Bobby Ge* (b. 1996) is an American-born, Shanghai-raised composer and media artist whose work engages with themes of communication, home, and hybridity. Described as “expressive and gripping” (Financial Times) and “exciting, frenzied, unpredictable” (CityNews CBR), his work is filled with shimmering textures and restless motion, often undergirded by a wry sense of humor. 

Winner of the 2022 Barlow Prize, Ge has received a diverse array of commissions including a sinfonietta/percussion ensemble piece for the Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire, a saxophone concerto for the US Navy Band, a multimedia work for the Bergamot Quartet, and a song for soprano, ensemble, and electronics supported by New Music USA. The latter, premiered by Mind on Fire, received a 2024 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. 

The coming 2024-25 season sees several notable premieres, including a string quartet for the two-time GRAMMY winning Attacca Quartet, an electroacoustic work for the icarus Quartet, a Pierrot quintet for Music from Copland House commissioned by their biannual Harvest Fund, and a large-scale symphonic work for the Albany Symphony. Ge will additionally serve as the Artist-in-Residence of the Telos Consort for the year, curating one full evening-length concert while closely advising the rest of their season programming. Other upcoming engagements include performances with the New England Philharmonic, the New York Youth Symphony, the Westside Chamber Players, and the Aruna Quartet. 

In previous years, Ge has received fellowships from the MATA Festival, the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, and Copland House’s CULTIVATE program. He was named the Composer of the Year by the Sioux City Symphony, the grand prize winner of the New York Youth Symphony’s Jon Deak First Music Award, and a winner of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s call for scores. Ge was the recipient of a Copland House Residency Award and has held additional residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Millay Arts, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.

Ge is an avid collaborator and has had the good fortune of sharing his work with a growing list of presenters that ranges from the unorthodox - the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, NJ Audubon - to the cutting edge of new music, including Khemia Ensemble, Tesla Quartet, Blackbox Ensemble, JACK Quartet, and So Percussion. 

A dedicated educator, Ge believes firmly in the value of the arts as an expressive and uniting force, and is eager to share this vision with others around him. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D at Princeton University as a Naumburg Fellow, and holds degrees from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University (M.M.) and the University of California, Berkeley (B.A.). His primary teachers include Donnacha Dennehy, Nathalie Joachim, Juri Seo, Dan Trueman, Tyondai Braxton, Kevin Puts, Harold Meltzer, and Cindy Cox.

*A note on pronunciation: please read Ge as ‘Jee’ in performance contexts. For those who are curious, though, the original Chinese - 戈 - is pronounced ‘G-uh’ with a hard G.

Geli Li is a Chinese-born American resident composer whose music bridges Eastern and  Western cultures through her own musical vocabulary. With two decades of professional  experience in music composition, she has dedicated herself to the new music realm, embracing  both acoustic and electronic media and instruments from both Eastern and Western traditions. 

She has collaborated with over 30 ensembles and orchestras, including the Orchestra of St.  Luke’s, Talea Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, Hanatsu Miroir, Chamber Orchestra-Jahrhundert XX-Österreich, NOMAD Tokyo, Berlin Zafraan Ensemble, 4Sonora String Quartet,  [Switch~Ensemble], Balance Campaign Ensemble, Tace t(i) Ensemble, Chartreuse Trio, Fear No  Music Ensemble, Altius Quartet, Beijing Modern Ensemble, Oregon Symphony Orchestra,  China Broadcast Orchestra, Beijing Chinese Orchestra, Central Conservatory Symphony  Orchestra, China Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Macao Chinese Orchestra. Furthermore, she  has worked with many individuals, such as Brad Lubman, James Baker, Peter Burwik, Manuel  Nauri, Anthony Millet, Laura Cocks, Jay Campbell, and more. 

Li’s compositions have been performed across North America, Asia, and Europe at numerous  events and festivals, such as ManiFeste IRCAM, Talea 15th Anniversary Celebration, Women  Composers Festival of Hartford, Midwest Graduate Music Consortium Conference, Thailand  New Music and Arts Symposium, Symposium of Contemporary Music Research (Taiwan), UNK  New Music Series and Festival, Florida State University New Music Festival, Shanghai Spring  International Music Festival, Intimacy of Creativity Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival  Composer Symposium, Das China Festival der Hochschüler für Musik und Theater, and many  others. 

