Composition

Jordan Abramson is a Toronto-born composer who is in his first year of a master’s degree in composition, entering MSM with the conservatory’s prestigious President’s Award. As a University of Toronto graduate with a major in composition and a minor in biology, he has been awarded the Ben McPeek Scholarship, the France-Canada Cultural Exchange Experience France
Award, the Glenn Gould Memorial Scholarship, and is a two-time recipient of the Arthur Plettner Scholarship. Jordan has previously studied with renowned composers Gary Kulesha, Kevin Lau, and Larysa Kuzmenko and studied at MSM with Ashkan Behzadi.

Maya Borisov is a composer and soprano born in 2004. From 2017 to 2022 she studied composition with Dr. Craig Levesque at the Westminster Conservatory of Music as well as voice with Danielle Sinclair. Maya graduated with High Honors from the Westminster Conservatory Honors Music Program, where she double majored in composition and voice. In 2020 she won the Westminster Conservatory of Music scholarship for achievement in composition. Maya was a participant in the Curtis Institute Young Artist Summer Program (2020), and the Atlantic Music Festival (2021), where she had her pieces A Purple Forest, To What Used to Be, and On the Flipside performed. She studied composition at MSM with Dr. Nirmali Fenn.

Marco Catella is a composer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was exposed to music throughout his life but developed a stronger interest in writing in 2019, at age 16. Although his musical influences are noticeably diverse, he attempts to unite them by creating vividly dramatic works. Wagner, Mahler, Strauss, and many film composers like Hermann and Rosza enkindled his love for drama. He majored in economics for one year in Argentina but decided to take the risk and study music. While unfamiliar with US music schools, he quickly fell in love with the Manhattan School of Music. After going through the thorough application process, including a very engaging interview, he visited the school and attended a concert. After that day, he had no doubt about which place would be best to cultivate his musical potential.

Mashi Coleman is a California native, born in Pasadena, California. He pursued his bachelor’s degree in composition under Professor Reiko Fueting. Previously, he attended the California School of the Arts, where he received multiple composition awards. He attended the Brevard Music Center in the 2022 summer season. He is a skilled classical pianist, who has played in several concerts around Los Angeles. He was lead keyboardist for the rock band “Space Hotel” and has written several songs and classical works. He is interested in composing and studying various styles of music ranging from Classical music to alternative rock and R&B.

Jonathan Gold (b. 2001) is an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. Originally from New Jersey, Jonathan’s musical journey began as a drummer in rock and heavy metal bands, but a transformative encounter with Morten Lauridsen’s choral music led him to devote himself solely to composition in his senior year of high school.

While studying composition and choral conducting with Alla Cohen and Geneviève Leclaire at Berklee College of Music, Gold was profoundly influenced by his discovery of works by Arvo Pärt, Alan Hovhaness, and Morton Feldman. In 2021, he saw the premiers of his first piano pieces, which were especially informed by Feldman’s late avant-garde sensibilities. He received his M.M. in composition at Manhattan School of Music.

His compositions often unfold slowly and quietly with dense carpets of sound and a localized, highly delicate treatment of texture and dynamics. His work embodies, as Gold describes, a desire to, “envelop and drench the spirit, so that it may pause and sense only the gradual, subtle, perpetual changes that occur in things without the human imposition of control. We do not dictate the nature of things, we are only meant to care for them – that power is reserved for God alone.” Gold’s music also reveals a deep religiosity involving sensations of absorption, presence, mortification, and purification.

Various orchestras, chamber ensembles, and choirs around New England have performed Jonathan’s music, including at Berklee and Atlantic Music Festival, as well as seasonal concerts by Crepusculum Choir and the Berklee and Boston Conservatory Chamber Singers. His works have received national and international recognition, including a second prize and special prizes for best free composition and best religious vocal music at the International Antonín Dvorák Composition Competition, a second prize at the MTNA Young Artist Composition Competition, a national semi-finalist at the American Prize Composition Competition, and the Rick Applin Award in Fugue from Berklee College of Music.

jonathan-gold.com

Chongguang Guan is a classical composer, pianist, and electronic music performer who graduated from the Music Middle School Affiliated to Shanghai Conservatory of Music where he studied composition with Weihao Qiang. He studied at Manhattan School of Music with Marjorie Merryman for his Bachelor of Music. His timbral approach is very unique and was well received in Elinor Armer’s master class (2015 May) and the Winter Master Class Program (2016) run by UCLA’s music department. His works have not only been influenced by various music genres, but also by his rich variety of experiences as a performer. He performed in the 2018 Electric Daisy Carnival Shanghai as a Guest DJ, and he also performed at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music as a jazz pianist in 2016.

