2024 Call for Scores

Sofia Jen Ouyang (b.2001) aspires to create works that embody interdisciplinarity in both thought and form –writing music that resonates with others, is rooted in collaboration, and critically engages with the world through an exploration of philosophical concepts.

Sofia is the winner of the BMI Composer Award 2023, Columbia University's Douglas Moore Prize 2023, Juilliard Orchestra Competition 2023, The American Prize in Composition 2022, and The Juilliard School's Gena Raps Piano Chamber Music Prize 2022. She received honorable mention from the Luigi Nono International Composition Prize 2023 and is one of eight composers selected to attend Lucerne Festival Composer Seminar 2023. In addition, Sofia is a BluePrint composer fellow with National Sawdust (2021), a recipient of Columbia University’s Rapaport Fellowship (2021, 2022), and her works have been selected by Serbian Composer Association's 31st International Review of Composer and Society of Composers Inc. (2021). In 2025, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s will premiere a new work by Sofia as part of the DeGaetano Composition Institute. Sofia’s works has been performed across the US, Europe, and Asia, including in venues such as Lincoln Center, Frankfurt Oper, Columbia University Miller Theatre, Luzern KKL, Arvo Pärt Center, The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, National Sawdust, New England Conservatory Jordan Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Vienna School of Music and Performing Arts, Rockport Music Shalin Liu Performance Center, and in music festivals such as Lucerne Festival, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, New Music On The Point, APAC Choir Festival, ICEBERG, and Atlantic Music Festival. She has received commissions from New York Virtuoso Singers, Columbia University New Opera Workshop, violist Hsin-Yun Huang, and pipa virtuoso Wu Man, and has collaborated with Ensemble Modern, JACK Quartet, Juilliard Orchestra, Trio Immersio, National Sawdust Ensemble, members of Philadelphia Orchestra, members of Imani Winds, members of International Contemporary Ensemble, vocalist Brittany Hewitt, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, clarinetist Stanislav Chernyshev, pianist Cornelia Herrmann, trombonist Scott Hartman, and percussionist Sae Hashimoto, among others. Sofia is currently finishing her BA in philosophy and music at Columbia University, and studies composition with Andrew Norman and Amy Beth Kirsten at The Juilliard School. Past mentors have included David Ludwig, Claire Chase, and Zosha Di Castri. In Fall 2024, Sofia will begin her doctoral studies in Composition at Columbia University. 

Golnaz Shariatzadeh is a composer, improviser and an interdisciplinary artist from Shiraz, Iran.

She thinks of sound as a tactile force that has the potential to convey stories that viscerally engage the audience. When combined with images, sound has the potential to be both in its most haptic form and to communicate concepts concretely. Inspired by works of Jan Svankmajer, Quay brothers and Czech stop motions, her experimental animations create semi-fictional worlds that are inspired by images, icons and memories mostly from my childhood. She incorporates her music as a psychological force that adds a new dimension to my images. Synthesizing  these two mediums allows each to transcend the other in ways that are unpredictable and liberating. 

Her latest work fabric of sorrow for ensemble and animation creates a fluid architecture made from hair and skin that swallows peoples’ pain and turns them into ethereal spaces. At its core, sit the grieving mothers weaving a fabric of light that feeds the building. This fabric begins with a strand of hair that runs through the building, becomes the mother’s umbilical cord and strengthens the bodies through the narrow alleys. Fabric of sorrow is dedicated to those who have lost their lives in the ongoing Iranian revolution.