Meet MSM Composition Students

2021 Alumni

• William Bolles-Beaven

  

  William Bolles-Beaven articulates and explores psychological spaces through sonic and visual ideas, which are grounded in art being a personal and interpersonal action. Larger themes in his work tend to appear dialectically: control and openness, the artificial and the genuine, permanence and impermanence. Bolles-Beaven explores these dialectics through juxtaposition, musical quotes, and repetition.

  In 2018 he earned his bachelor’s degree in composition from Oberlin Conservatory, where he studied with Elizabeth Ogonek. In his third year, the composition faculty chose his orchestra piece to be performed by the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra. His senior year, the faculty awarded him the Walter E. Aschaffenburg Prize, which recognizes a graduating senior for “outstanding music composition.”

  While at Oberlin, William Bolles-Beaven also grew more passionate about linguistics and the German language in particular. After he graduated, he taught English in Bregenz, Austria through the United States Teaching Assistant Program, which reaffirmed his desire to teach and heightened his awareness of language change and dialects.

  In 2021, Bolles-Beaven graduated from Manhattan School of Music with a master’s degree in Composition. During his studies he worked with Reiko Füting and was awarded the Nicolas Flagello Award, which is given to a graduating senior for “outstanding achievement as a composer,” as well as the Carl Kanter Prize for his thesis composition.

  William Bolles-Beaven is currently based in New York City.

  williambollesbeaven.com

• Alexandros Darna

  

  Alexandros Darna (b. 1998) is a Cypriot-Cuban composer based in Nicosia, Cyprus and New York City.

  Alexandros’ works have been performed in Cyprus, Greece and the United States. His recent chamber work Minnaloushe – for Violin, Piano and Percussion, commissioned by the Cypriot chamber ensemble Trio Ostinato, was recently performed by the group at the Embassy of the Republic of Cyprus in Athens, Greece. In 2015, Alexandros conducted his symphonic work Morning Voyage, with the Municipal Youth Symphony Orchestra of Nicosia in concert halls throughout Cyprus. His quartet Popular Renaissance received the first prize in the second student composition contest Solon Michailides (2016).

  Upon graduating from Nicosia’s Music High School in 2016, Alexandros received the OPAP Best Overall Graduate Award. In 2017, after completing his military service, Alexandros traveled to Havana, Cuba and studied Composition at Instituto Superior de Arte under the instruction of Juan Piñera and Javier Iha Rodriguez.

  Alexandros is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Music in classical composition at Manhattan School of Music in NYC, where he studies with Dr. J. Mark Stambaugh. Alexandros is honored to have been the recipient of the Manhattan School of Music International Advisory Board and the Makarios (Cyprus Children’s Fund) scholarship awards.

• Nicolas Farmer

  

  A native of College Station, Texas, Nicolas Farmer is a composer pursing his master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music. He completed his undergraduate studies in composition and horn performance at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Besides composing, he also has research interests in the study of timbre and orchestration. In July 2019, he gave a presentation titled “Seeing New Colors: Devices of Scriabinian and Post-Scriabinian Orchestration” at the first Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration Project conference at IRCAM.

• Elizabeth Gartman

  

  Elizabeth Gartman (b. 1996) is a composer and soprano currently based in New York City. As a composer, her work calls attention to the implications behind the vocal instrument paired with the physical body. In addition, her work explores themes of process in performance, as well as active listening and response. As a performer, Elizabeth is dedicated to the contemporary dramatic stage, with a background in classical voice and a current emphasis on new works. Accolades include selection as a finalist in Beth Morrison Project’s 2021 “Next Gen” Cycle, twice recognition as a finalist in ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Competition, the Karl Canter Prize for Orchestral Composition, and the Giampaolo Bracali Composition Award, among others. Elizabeth received her master’s degree in composition from the Manhattan School of Music in May of 2021. Elizabeth most recently studied with Susan Botti (composition) and Lucy Shelton (voice).

  www.elizabethgartman.com

• Yule Han

  

  Yule Han (b.1994), born and raised in South Korea, and currently based in New York City, is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, music educator, and an avid collaborator. She seeks to explore unique conceptualizations of a sonic world that confronts what are perceived as conventions. Her music draws inspiration from various domains such as literature, science, nature and psychoacoustics.

  Her music has been featured at SICPP, the Atlantic Music Festival, Tara Helen O’Connor’s Purchase CoM Flute Studio, and by Idith Meshulam Korman from Ensemble Π. She has attended workshops with Michael Finnissy, Nicholas Vines, Pierre Jalbert, and David Ludwig. As a collaborator, she has worked with both the Dance Conservatory and Film Conservatory of SUNY Purchase, which allowed her to work with Min Lee (ballet), Emily Danbi Park (film) and Damani Brissett (film). Recently, she has received the Jan Williams Award for Composition/Contemporary Performance Collaboration.