Yueqing Guo (YG/Iris) is a composer who graduated from the Professional Studies Program at Manhattan School of Music. Her compositional practice centers on amplifying nuanced and marginalized voices through the intersection of materialized architectures and aesthetic politics. She holds degrees from Manhattan School of Music and South China Normal University, with specialized training in Classical Piano Performance and Music Education.

Alexander Howard was born in 2004 in Chandler, AZ. He has been studying the saxophone and clarinet for many years and participated in two All-State competitions with both. He discovered his desire to compose in elementary school and continued forward with his passion. In high school, he studied saxophone and clarinet privately with Mr. Don Goldstone, piano with Mrs. Blair Myers, and composition with Dr. Mathew Fuerst.

He is obsessed with a medley of composers and of the folk music from many cultures. He strongly believes that music is a universal medium and music must be able to resonate as strongly with everyone playing and listening. His music possesses strong melodicism and richly colorful harmonic palette, focusing on the intense joys and the cataclysmic lows of the human condition. He often derives music from nature, and alongside his synesthetic responses, finds music in every tenet of life.

Besides music, he loves reading, studying butterflies and geology, hiking in the mountains, and talking with his friends and family.

Shrish A. Jawadiwar (b. 1999) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from South Brunswick, New Jersey. He plays double bass, viola da gamba, violone, bass guitar, and the North Indian hand drums—tabla. He is additionally a choral singer who sings with the Philadelphia-based Epiphany Singers. His music has influences from both the Western classical tradition and his native Hindustani classical tradition. More recent works include forays into microtonal technique mixed with repeating musical cells. His biggest interests are in early music and musical form. Since the double bass is a fairly underrepresented solo instrument, a goal of his is to increase the repertoire for it and other similarly underrepresented instruments. Shrish holds a B.A. in political science and music from The College of New Jersey and an M.M. in composition from Temple University. His teachers in composition include Dr. Robert Young McMahan, Dr. Quinn Collins, Dr. Ellen Fishman, Dr. Andrew Litts, Mr. Jan Krzywicki, and Dr. Maurice Wright. At MSM, he studied under Dr. Susan Botti.

shrishjawadiwar.com

Jingyu Jin is a composer and pianist from Wuhan, China. She graduated from the Wuhan Conservatory of Music in 2024 with a Bachelor of Music degree in composition and with a master’s degree in composition at the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Professor Susan Botti. Her compositions are typically related to literary works, and she is also exploring the fusion of Chinese and Western musical instrument cultures. Her works are characterized by delicate and rich timbres, and she has a diverse range of compositions, including art songs, instrumental solos, various chamber music pieces, and symphonies. During her undergraduate studies, she pursued a minor in solfeggio and aural skills, and she also possesses nearly three years of experience in teaching these subjects to children.

She has received the following awards: 2020: a prize in the College Cup competition of Wuhan Conservatory of Music; 2022: the third price in the 18th SUN RIVER PRIZE Student’s New Music Composition Competition; 2022: her piece was selected to join in Wuhan Conservatory of Music 2022 Academic Traditional Chinese Style Works Show; 2023: the second price in the Regulations on JEAN SIBLIUS Composition Competition On-Line; 2024: her piece was shortlisted for the Le Domaine Forget de Charlevoix New Music Session.

