announcing the winner of the 2026 emerging composer award
Congratulations to Willie Cornish, the winner of One Found Sound’s 2026 Emerging Composer Award! Willie’s winning composition “Chroma” will be performed by OFS in spring 2027 in San Francisco. Congratulations to our runner-up Madeline Barrett, and our finalists Yu-Shiuan Mei, Kevin Rosacia, and Yuval Medina. Scroll for more details on our incredible winners!
meet our winner and runner-up
Willie Cornish, Jr. is a Michigan-based composer whose music is inspired by nature, art, and human connection. He creates a reflective soundworld through lush harmonies, energetic pulses, and lyrical lines that converge over a cinematic, narratively driven undercurrent.
A recent recipient of the University of Michigan’s Creative Careers Residency, Willie is an avid collaborator whose works have been recognized nationwide by artists and organizations like What Is Noise, The U.S. Air Force Band, the George Shirley Vocal Competition, Luna Nova Music Ensemble, New York Youth Symphony, among many others.
Willie holds degrees from Furman University and the University of Michigan under the tutelage of Mark Kilstofte, Jay Bocook, Erik Santos, Evan Chambers, Michael Daugherty, Stephen Rush, and Roshanne Etezady.
You can hear Willie’s music on YouTube or click here to learn more! Check him out and follow him on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.
Willie’s winning composition “Chroma” will be performed by OFS in March 2027 in San Francisco.
Madeline Barrett is a Los Angeles-based composer and pianist whose work intertwines nature, emotion, and diverse musical influences. Raised in Phoenix, Arizona, her compositions draw inspiration from the world around her. Notable pieces include The Flowers That Close at Night, which won the 7th Annual Boston New Music Initiative Young Composer Competition, and The Sun in My Heart, a new oratorio exploring themes of interbeing and divinity in nature. Her works have received diverse awards and been performed around the world by artists such as the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, Orchestra Senzaspine, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Salastina, Carpe Diem String Quartet, Quatuor Diotima, LunART Choir, Fivemind Reed Quintet, Boston New Music Initiative, PHACE ensemble, Hila Plitmann, Stefano Greco, and Lisa Pegher. She recently received her PhD in composition from UCLA.
Check her out on Instagram or Facebook or take a listen to Elegy and Softly Speaks the Wind
meet our finalists
Yu-Shiuan Mei is a Taiwan-born composer and a performer of the zheng, a Chinese zither. He is currently a doctoral student in composition at the University of North Texas. He holds a bachelor’s degree in zheng performance from Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA), as well as master’s degrees in composition from Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) and the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. He is keen on exploring the possibilities of timbral discrepancy, combining traditional culture with contemporary musical techniques to shape a diverse musical landscape, and experimenting conceptual ideas through various dimensions in music. His current work often investigates multi-sensory dimensions through music, while drawing on diverse cultural materials and timbre exploration.
Check out his Instagram to learn more.
Kevin Rosacia is a Filipino-American composer and pianist who serves as Assistant Choir Director at Michael R. Null Middle School in Houston, Texas. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of North Texas in 2020 with a bachelor's degree in music composition. His works span a variety of ensembles, including choral, orchestral, and percussion settings. In addition to his work as an educator, Kevin composes and arranges music for concerts and also serves as an accompanist for concerts and contests.
Click here to learn more or check him out on YouTube.
Featured videos include:
Yuval Medina is a New York-based composer and pianist working at the intersection of music with dance, film, and the concert stage. At the core of his work is a commitment to storytelling, immersive experience, and the inherently human power of music — its ability to bridge the widest divides and remind us we are in this together. Yuval won first prize in the American Pops Orchestra's 2026 Ruth Wales du Pont Collegiate Composition Competition and was selected as a Composition Fellow for the 2026 Intimacy of Creativity festival in Hong Kong, led by Bright Sheng.
Click here to learn more or check him out on Instagram, YouTube, or SoundCloud.
Questions? Contact: emergingcomposeraward@onefoundsound.org
One Found Sound’s Emerging Composer Award is generously supported by The Richards Family.
Emerging Composer Award Application Requirements
Scores must be submitted in PDF form.
Scores must be accompanied by a live or MIDI recording.
Compositions must be no more than 10 minutes in length.
Our orchestra consists of the following: 20 strings (5/5/4/4/2) + 2 2 2 2 - 2 2 0 0; 2 percussion, 1 harp. Preference will be given to works scored for mid- to large-size ensembles.
Percussion (2 players) available instruments: Vibraphone (3-octave, F3–F6), Glockenspiel (2.5-octave, G5–C8). Two timpani only (26″ and 29″, practical tuning range F2–F3). Snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, and other small standard orchestral percussion.
Compositions may not use piano.
Winning compositions will be performed without a conductor. We urge applicants to keep this in mind when submitting works.
One Found Sound’s Emerging Composer Award focuses on the performance of new music by aspiring young composers, with an emphasis on those from historically excluded groups. Selected from an annual call for scores, the winning composition is performed by One Found Sound. The Emerging Composer Award winner receives a $1,000 cash prize, a live recording of the performance, and a $500 travel stipend to attend the performance of their work
Our 2026 application cycle is closed. Our next award cycle will be announced in early 2027.
