Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies
Class of 2026

Lurie Asher

Rice University, Shepherd School of Music

Composer, percussionist, and guitarist Asher Lurie (b. 2003) won the Tribeca New Music Young Composer Competition, the Stamps Composition Competition, and was a finalist for The American Prize and musicON Composition Competition. He has worked with Sandbox Percussion, arx duo, Silver Bow Sound, Time for Three, and Pathos Trio, and was featured in festivals including highSCORE, soundSCAPE, Cortona Sessions, and Brevard. Lurie’s music, shaped by his Jewish heritage and studies in neoclassical metal, blends aggression with dreamlike serenity. He studied at the University of Miami with Scott Stinson and is pursuing a master’s at Rice University with Pierre Jalbert.

https://www.asherlurie.com/

Julia Moss

University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music

Julia Moss is a Los Angeles-based composer whose music seeks to illuminate our most visceral emotional landscapes. Through heightened dreamlike soundscapes, expansive textures, and whimsical flourishes, Julia seeks to suspend the listener in immersive moments. Julia is also a passionate collaborator who loves working in theatrical spaces.

Julia’s music has been performed by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Beth Morrison Projects, the Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, Sputter Box, Contemporaneous Ensemble, the Rhythm Method, as well as by choreographers and dancers from USC’s Kaufman School of Dance. Julia holds a fully-funded Masters of Music Composition from USC’s Thornton School of Music.

https://www.juliamossmusic.com/

Jaebong Rho

Yale University

Jaebong Rho is a composer whose music has been performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and the IEMA-Ensemble, with a forthcoming premiere by Ensemble Ecoute. He served as Composer-in-Residence with the Korean National Symphony Orchestra (2024-25), premiering multiple commissions. Honors include an ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award and First Prize in the Ensemble Ecoute Composition Competition. He received artist grants from the Busan Cultural Foundation for portrait recitals (2021, 2023). He holds a B.M. from Pusan National University and studies at Yale School of Music.

https://www.jaebongrho.com/

Ben Rieke

Yale University

Ben Rieke (b. 2000) is a composer and pianist from Naperville, Illinois. He has previously won awards from the NY Federation of Music Clubs, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, ASCAP, Tribeca New Music and NYC's Metropolitan Youth Orchestra. Ensembles and musicians that have performed Ben's work include JACK quartet, Wet Ink Ensemble, and the Juilliard Orchestra. He is currently at the Yale School of Music as a DMA candidate studying with David Lang. Before that, he studied at the Juilliard School and Indiana University, obtaining BMs in music composition and piano performance. At IU, he also obtained a BS in computer science.

https://www.benrieke.com/

Shiri Riseman

Kunstuniversität Graz

Shiri Riseman (1992, Israel) is a composer, conductor, and singer based in Vienna. Her work is rooted in the human voice and its influence on instrumental writing. Central to her practice is the concept she terms the “fantasy of amateurism,” imagining music as a universal, playful activity that embraces experimentation, trial and error, and the productive potential of failure.

Her works have been performed internationally by ensembles including the SWR Vokalensemble, Tonkünstler Orchestra, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, and Meitar Ensemble. She is a recipient of the Klon Award for Emerging Composers, the Rosenblum Prize, and grants from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.

https://shiririseman.com/

Daniel Sabzghabaei

Cornell University

Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei is a composer & vocalist who is interested in looking at time through different lenses: unpacking notions of tradition, exploring memories of those past, and investigating nostalgic frameworks that lean forward. His music has been commissioned by: Ensemble Proton Bern, JACK Quartet, National Sawdust, New York Youth Symphony, Duisburg Philharmonic, New York Festival of Song, bassist Robert Black, violist Lawrence Power, the Banff Centre, Guerilla Opera, Moab Music Festival, Chorus Austin, The Esoterics, among others. Daniel holds a doctorate from Cornell University and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Université Grenoble Alpes. He also translates Persian poetry.

https://danielsabzghabaei.com/

SiHyun Uhm

University of California, Los Angeles

SiHyun Uhm is a composer, pianist, and multimedia artist based in Los Angeles and South Korea. Her work has been commissioned by ARTZenter, New Music USA, the U.S. Air Force Academy Band, Yamaha, and the Korean National Opera House. She has received fellowships from the American Composers Orchestra and the Nashville Symphony Composer Lab, as well as awards from “The President’s Own” Marine Band and the Arts Council of Korea. Her music spans classical, electronic, and film/game genres. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in composition at UCLA, exploring immersive multimedia art integrating scientific data through interdisciplinary research and performance.

https://www.sihyunuhm.com/

Jaylin Vinson

Rice University, Shepherd School of Music

Jaylin Vinson is a composer whose music has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and across the U.S. by musicians from the New York Youth Symphony, the U.S. Navy Band, and Apollo Chamber Players. Recent projects include Future of Dreams, a chamber opera commissioned by Washington National Opera (2025), and Dark Matter, an Afrofuturistic flute concerto commissioned by Performing Arts Houston, featuring acclaimed flutist Tyler Martin and the KINETIC Ensemble. Currently based in Houston, Texas, Vinson has a Bachelor of Music in composition from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.

http://jaylinvinson.com/

Elise Winkler

The Juilliard School

Elise completed her bachelors and masters degrees in music composition at The Juilliard School. She has worked with many esteemed ensembles, including the Seattle Symphony, Symphony Tacoma, The Juilliard Orchestra, Trio Immersio, Seattle Opera, The Dolphins String Quartet, and the Talea Ensemble, and soloists Paul Demers and Efe Baltacigil. Her works have also been premiered at the Curtis Institute of Music's Young Artists' Summer Program, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Norfolk New Music Festival, and Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival. She was awarded the Gena Raps Prize and selected as a winner of the Jon Deak First Music Commissioning Competition.

http://elisewinkler.com/

Annija Zarina

Yale University

Annija Anna Zarina is a Latvian composer based in New Haven, Connecticut. She is pursuing a Master of Music in Composition at the Yale School of Music and holds bachelor’s degrees in composition from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and Jazeps Vitols Latvian Academy of Music. Some of her recent compositions work with conceptual and text-based approaches, where clarity and purity play an important role and the voice plays a central part, whereas others work on a purely musical level. Zarina writes for a range of formats, and her music has been performed in the US and Europe.

https://annijaannazarina.com/