Martín La Rotta is a queer multi-disciplinary artist from Colombia that merges acoustic and electronic realms by electronically processing acoustic ensembles, representing their personal mythology through drag performance as an alchemical vehicle. Their work explores the immense dimension of gender and transcendent identity, and how their harmonic union reveals the immediacy of liberation.  Their intentionality varies with each work, for renewal is constant in the realm of change, but their center (the center) is always one and the same: boundless and supremely tender. Currently based in New York City, they studied with Susan Botti at the Manhattan School of Music. Their various creations have been represented with numerous performance identities: Alquimia, om, Sonora Atemporalis, Mar de Rott and Geometría.

Tongyu Lu is a composer from China who received a bachelor’s degree in composition at Manhattan School of Music studying with Professor Reiko Fueting.

Tongyu was born into a musical family and began to learn the piano at the age of five and the trumpet at the age of eleven. In 2016, he was admitted to Central Conservatory of Music Middle School with excellent results, and studied trumpet with Professor Chen Guang, piano with Professor Li Xiang, solfeggio practice and music theory with Professor Wang Yusu, Associate Professor Zhang Juan and Professor Li Tong. He also joined the China Youth Symphony Orchestra (Central Conservatory of Music Youth Symphony Orchestra). In 2020, he officially began to study composition, under the guidance of Professor Xu Zhitong and Professor Liu Kanghua.

He has an extensive passion to compose various styles of music and create his own new works. Also, he has a great interest in art and nature under the influence of his family. Many of his works are inspired by them.

Yuval Medina is a composer, pianist, and computer programmer based in Brooklyn, New York. He received his master’s in composition at the Manhattan School of Music, studying under David Adamcyk, where he was awarded the merit-based Presidential Scholarship.

After working at Google as a software engineer on the Education on Search team, Yuval quit his job to pursue his dream — music composition. At MSM, Yuval plans to integrate his skills in programming, electronics, and signal processing into his classical compositions, and enhance his melodies and deep and rich harmonies from the rich tradition of Western classical music and Jewish folk music, with textural- and sound-based elements from the modern age. The master’s in composition is a natural continuation of his studies at the Juilliard Extension Division, having completed two years of composition classes under Elliot Cole and Conrad Cummings, as well as private study under Matthew Ricketts.

Before coming to New York, he completed his bachelor’s in computer science at Duke University, where over the course of his studies he combined his passions for data, experimental coding, music-writing, and signal processing, and created a generative engine to visualize biological river data through sound, i.e. data sonification.

Yuval is always excited to collaborate artistically with others. He composed the soundtrack for a video game developed by a colleague at Duke. He also performs as a pianist and organizes GroupMuse concerts around the city regularly.

Please feel free to reach out if you feel inspired by Yuval’s work and want to collaborate.

yuvalmedina.com

Zeke Morgan is a composer, violinist, and fiddle player from Jackson, Mississippi who received his master’s degree from Manhattan School of Music studying with Ashkan Behzadi. In May 2024, he graduated Bard College-Conservatory with degrees in composition and the written arts, and through his studies in poetry, developed a special interest in vocal music, resulting in the composition of multiple art songs and two operas: Vivisection and Requiem. Zeke has performed and composed in a wide variety of musical settings— from orchestras to folk and rock bands. For inspiration, he engages with pure improvisation, folklore/myth, electronica, philosophy, and occasionally; the world around him. He is most interested in the reconciliation of different (sometimes strikingly different) stylistic genres and art-forms as a way of accessing the human psyche, but also has an undying desire for beautiful noise.

While still an undergraduate at Bard, Zeke ran the Sinfonietta Project, a student-led new music initiative designed to provide opportunities for living composers and performers to engage in music-making together. He organized multiple student composition concerts, including one where performance and composition students wrote music for one another.

His music has been performed at an incredibly high level by the Da Capo Chamber Players, The Orchestra Now, and members of ICE. Notable teachers and mentors include Joan Tower, Missy Mazzoli, George Tsontakis, and Jorge Variego.

Guiomar Ortiz is a composer and pianist born in Madrid, Spain, in 1999. She defines herself as a multidisciplinary artist, she focused her career on music, but she always had an interest in other branches of art production, such as plastic or visual arts, that kept reflecting on her music.

