2025 CALL FOR SCORES WINNERS
Lingbo Ma
LINGBO MA is a Chinese-born, US-based composer and pianist whose work has been performed in the USA, China, and Europe. She strives for unique ways of reaching the ultimate simplicity and clarity while unfolding diverse narratives in her music. A Presser music award recipient, Lingbo has received commissions from the Tanglewood Music Center, Dutch National Opera, National Sawdust, Collage New Music, Cantilena Choir, saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky, among others.
Lingbo obtained her Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School and is currently a doctoral candidate at New England Conservatory. Her composition mentors are Kati Agócs, Robert Beaser, and Michael Gandolfi.
Stella G. Gitelman Willoughby
Stella G. Gitelman Willoughby (b. 2000) is a nine-time ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award winner and finalist and a national and international award-winning composer from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She writes for solo instruments, voice, chamber ensembles, and symphony orchestra. Valuing the unique qualities of each instrument and performer, Stella strives to create works that highlight their unique sound and embraces opportunities for her music to be performed in, and heard by, the public.
Stella works collaboratively with musicians, dancers, filmmakers, performance and fine artists. She has received commissions for concert programs, recording projects, music festivals, dance, film, audition repertoire, performance and public art installations, student musicians, academic presentations, and to accompany historical and liturgical texts. Her compositions are licensed in the US and around the world.
Stella is a graduate of Berklee College of Music, summa cum laude. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Stella is completing a journal article on the history of quadraphonic sound in classical music. She recently interned at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and at the Folger Shakespeare Library for six summers.
Jennifer Margaret Barker
Scottish-American composer Jennifer Margaret Barker has received performances of her compositions by orchestras such as the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony; chamber and choral ensembles such as Orchestra 2001, Network for New Music, Vocal de Cámara Platense and the Bearsden Choir; and an extensive list of international artists including British pianist Martin Jones. Among her recent composition awards are the 2022 Miriam Gideon Prize from the International Alliance for Women in Music, the 2022 New Ariel Piano Composition Competition Winner, and the 2021 Masters Fellowship from the Delaware Division of the Arts. In 2023 her album, Transcontinental: Music Without Words, received two Silver Medals from the Global Music Awards. Recent international festivals in which her music has been featured include Malta’s Victoria International Arts Festival, Brazil’s Festival Internacional Compositores de Hoje and Scotland’s Edinburgh International Arts Festival Fringe. Her compositions have been broadcast on American public radio (including 'Performance Today'), Canadian radio, Hong Kong radio, Swedish radio and the BBC. Recordings of her compositions have been released on the Naxos, Albany, New World Records, Composers Recordings Inc., Meyer Media, and PnOVA labels.