  Upcoming presentations include 4 concerts in following venues: Weimar, Germany; Magdeburg, Germany; NYC, USA; Manhattan School of Music (November 2021).

  Yule graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music summa cum laude from SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Gregory Spears, Kamala Sankaram, and Laura Kaminsky for composition; Carmit Zori for violin. She is expected to earn her master’s degree from Manhattan School of Music, studying with Reiko Füting.

  www.yulehan.net

• Euna Joh

  

  Euna Joh (b. 1995), a native of Seoul, South Korea, is a composer and a pianist. Euna is currently pursuing a Master of Music in composition at Manhattan School of Music, studying with Reiko Fueting. Her compositions have been performed throughout the United States and South Korea. In 2019, her work Love Languages was selected to be performed by the internationally renowned JACK Quartet. She has received several awards and scholarships including the KU Young Musician Academy Scholarship, the RST Prize from Chun University Music Competition, and a full scholarship from West Virginia University. Euna holds her Bachelor of Music degrees in Piano Performance and Composition from West Virginia University, where she studied piano with Peter Amstutz and composition with David Taddie and Yu-Chun Chien.

• Jaegone Kim 

  

  Jaegone Kim was born in Daejeon, South Korea in January 1999. He explores paradox, dilemma, absurdity, and the distortion of perception in his artworks. He has been interested in chemistry from a young age, hence logic and mathematics are still inherent in his works.

• Sohwa Lee

  

  Sohwa Lee (Seoul, South Korea). Korean-born composer and theorist. Sohwa Lee got bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Composition at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul and a master’s degree in Composition and Theory at Mannes School of Music in New York City.
  She believes in a huge sense of humor in music. Under the suggestion that human beings are a social species, she thinks interacting with each other is the key aspect of music. She actively writes music to develop her career as a composer and lives with communicating in the joy of music every day.

  Listen on Soundcloud

• Longfei Li

  

  NYC-based composer Longfei Li (b. 1988) is originally from China. His music has been performed worldwide in North America, Asia, and Europe. He has worked with influential ensembles such as the Longleash Piano Trio, Yarn/Wire, and Loadbang. Li is searching for a way to create a better connection between mechanism and organism in his music. Notable works include his new media chamber opera Simulacrum, Catalyz for orchestra, Aurora for piano trio, and Passacaglia for solo percussionist and electronics. In 2016, his piano and electronic piece Ripples won the Samadis’ Records & International Composition Competition and his Legacy Quartet won the Manhattan Prize in the same year. In 2020, his piece Noisses.. for solo cellist won the first prize in the International Composition Competition by Academia Musica Wien. He has also attended many new music festivals such as the 2017 Loretto Project, the 2018 HighScore festival, the 2020 St. Petersburg International New Music Festival “reMusik.org”, the 2020 Vienna Summer Music Festival, and the 2021 Yarn/Wire International Institute. As the co-founder and the artistic director of Path New Music, he is organizing opera productions that combine contemporary music, new media arts, and dance. Longfei Li is currently pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts at Manhattan School of Music with Dr. Reiko Füting. He is also teaching musicianship and theory at MSM.

  www.longfeili.com

• Alexander Liebermann

  

  Alexander Liebermann graduated from the Hochschule für Musik ‘Hanns Eisler’ Berlin and the Juilliard School. He is currently enrolled in the doctoral program at Manhattan School of Music, studying with Reiko Füting. Recent works include a climate-change-reflective monodrama commissioned by the Deutsche Oper Berlin (2019) and a soundtrack for the documentary film ‘Frozen Corpses Golden Treasures’. He has been a faculty member at Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program since 2017.

  www.alexanderliebermann.com

• Jace Mankins

  

  Jace Mankins is a native of Kilgore, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Music in composition from Texas Christian University and is currently pursuing a Master of Music in composition from the Manhattan School of Music. Jace has over 15 years of experience playing piano, cello and organ. He studied piano with Sylvia Bolding and Harold Martina and has studied organ with Lorenz Maycher, Founding Director of the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival. Jace is a former piano and cello instructor at Arlington School of Music and currently serves as the Director of Communications for the Roy Perry American Classic Organ Foundation.

