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​.

Aporias by Seare Farhat

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.

Sounding Petals by Igor Santos

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.

SPINNING, TOUCHED, UNDREAMT; SNOW- by Corie Rose Soumah

Described as “simply phenomenal” (New Britain Herald), Romanian-Hungarian pianist Alexa Stier has performed extensively in the United States and across Europe. She appeared as a soloist with orchestras such as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (UK), the New Britain Symphony Orchestra (USA), the Kelvin Ensemble (UK), the “Dinu Lipatti” Philharmonic Orchestra (Romania), and Transylvania State Orchestra (Romania). Alexa has received first prizes in many international competitions, such as the Sheepdrove Piano Competition (UK) and the Virtuoso & Belcanto Concerto Competition (Italy).

Alexa is also a dedicated performer of contemporary music. She has premiered over twenty new works, and worked with composers such as Katie Balch, Electra Perivolaris and Lila Meretzky. She was awarded Third prize, Audience Prize, and the Prize for the best interpretation of a commissioned work at the Olivier Messiaen International Piano Competition (France, 2023). Alexa was the recipient of the “Maurice Ohana” Special Prize at the Orléans International Piano Competition dedicated to the music of the twentieth-and twenty-first centuries (France, 2021).

Alexa’s most notable appearances include solo recitals and chamber music collaborations at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (UK), the Newbury Spring Festival (UK), the Mozart Festival (Cluj-Napoca, Romania), the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts (Chicago, USA), Brooklyn Art Song Society and Extensity Concert Series (NYC), the Liszt Cultural Institute (NYC), Morse Recital Hall (New Haven, CT), Glasgow City Halls and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (UK), Vaidilos Theater (Lithuania), Teatro del Sale (Firenze, Italy). In 2021, she was a fellow at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (CT).

Alexa is the founder and artistic director of the ContemporArt Association and Chamber Music Festival based in her hometown, Satu Mare, Romania, which aims to contribute towards the cultivation of chamber music and contemporary music through a series of concerts and workshops designed for young musicians. You can find more information on ContemporArt here: Contemporart.org

Alexa completed her Master of Music degree in 2021 at the Yale School of Music, where she is currently a candidate of the Doctorate of Musical Arts program, studying with Boris Berman and Wei-Yi Yang. During her studies at Yale School of Music, she received the “Elizabeth Parisot Prize” awarded to “outstanding pianists in the Yale School of Music”, the “Alumni Prize”, and the “Friedmann Thesis Prize”. In 2019 she earned her Bachelor of Music degree with First Class Honors at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where she studied with Fali Pavri. In 2017 Alexa was a student at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, (Budapest, Hungary), through the Erasmus exchange scheme under the guidance of Prof. Jenő Jandó. As a recipient of the “Constantin Silvestri” Academic and Musical Scholarship for young Romanian musicians offered by The Mary Erskine School, Alexa completed her high school studies in Edinburgh, Scotland.

From the fall of 2023, Alexa is a piano pedagogy fellow and faculty member at the New School for Music Study in Kingston, New Jersey.