Composer's Workshop

Yuri Lee

Yuri Lee is a 15-year-old 9th grader in NY. She has been studying composition with Daniel Felsenfeld and violin with Lucie Gelinas at The Juilliard School Music Advancement Program since 2016. After being selected as a Luna Composition Lab fellow in 2018, she has also been studying composition with her mentor, Reena Esmail.

Her pieces have been performed in many places such as Composers Now 2019 Opening Event at National Opera Center, Manhattan Chamber Music, the Tuckahoe School District - some with professional musicians. She was also selected as the winner in Hear It Live! hosted by Concordia Conservatory in 2017 and 2018, the recipient of the Patrina Foundation Fellowship at Luna Composition Lab in 2018, and the orchestra finalist at the National Young Composers Challenge in 2019.

Her goal in life is to make people happy with music. Therefore, she founded the “Music Around Us Project”, organizing concerts to play with young musicians for seniors in an assisted living facility and elementary school students.

Feedback by Yuri Lee for Aeheli's "Everest's Ribbons"

Feedback by Yuri Lee for Anoushka's "Flying"

Feedback by Yuri Lee for Anoushka's "Happy Times"

Willa Hawthorne

BIO coming soon!

Feedback by Willa Hawthorne for Madhav's "Fall is Here"

Caroline Bragg

Caroline Bragg (Carolina) has studied composition with Alla Cohen since 2010 and Reena Esmail since 2018. She is delighted to have received her first-ever commission from Friction Quartet as part of their Commissioning Initiative II. They will premiere her work bird of paradise in April 2020 in San Francisco and Berkeley. In 2019, she was co-commissioned by Grammy-nominated chamber ensemble A Far Cry and Milton Academy; Disquiet was premiered as part of her school’s 89^th annual Gratwick Concert. She was the Patrina Foundation fellow in the 2017-2018 Luna Composition Lab, in which she wrote her string quartet Paradise Lost: This Pendant World; in Luna Lab’s concert week, her piece was premiered at Roulette Intermedium and National Sawdust in Brooklyn, New York. She is a three-time finalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Competition. Carolina studies cello with Eugene Kim through New England Conservatory and plays cello in the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra (BYS). As co-head of her school’s Classical Music Club, she performs in and organizes community outreach events.

Feedback by Caroline Bragg for Samantha's "Adventure"

Feedback by Caroline Bragg for Logan's "Aliens in Italy"

Violet Barnum

Violet Barnum is 16 years old and in 11^th grade. She lives in New York City and attends the Chapin School. At the Third Street Music School, Violet has been studying piano with Edmund Arkus for 11 years and theory and composition with Matthew Barnson for 4 ½ years. During her years of composition study, she has written a number of solo piano pieces that she has performed and several pieces for small chamber groups. In 2016, Violet was chosen to be a fellow in the inaugural year of the Luna Composition Lab for young female composers. At Luna Lab, Violet worked with composer Reena Esmail to compose a trio for flute, cello, and piano that was performed by Face the Music in 2017. Violet continues to study with Reena today. In 2018, Violet had a piece commissioned by the New York ensemble Contemporaneous; this two-movement piece called “Evolving in Cycles” was performed in March of 2019. In the summer of 2019, Violet was accepted into the Young Artists Summer Program at the Curtis Institute of Music. She spent three weeks there studying composition, and she wrote a piece for cello and clarinet that was performed by professional musicians. In her spare time, Violet enjoys leading an Acappella group at her school, writing pop songs, and playing the drums.

Feedback by Violet Barnum for Emily's "Slimy Snail"

Feedback by Violet Barnum for Sahana's "Detective"

Kate Salfelder

Composer Kathryn Salfelder (b.1987) engages late-Medieval and Renaissance music in conversations with 21^st-century techniques. Her music has been performed by over three-hundred ensembles at the nation’s leading universities and conservatories. Three wind ensemble works, Cathedrals, Crossing Parallels, and Reminiscence, are published by Boosey & Hawkes. Kathryn teaches composition and music history at New England Conservatory. Prior to teaching at NEC, Kathryn served as Lecturer in Music Theory at MIT. In her spare time, she can be found realizing figured bass lines and dabbling at the organ.

Feedback by Kate Salfelder for Saanvi A.'s "Friends Far Away"

Desiree Robinson

Desiree Robinson is a composer and songwriter from Lafayette, LA, USA with a bachelor's degree in music composition, with concentration in clarinet from Loyola University New Orleans. Under the tutelage of Dr. William P. Horne and Dr. James Walsh at Loyola, she has written pieces and songs for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, gospel choir, trios, duets, solos, and spoken word. She was named the 2018 Loyola Composition Competition Winner, where she was able to premiere a piece for symphony orchestra, and the 2018 and 2017 Loyola Composition Student of the Year. At Loyola, she not only studied composition and clarinet, but strengthened her songwriting skills, managed a student music label, lead different organizations in several capacities, performed with many ensembles, assisted a band director, coordinated recitals, events, and performances, and worked as an usher for events and performances. She has experience writing Hindustani Indian Classical music and Western Classical crossover music and music for contemporary ballet. Her music is heavily inspired by her Christian faith, the love of God, and her growth as a person through life experiences. One of her goals as a musician is to build on the crossovers between Gospel and classical music, and contemporary worship and Classical music. She also plans to write works for wind ensemble and SATB choir.

Feedback by Desiree Robinson for Ambika's "The Harp Player"

Feedback by Desiree Robinson for Shriya's "Pulchritudinous"