• Jason McCauley

  

  Jason McCauley is a composition student in the Professional Studies Program at Manhattan School of Music studying with Reiko Fueting.
  He has two master’s degrees from St John’s College in the Liberal arts of Western Civilization from 500 b.c. to the 18th century and in Eastern Classics from India, China, and Japan and has studied Sanskrit and translated sections of the Bhagavad Gita.
  Jason studied music composition for his B.A. at Cornish College of the Arts with Professor Jarrad Powell, friend and collaborator of John Cage, and noted student of Lou Harrison. Other teachers of Jason’s include former students of Carl Off and Messian, and in other disciplines, students of William McNeill and Mordmer Adler.
  His compositions are inspired by melodic systems from world historic traditions. Attempting synthesis of these, Jason has created his own mathematical model for deriving music rather than creating it, by combining Algebraic Geometry and Number Theory with Phenomenology. Jason is currently preparing his recently completed proof of the infamous 3n+1 conjecture and is hoping to submit it for peer review this year.
  Jason’s career is that of a freelance artist and spans a gamut of disciplines such as board membership, higher education, working in the arts industry of thailand and various collaborations with award winning artists internationally.
  Jason is a Liberal Arts Composer; he seeks freedom through knowledge for himself and others. Jason finds himself on a path analogous to that of the Bodhisattva and music is his framework for fullfilling that path.

• Ben Munro

  

  English Composer Ben Munro is a 3rd year Bachelor of Music student under the support of the Parnassus Award at the Royal College of Music, London. Ben’s style encompasses a plethora of genres as he often experiments with different forms and mediums of musical creativity. His orchestral debut was with the Leeds Symphony Orchestra in 2016 where a successful first performance led to two further appearances on the programme later that season. This created an ongoing relationship with the orchestra as both a composer and performer, leading to a commission by The Chamber Orchestra of Leeds; Reflections was first performed in February of 2019 at the Chamber Orchestra’s debut concert.
  Aside from composing for orchestral ensembles, Ben is actively involved with the music of his local community, leading to conducting in a variety of Yorkshire ensembles such as Harrogate Male Voice Choir’s 50th Anniversary concert at the Royal Hall, Harrogate, and composing an experimental sensory workshop piece for the visually impaired which combined both acoustic and electronic composition. He recently worked in collaboration with the composition department at the Royal College of Music as a composer and website programmer for Treephonia, an interactive website to explore the connections between sound and the natural world in Kensington Gardens, London.
  Aside from commissions, he has taught in schools in Harrogate and Knaresborough, weaving creative aspects of theory and composition into teaching piano. Ben is currently studying on a semester abroad exchange programme at the Manhattan School of Music, New York City.

  https://benmunro.uk

• Thomas Palmer

  

  Thomas Palmer is a composer and performer based in New York City. His works have been performed by ensembles across the east coast, including the Imani Winds and the Akropolis Quintet. Thomas is the recipient of the John and Lucrecia Herr award for Composition and the Arthur M. Fraser award, as well as the Presser Scholar Award for extraordinary musical and academic accomplishments. He was interviewed in 2019 on South Carolina NPR’s Sonatas and Soundscapes and is published by Murphy Music Press.

  Thomas is an advocate for new music, and he maintains a full schedule of projects and commissions. Thomas received his B.M. in Composition from the University of South Carolina and currently studies under Dr. Reiko Füting at the Manhattan School of Music in New York.

• Liang Christopher Qian

  

  Liang Christopher Qian won the 2018-2020 the China National Arts Fund (CNAF). He also has won Golden Bell Awards (GBA), the Ablaze International Symphony Awards, the Carl Kanter Prize in Composition (MSM), and his work Cello Song listed in the Famous Chinese Masterpieces of Contemporary Art by China Federation of Literary and Art Circles. He has been commissioned by many organizations, such as the China National Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, the EOS Repertoire Orchestra, the Asia Philharmonic Orchestra, the Cheltenham Music Festival in the UK, the Lucca International Music Festival in Italy, the Beijing Modern Music Festival, the International Youth Theatre Festival, and some singers and performers. Since 2016, his works have been recorded and published by ABLAZE Records in USA, his scores published by People’s Music Publishing House in China. He’s also a member of the American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC).

• Tian Qin

  

  Tian Qin is a candidate for a Bachelor of Music in the Composition, Theory and Skills department at the Manhattan School of Music, studying with Dr. Marjorie Merryman. She has also studied piano with Jiayin Li at MSM since 2018.

  Tian started studying piano at age nine and classical composition at age 10. She studied in the Music Middle School Affiliated to Shanghai Conservatory of Music for six years with composition professor Din Ying and piano professor Yu Xiangjun until she graduated. Her vocal piece, “The Moon,” won second prize in the vocal category of the Li Ming Chun Xiao China National Composition Competition in 2015. Her trio, “Obsessed,” comprised of traditional Chinese instruments, won second prize in the Yinzhong China National Composition Competition in 2016. This piece was selected to be performed at the 34th Shanghai Spring International Music Festival as well as the Communication Concert of the Xian and Shanghai Music Middle Schools in 2017.

  During her three years of studying in Manhattan, Tian has had several opportunities to work with ensembles. In 2019, Tian composed “One to Ten” for the trumpet and soprano duo “Byrne:Kozar:Duo” – though the concert was postponed because of the pandemic. In 2020, Tian composed a wind quintet piece called “Songs for Children” for a recording project with the Windscape Ensemble. This year, she was also invited to write background music in the Podcast Channel 话室 Chat Room.