Questions? Contact: emergingcomposeraward@onefoundsound.org
One Found Sound’s Emerging Composer Award is generously supported by The Richards Family.
past winners
2024
Ty Bloomfield | FLUX//DRIVE
Performed live on April 5, 2025 at Heron Arts in SF
The music of Chicago-born composer Ty Bloomfield is characterized by its intimate and patient soundscapes, jazzy undertones, hidden melodies, and emotional complexity. His recent works, focused on conveying social dynamics, have been based on topics such as companionship, love, competition, and hostility.
Driven by the excitement of collaborating with a wide range of artists, he has collaborated with and been performed by the JACK Quartet, the Unheard-Of//Ensemble, Lati2de, clarinetist Berginald Rash, and FLYDLPHN among many others. Bloomfield is a Dorothy Greenwald Fellow at the University of Michigan where he is pursuing a master’s in music composition under the guidance of Bright Sheng and Michael Daugherty.
2024 honorable mention / Sami Seif
2024 finalists / Bobby Ge, Yifeng Yvonne Yuan , Logyn Okuda, Kerwin Petrus
2023
Sam Wu | Hydrosphere
The music of Sam Wu (he/him) deals with the beauty in blurred boundaries. Many of his works center around extra-musical themes: architecture and urban planning, climate science, and the search for exoplanets that harbor life.
Selected for the American Composers Orchestra's EarShot readings, winner of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Sam Wu also received First Prize at the Washington International Competition.
Sam’s collaborations span five continents, notably with the orchestras of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Minnesota, Sarasota, Melbourne, Tasmania, and Shanghai, New York City Ballet, Sydney International Piano Competition, the Lontano, Parker, Argus, ETHEL, and icarus Quartets, conductors Osmo Vänskä, Case Scaglione, and Benjamin Northey, and sheng virtuoso Wu Wei.
From Melbourne, Australia, Sam holds degrees from Harvard University and The Juilliard School, and is a DMA candidate at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. His teachers include Tan Dun, Anthony Brandt, Pierre Jalbert, and Chaya Czernowin.
Click here to learn more about Sam and his muisc!
Performed live on April 27, 2024 at Swedish American Hall in SF
2023 honorable mention / Sami Seif
2023 finalists / Atiq Ahsan , Ty Bloomfield, Ryan Qiu
2022
Estevan Olmos | Mi Cultura Lejana
"This piece is meant to evoke a sense of nostalgia and yearning for one's own 'distant culture.' Hence the name, Mi Cultura Lejana, which translates to 'my distant culture.' As a U.S. born Mexican-American, I have witnessed firsthand how in the United States, Mexican culture slowly fades from generation to generation. My parents' grasp on Mexican culture is slightly different than my grandparents' which begs the question, at what point are we still Mexican? If my family traditions are lost, are we still Mexican?
“I do not claim to have answers to these questions, but what I do know is that many other people in the United States can relate to this. As a country of immigrants and natives, we all have a distant culture that we come from. Some are more connected to it than others but it is still there. Although this piece is specifically about my distant culture, I hope many others can relate to it as well (not just Mexican-Americans)." - Estevan Olmos
Performed live November 12, 2022 at Heron Arts in SF
Film directed and created by Max Savage
Imagery inspired by conversations with Estevan
Audio recorded & mixed by Scott Padden
2022 honorable mention / Yi-Fan Chen
2022 finalists / Sami Seif, Kian Ravaei, Willie Cornish Jr.
2021
Joel Hoo | Ecosystem
"Ecosystem is a manifestation of the multi-faceted landscape of natural wildlife in the world. From segments with harmonics imitating birdsongs and swarming pizzicato impersonating teeming fish in a pond, to entire sections of snap pizzicato emulating the sounds of small creatures in grass and lower harmonies representing majestic larger animals, this string quartet illustrates a portrait of the biosphere as a whole." - Joel Hoo
In the democratic and collaborative spirit of One Found Sound, this film blends many different layers of art and artistry into a unique, audiovisual ecosystem. Harmonizing the organic and synthetic, our live performance, images of the natural world, and footage of kinetic sculptures by artist Casey Curran are blended with AI technology to create a film that both embodies and celebrates the interconnectedness of all things.
Performed live December 11, 2021 at Heron Arts in SF
Film directed and created by Max Savage
Kinetic sculptures by artist Casey Curran
Audio recorded & mixed by Scott Padden
2021 honorable mention / Bobby Gee
2021 finalists / Eunike Tanzil, Kevin Rosacia, Sam Wu
2025
Aidan De Guzman | When Cherry Blossoms Burned
Performed live on April 11, 2026 at heron Arts in SF
Aidan De Guzman (he/him) is a composer from Los Angeles, California. He earned a Bachelor of Music in Composition and a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Point Loma Nazarene University in May 2025. Aidan’s music often blends genres, particularly integrating Eastern folk elements with Western classical traditions. During his time at PLNU, his works received numerous accolades. Aidan’s flute sonata was awarded multiple times in the 2025 Piano Guild International Composition Contest and was the state winner of the 2024 MTNA Composition Competition. His orchestral piece “When Cherry Blossoms Burned” won the 2025 MTAC Composers Today Contest and earned him the One Found Sound 2025 Emerging Composer Award. His primary composition teachers include Dr. Victor Labenske and T.J. Hill.
2025 honorable mention / Ethan Soledad
2025 finalists / Claire Stephenson, Kiki Xiaoman Liu, Michael Pogudin