2024 Composers

Described as “otherworldly and mysteriously familiar” (Chicago Classical Review), and as “exciting and clear… with a striking boldness” (Luigi Nono Competition Prize), Igor Santos’ music has been performed internationally, by leading musicians such as Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain,Ensemble Dal Niente, Yarn Wire, Alarm Will Sound, POING, the American Composers Orchestra, and The Florida Orchestra.

His work is centered on mimetic relationships between found sounds, acoustic instruments, and recently with video, all of which is dramatized through repetition and the use of microtonal keyboards.

Igor has earned degrees in Music Composition from the University of Chicago, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of South Florida. He has been awarded the Rome Prize (2022), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2023), and has won additional prizes such as the International Ferruccio Busoni Competition, the Luigi Nono International Competition, the RED NOTE Competition, the Salvatore Martirano Award, and was also awarded Best Sound Design from Theater Tampa Bay (for his incidental music). Igor is a native of Curitiba, Brazil.

Seare Ahmad Farhat strives to create music that connects a listener to the visceral imagination, energy, and transformation within narrative forms. Starting out his musical endeavors in Afghan folk music, he later built on these valued experiences in the western classical tradition combined with other interests, such as mathematics. Seare has received commissions from the JACK and Flux Quartets, IU New Music Ensemble, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, Quintessence Wind Quintet, and the Oberlin Sinfonietta, and served as the young composer-in-residence of the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings in 2019. Seare has also held residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Banff Evolution: String Quartet, and with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music as a Balhest Eeble Composer Fellow for the 2021-23 cycle. He has also received prestigious awards such as the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a BMI Composer Award. Seare holds a B.M. in Composition and B.A. in Mathematics from Oberlin College and Conservatory, a master’s degree from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he held the position of Assistant Director of the New Music Ensemble, and is currently pursuing a D.M.A. at Cornell University studying with Elizabeth Ogonek, Kevin Ernste, and Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri.

Corie Rose Soumah is a Canadian composer (QC) currently based in New York. She is interested in shaping fractured and reconstructed sound components through hyper-collages and visceral physical gestures. Her approach is characterized by a keen interest in the interweaving of multiple aesthetic and sonic elements from the perspective of Afro-diasporic geologies. She explores these textures through the overlay of different acoustic mediums as well as electronic and analog technologies.

Soumah works have been performed by an extensive number of ensembles and performers such as Instruments of Happiness, Flux, Hypercube, Ekmeles, Paramirabo, Sixtrum, Contemporary Insight, New Music Concerts, Orkest de Ereprijs and Wet Ink. Her works have also been featured at the 24th Young Composer Meeting, Fontainebleau Schools of Music and Fine Arts, Festival Musica, MATA festival, soundSCAPE festival, highSCORE festival and Domaine Forget. Her works have been performed in Canada, the U.S, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy.

Recent and upcoming collaborations include a piece for saxophones, electronics and shells performed by Antonin Bourgault and Erin Rogers, a new commission by Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM) as part of the 2025 Forum and collaboration with ensembles PinkNoise as well as Longleash trio.

Soumah is currently pursuing a Doctoral degree in composition at Columbia University. She completed a BMus degree in composition from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. Her mentors include Zosha Di Castri, George Lewis, Marcos Balter, Georg Frederich Haas, Annie Gosfield, Michel Tétreault, Nicolas Gilbert and Jimmie Leblanc.