BMI Student Composer Award!

Hello again!

I am very excited and honored to report that I have won a BMI Student Composer Award! I’ve had an absolutely surreal last couple days in New York City at the awards ceremony and surrounding events, and it was an absolute privilege to be invited and surrounded by such incredibly talented and inspiring people. I am excited to keep in touch with the people I’ve met, and looking forward to exploring some crazy good music!

The score I submitted to the competition was Remains of a Permian Gas Station, a string trio I wrote in August 2021 that premiered at Tufts University a few months later on December 3rd. It’s a work that means a lot to me in many different ways; my music has always gravitated towards nuanced expressions of places and atmospheres surrounding the environments I grew up in, namely the Permian Basin and the Southern Rocky Mountains. Remains is specifically inspired by an abandoned gas station I used to pass by on family road trips across West Texas, and explores not only the sonic atmosphere of the structure itself in conjunction with the encroaching landscape, but also the similarly deteriorating economic system of resource extraction that has flung communities in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico into devastating financial turmoil.

I am grateful for my time at Tufts University for getting me here. My teachers, John McDonald and Kareem Roustom, have been incredible mentors and without their guidance I would not have accomplished what I have. I am in debt to the Tufts music department for creating an invigorating space that facilitates such a high level of creativity and academics while providing students with constant high-quality opportunities.

You can read more about the competition here

AND check out the links for recordings of the winning works here