As Composers Now celebrates its 15th anniversary, the organization proudly announces the three composers selected for the 2026 Second Stage Commission: Abby Harris, Maria Isabel Emiliano, and Isabelle Tseng. Supported by the Toulmin Foundation, the Second Stage Commission is a commissioning, mentoring, and professional development initiative designed to uplift the next generation of creative voices in contemporary music.

Since its founding in 2010 by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Tania León, Composers Now has become a vital force in the cultural landscape, championing living composers and expanding opportunities for both accomplished and emerging artists. Over the past fifteen years, the organization has commissioned new works, supported creative residencies, fostered mentorships, and presented hundreds of performances citywide—building a dynamic ecosystem that celebrates the creators of our time.

Launched in 2022, the Second Stage Commission reflects this mission by offering an annual, in‑depth experience for three young female composers, culminating in a concert of world premieres in New York City. With nominations from Luna Composition Lab, Composers Now reviews works, meets with composers, and selects three alumni of the Luna Lab Fellowship Program each year.

Second Stage encourages its awardees to explore new genres, styles, instrumentations (or, and technology) and intentionally step beyond their existing artistic experiences. The program supports each composer through a period of creative expansion and discovery, widening their artistic horizons.

Mentors are chosen for their artistic excellence, creative practices, and meaningful impact on young composers. In addition to one‑on‑one mentorship, awardees engage with professionals across aligned fields, deepening their understanding of the broader creative landscape.

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‍2026 Second Stage Commission Awardees

Abby Harris
Abby Harris is a New York City–based composer and pianist. She currently studies composition with Robert Cuckson at the Mannes School of Music and has previously worked with Timo Andres, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Tamar Muskal, and Kevin James. Her works have received recognition from MATA Jr., NFMC, the Robert Avalon Competition, and others. Performances of her music include presentations by ICE, Duo Envol, the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus, and Hypercube Music/Ensemble Ipse.

Maria Isabel Emiliano
Maria Isabel Emiliano is a Dominican composer from Santo Domingo, now based in New York City, where she studies at the Mannes School of Music with David T. Little. She has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, the Kennedy Center, and Orozco Ballet Contemporáneo, and is the founder of the Toccata Quartet in Santo Domingo. Her training spans the Mannes School of Music and the Academia de Música Patricia Logroño, with additional workshops led by Angélica Negrón, Inti Figgis-Vizueta, Donnacha Dennehy, Martin Amlin, and Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez.

Her music has been presented at the Teatro Nacional de Cuba, Fábrica de Arte Cubano, the Kennedy Center, Quinta Dominica, Centro Cultural de España, and the San Francisco Jazz Center, as well as festivals including BUTI and soundSCAPE. She has served as music librarian for the multi‑Grammy‑winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and is currently preparing collaborations with the National Contemporary Dance Company of the Dominican Republic, Orozco Contemporáneo in Cuba, and Dominican folkloric artist José Duluc. Her work explores Latin sound worlds with a focus on Dominican folkloric traditions and Cuban influences.

Isabelle Tseng
Isabelle Tseng is an award‑winning composer from Florida whose music tells stories through emotional perspective and bridges cultures through shared human experience. Her work has been recognized by ASCAP and Luna Composition Lab, and performed by ensembles including Imani Winds, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Kronos Quartet, and Ensemble for These Times (E4TT). Her music has appeared at festivals hosted by the American Composers Orchestra, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and the Mannes School of Music.

Her work engages language—spoken, cultural, and musical—and the shifting meanings between them. Drawing from cultural references and fragments of speech, she creates music that moves between familiarity and estrangement. Collaboration is central to her practice, and she has worked closely with performers to develop a physical, performer‑driven approach to sound. Recent projects include commissions for violinist Jennifer Koh, the Princeton Opera Company, and Princeton Chinese Theater.

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Monday, December 2, 2024

The DiMenna Center for Classical Music - 450 W 37th St, New York, NY 10018

World premieres by KiMani Bridges, Alicia Erlandson, and Haeon Lee.

Composer Mentors: Judith Clurman, Javier Diaz, Ingrid Laubrock.

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PROGRAM

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Over!

By KiMani Bridges

Composer Mentor: Ingrid Laubrock

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Home

By Alicia Erlandson 

Composer Mentor: Javier Diaz

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Professions for Women - with text by Virginia Woolf

By Haeon Lee

Composer Mentor: Judith Clurman

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Alisha Heng & Jane Ira Bloom

composer: Alisha Heng

compositional goal: a work that expands her jazz vocabulary -- likely jazz fusion or free jazz with improvisation

Alisha Heng (she/her) is a composer and filmmaker based in NYC. Her compositions have been performed across Europe and the USA by performers and ensembles including Christopher Herbert, International Contemporary Ensemble, members of the Juilliard Pre-College, and Barbora Kolářová. Through her work, Alisha explores the relationship between art and music, music as the means of creating the world we see before ourselves every day, and the balance between sound, silence, motion, and clarity. Her passion for composing comes from both instrumental study and a fascination to create works that provoke the mind. Alisha currently studies Composition under Kevin Puts at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University as well as Applied Mathematics and Statistics. She also studies clarinet privately. A U.S. Presidential Scholar semifinalist, Alisha was a 2020-2021 Luna Lab Fellow, a 2021 National YoungArts Foundation Finalist, and an Adobe x Sundance Fellowship Finalist. When she isn't composing she enjoys reading, investing, and volunteering at the National Archives.