• Simon Røttingen

  

  Simon Røttingen was born in Norway in 2000. He studied piano with Michael Endres and Christian Ihle Hadland as well as conducting with Eivind Aadland at Barrat Due’s Music Institute in Oslo from the age of 12 to 19. During this time, Simon also arranged and composed music for two concerts created exclusively by young musicians, visual artists, and dancers. These projects were created to bring young people together in a utopian space outside of their artistic institutions and specialized fields. He was also accepted into the Norwegian Academy of Music’s Youth Program as a composition major in 2016. In 2019, he moved to New York to study with Reiko Füting at Manhattan School of Music. He is interested in how music reflects the culture in which it is created and performed, as well as music’s ability to change consciousness at fundamental levels, thereby also changing the culture in which it is created and performed.

• Adam Sisler

  

  Adam Sisler is a composer, photographer, visual artist, saxophonist, and pianist from Lexington, Virginia. Adam graduated from Rockbridge county high school in 2011 and has since taken courses at both the New England School of Photography, studying portraiture, and the Academy of Realist Art, where he studied figure and portrait drawing. Adam is a candidate for a Bachelor of Music from the Manhattan School of Music in 2022. Adam has participated in several concerts at MSM as well as in his home town at various churches and local venues of musical interest.

  His musical works range from strictly music to multimedia cinemagraphs, or videos of still images with accompanying music, which are often improvised. Upon graduating, he aims to write concert works as well as seek opportunities in advertisement or videogames for commercial employment.

• Logan Vrankovic

  

  Logan Vrankovic is an award-winning composer, pianist, conductor, and multi-instrumentalist from New York City. His repertoire and writing style are varied and genre-inclusive by rule, as Logan is a musician that finds his greatest fulfillment by exploring all the different kinds of music the present day has to offer. He was awarded second prize at the 10th International Antonín Dvořák Composition Competition for his pieces 6 Variations on ‘Šlo Dzjevča’ for violin and piano, and his Double Concerto ‘By Vltava’ for two clarinets in Bb and strings. He composed both pieces during the five-day speed-composing competition in Prague, Czech Republic. That same year, his “Piano Concerto” won both the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award and the Bohuslav Martinu Prize in Composition. As a performer, Logan is a classically trained concert pianist and conductor. He has performed in venues in the United States and Europe, his favorite venues include the DiMenna Center, Carnegie Hall, Lobkowicz Palace, and Zadar’s Church of St. Donatus. He is a part of many small ensembles and enjoys performing chamber music new and old while striving to incorporate improvisation and modern sensibilities wherever possible.

• Yuqin (Strucky) Yi

  

  Yuqin (Strucky) Yi is a classical composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer who graduated from the South China University of Technology’s School of Art and is now pursuing his Master of Music in classical composition at Manhattan School of Music. Influenced by a wide variety of music genres, his works aim for a crystallization not only of classical music but also of rock, jazz, and soul music. Apart from working in the commercial music industry (pop production, film scoring), Strucky has also been involved with many classical and jazz events as a composer, orchestrater and consultant. Selected for the NCPA’S (National Grand Theatre) Young Composers Program Award in 2019, his works have been in China, the United States, and Europe. His method of composition—of works that are often literary in conception—reflects the fullness and possibility of contemporary music, freshly processing timbre, harmony, and rhythm to generate a philosophical narration of life experience.

• Haihui Zhang

  

  Haihui Zhang was born in Wuhan, China. She studied piano and composition with her father at the age of 4. She attended the Music Middle School Affiliated to Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 2013 and studied composition with Professor Ding Ying. She also studied piano with Professor Wang Qing, Zhou Ting and Yu Xiangjun. In 2016, she was accepted by Manhattan School of Music and studied composition with Dr. Reiko Fueting.

  Both as a composer and a pianist, Haihui Zhang has received many prizes and scholarships. In 2014, she was in the top ten of the CCTV Piano and Violin Competition for piano in the youth group. In 2015, she won third prize in the China–ASEAN Music Week Art Song Competition, and she won second place in the Advanced Music College’s ninth Chinese Traditional String Quintet Competition. In 2017, she won second prize in the China——ASEAN Music Week Piano Solo Composition; in the same year, she was commissioned by the International Percussion Education Association. In 2018, she won first prize in the WALDORF 100 International Composition Contest. In 2019, she was commissioned by the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. In 2020, her piece, “The Hourglass,” won third prize in the first Hangzhou Contemporary Music Festival Art Creation Awards International Orchestral Composition Competition and was premiered during the Hangzhou Contemporary Music Festival; in the same year, her orchestral work, “A Journey to the West” was premiered during the 28th “Autumn in Chengdu” International Music Season. Her works have been performed in China, United States and Europe.