Li has served as composer-in-residence at the DeGaetano Composition Institute (2024),  Rodamúsic Composers Residency (2024), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology  (2017), and CHEN Qigang Music Academy (2016). 

Li’s academic journey has spanned Asia, Europe, and North America, reflecting her global  perspective on music and her commitment to musical innovation and cross-cultural dialogue. She  holds a doctoral degree in Music Composition from the University of Texas at Austin, where she  received the Academic Excellence Fellowship, the Professional Development Award, and the  Kent Kennan Endowed Graduate Fellowship. Li studied Music Composition at the Hochschule  für Musik und Theater Hamburg from 2014 to 2015 as part of her master’s degree. She also  spent eight years at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China, where she completed  her bachelor's and master’s degrees in Music Composition and Music Theory with top-tier  honors. Li’s musical education has been enriched by mentorship from Augusta Read Thomas,  Januibe Tejera, Yevgeniy Sharlat, Elmar Lampson, Qin Wenchen, Hao Weiya, and many others.

Our Committee would like to award the following scores as Honorable Mentions in our 2024-25 Call for Scores.

Hansol Choi Hw'ang_Hōn (2024)

Aidan Gold For Whom do we Perform (2024)

Carlos Bandera, Of Rain and Air (2021)

Carlos Bandera is a composer whose music is characterized by a glacial unfolding of sonic landscapes. He often expands simple elements into large-scale musical structures, through which he explores the interplay of harmony, noise, and texture.

Bandera's orchestral work Materia Prima, premiered in 2023 at Carnegie Hall by the American Composers Orchestra, was described by the New York Classical Review as having “one of the most immersive and elegant transitions from nothingness to complexity that one has heard.” His music has been performed by groups including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the American Composers Orchestra, the Albany Symphony, the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Dogs of Desire, Hotel Elefant, Earspace, Hebrides Ensemble, Nebula Ensemble, Omnibus Ensemble, and Now Hear This. He has been a fellow at Copland House’s CULTIVATE, Orchestra of St Luke’s DeGaetano Composition Institute, Composers Conference, and the Underwood New Music Readings, and he has attended the Delian Academy for New Music and Time of Music (Musiikin aika). Recently, his piece Meristem was performed by the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra during their “On the Road” tour across South East England and his piece Spirare II was recorded by Yarn/Wire.

Bandera holds a Master of Music degree from Peabody Conservatory and a Bachelor of Music degree from Montclair State University. He is currently based in Chicago where he is pursuing his PhD in Composition and Music Technology at Northwestern University.

Learn more about Carlos here.

Akari Komura, Inhabited by air (2023)

Akari Komura (b.1996) is a Japanese composer-vocalist whose works center around contemplative engagement with listening and soundmaking. She is interested in curating a participatory performance space that invites a community of musicians and listeners for a collective transformative experience. Her works have been presented at the Atlantic Music Festival, Composers Conference, Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, Nief-Norf, and soundSCAPE. She holds an M.M. in Composition from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in Vocal Arts from the University of California, Irvine. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition at the University of California San Diego.

Learn more about Akari here.

Cole Reyes, Sprint (2022)

Cole Reyes (b. 1998) is a Brooklyn-based composer, educator, conductor, and performer originally from the Chicagoland Area. His music explores the intersection between personal experience and the world beyond.

He has collaborated with artists such as JACK Quartet, the Rhythm Method Quartet, Bergamot Quartet, Juventas New Music Ensemble, BlackBox Ensemble, Del Sol Quartet, Transient Canvas, Hypercube, and Unheard-of//Ensemble among others. Recent commissions include those from the National Orchestral Institute, Six Degrees Singers, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C., and the Victory Players.

His primary composition teachers include Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, Robert Honstein, Christopher Stark, and LJ White. He has participated in summer festivals including the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, National Orchestral Institute, Connecticut Summerfest, and the Lake George Music Festival. He is co-founder of Telos Consort, a professional chamber ensemble based in New York City. He will begin doctoral studies at the University of Michigan in the fall of 2023.

Learn more about Cole here.