She started her musical career focusing on piano competitions, receiving lots of international awards, while she began to arouse interest in composition and improvisation. At the age of 14, she premiered her first “album of improvisations” and started writing music for the screen. In 2016, she composed her first piece for contemporary dance, which was choreographed by the Royal Conservatory of Contemporary Dance of Spain.

In 2017, she started a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance in Madrid, where she met the pianist Pelayo Ciria and started the piano duo “Duo Rex”. They won several chamber music competitions and gave recitals around Europe. During those years, she focused her composition career on film scoring and achieved different awards in Spain, Los Angeles and Argentina, as well as in Music for Theater, as she became head composer of the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

In 2021, she started to work as a resident composer in a prestigious art gallery in Madrid (EstArt) focusing on music for contemporary performance, visual and plastic artists, and experimental projects. She found her path in that world and continues investigating how to combine different types of arts.

Meanwhile, she continued composing classical music for chamber ensembles, ballets and solo pieces, which earned her one of her most important awards thanks to her first piano trio, “First Prize Vienna Classical Music Academy” in Chamber Music. This year she premiered her album “La Luz”, which has also been recognized with many international awards, both for the musical and the video art and photography.

Chinese composer Cengxing Shi is interested in exploring dream-like musical atmospheres. She is first prize winner of the second YinZhongCup Prize International Composition Competition in 2016, and winner of the Camerata Nova Commission Prize in 2023. She began studying composition at the age of 10 and was admitted to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music Affiliated School in 2014.

Cengxing was joined the Winter Master Class Program (2016) held by UCLA’s music department and obtained Certificate of Outstanding Exchange Student. She was invited by Shanghai Hongkou Official Adult Chorus as composer, musical instructor, and pianist in 2018. She was also admitted to the L.A. Music Industry Summer Academy program in 2022 and collaborated with composer and Grammy-nominee Ariel Chobaz and prominent producer Essay Jones at Paramount Music Studio. In 2024, Cengxing collaborated with renowned American conductor George Manahan for a symphony performance and held her recital in New York. That same year, she composed original music for a ROARINGWILD brand advertisement and served as Chief Music Producer for GWANTSI’s “Beautiful Life Space” exhibition. Her compositions have premiered in New York, Los Angeles, and Shanghai.

Cengxing studied with Dr. Marjorie Merryman at MSM, and received her Master of Music in Composition at the Manhattan School of Music under the mentorship of Dr. J. Mark Stambaugh. She is a recipient of the MSM Merit Scholarship (2024-2025) and received the Deolus Husband Scholarship for Composition for four consecutive years (2020-2023).

R.S. Stricklin III, born in 1994 in Dallas, Texas, has had his music performed across the United States and in Europe. He has worked on performances of his music with loadbang, Frances-Marie Uitti, and members of the Ostravská Banda and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Stricklin graduated from Southern Methodist University in 2017 with a BM in composition and honors in the liberal arts, and Manhattan School of Music in 2020 with an MM in composition, where he then received a DMA in composition, studying under Reiko Füting.

Philip Tappan is a composer and conductor who loves collaborating on new and exciting projects. He has a passion for multi-disciplinary influence and Arts productions. He finds inspiration in listening to others, books, dance, and being with nature.

Philip’s compositions and arrangements have been performed at the Kennedy Center, the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, the Sugar Hill Salon, and numerous universities across the United States. He has led numerous calls for scores, reading sessions, and recordings of new music in the multiple posts he has held.

In 2010 and 2011, Philip volunteered as a school teacher in the City of Tbilisi Public School system through the Ministry of Education, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia (the former Soviet Bloc State). Working with the national conservatory and the US Embassy in Tbilisi, he was also invited to give four lectures to Georgian youth on American Classical music in the 20th century.

Philip holds a BM in music composition from Messiah College, an MM in orchestral conducting and a BM in music education from the State University of NY at Fredonia, and an Executive MBA from Quantic University. At Manhattan School of Music in 2026, he received a professional studies certificate in music composition.

Philip serves as the Deputy Commander of the West Point Band and is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), through the Project Management Institute (PMI).

https://www.philiptappan.com/about-philip