Mentor: Jane Ira Bloom

Jane Ira Bloom, composer/soprano saxophonist, has been developing her unique voice on the soprano saxophone for over 40 years. She is a pioneer in the use of live electronics and movement in jazz. Winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition, the Downbeat International Critics Poll & Jazz Journalists Association Award for soprano saxophone, the Mary Lou Williams Award for lifetime service to jazz and the Charlie Parker Fellowship for jazz innovation. She is the first musician ever commissioned by the NASA Art Program and has an asteroid named in her honor by the International Astronomical Union (asteroid: 6083janeirabloom). Her critically acclaimed CD "Early Americans" received a Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound Album and made numerous year-end best lists. Her most recent digital release of duets, "Picturing the Invisible - Focus 1" featuring drummer Allison Miller, koto artist Miya Masaoka, and bassist Mark Helias received a 2023 Grammy nomination for Best Immersive Audio Album.  Her critically acclaimed duo projects "Tues Days" with drummer Allison Miller, "See Our Way" with Helias, and trio project "2.3.23  Bloom/Helias/Previte" appear on Bandcamp. JIB finds inspiration in creating exploratory music with improvising musicians around the world and has participated in several international 'remote' events including a performance at the United Nations that linked improvising musicians in Korea, China, New York, and San Diego. Bloom is a professor at the New School's College of the Performing Arts, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in NYC.
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Jane Meenaghan & Mari Kimura

composer: Jane Meenaghan

compositional goal: a work that expands her creative horizons, bridges her background and cultural influences and explores self-controlled electronics

Jane Meenaghan (she/her) (age 22) is a composer, vocalist, and songwriter who frequently explores spiritual philosophy and states of consciousness through works that incorporate electronics and theatrical elements. Under the tutelage of Andrew Norman, Jane studies theology and music composition at Columbia and Juilliard respectively as a dual-degree student. A recipient of multiple ASCAP and BMI awards as well as the highest honor from National YoungArts, Jane has worked with ensembles and venues including Los Angeles Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, Seattle Symphony, Lyris Quartet, HOCKET, and members of New World Symphony, Houston Symphony, and Orlando Philharmonic. She is also an alumnus of Luna Lab, Hear Now Festival, National Young Composers Challenge, and NextNotes Awards. Most recently, Jane is preparing for a Carnegie Hall debut with American Composers Orchestra and collaborations with Bergamot Quartet.

mentor: Mari Kimura

Mari Kimura is at the forefront of violinists who are extending the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. As a composer, performer, researcher, and entrepreneur, she has opened up new sonic worlds and new musical possibilities for the violin. Notably, she has mastered the production of pitches that sound up to an octave below the violin's lowest string without re-tuning. This technique, which she calls Subharmonics, has earned Mari considerable renown in the concert music world and beyond. She is also a pioneer in the field of interactive computer music. At the same time, she has earned international acclaim as a soloist and recitalist in both standard and contemporary repertoire. Her most recent efforts involve entrepreneurship, bringing her prototype motion sensor MUGIC™, (pronounced "mu" as in music +"gic" as in magic) to the market.

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Azalea Twining & Erica Lindsay

composer: Azalea Twining

compositional goal: writing for a group of 'same instruments', likely four saxophones

Azalea Twining (she/her) is a seventeen-year-old composer, vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter. As a 2020-2021 fellow of Luna Composition Lab, Azalea studied composition with Ellen Reid and composed Under Her Voices for piano trio, which was the winner of the 2021 G. Schirmer for Luna Lab Prize. Azalea's most recent and current projects include "Echo" for solo flute commissioned by Intersection, a song cycle set to the poetry of the Brontë sisters, and Evelyn/Evelyn, a dance opera created and performed by her family, Ensemble InterTwining. She also composes and performs original work for voice, string quartet, prepared piano, and more through her school's Fine Arts Academy. Azalea has been studying voice with Eileen Clark since 2014. An alumnus of the WNO Opera Institute, Eastman Summer Classical Studies programs, and NYU MPAP Summer Classical Voice Intensive, Azalea has a passion for art song and arias. More recently, she has fostered a love for performing small vocal ensemble music- both early and experimental. She hopes to one day compose and sing in her own experimental operas. Azalea will be attending Columbia University as a music major in Fall 2023.

mentor: Erica Lindsay

Erica Lindsay, composer and tenor saxophonist, is an Artist-in-Residence at Bard College where she teaches jazz composition and improvisation. She has toured and appeared in the U.S. with jazz legends including Dizzy Gillespie and Melba Liston and has made guest appearances with Frank Zappa and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. She has performed and recorded with Baikida Carroll, Oliver Lake, Howard Johnson and many others, as well as leading her own quintet. Inspired by her work as a jazz improviser, Lindsay attended the first ever Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, leading to writing orchestral works for the American Composers Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony and several smaller works for  the da Capo Chamber Players. She has also written musical scores for two Off-Broadway plays, the television series Tales from the Darkside, and collaborated with choreographers. She was recently commissioned to compose a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works, entitled, Meditations on Transformation, for the composer collective, Alchemy Sound Project. Her recent recordings include Initiation, a collaboration with Sumi Tonooka, Live in London, with the Jeff Siegel Quartet and from Alchemy Sound Project, three new CD's; Further Explorations, Adventures in Time and Space and Afrika Love.