announcing the 2025 emerging composer award winner!
Congratulations to Aidan De Guzman, the winner of One Found Sound’s 2025 Emerging Composer Award! 🎉 Aidan’s winning composition “When Cherry Blossoms Burned” will be performed by OFS on April 11, 2026 at St. Joseph’s Arts Society in San Francisco.
This annual award focuses on the performance of new music by aspiring young composers under the age of 30. This award emphasizes works by young composers from historically excluded groups. Selected from an annual call for scores, the winning composition is performed by One Found Sound and the composer receives a $1,000 cash prize.
meet our winner and runner-up
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.
Aidan’s winning composition “When Cherry Blossoms Burned” will be performed by OFS on April 11, 2026 at St. Joseph’s Arts Society in San Francisco. Visit our events page for more info!
With music described as a "tour de force" (Phoenix Boys Choir New Works Rising) and "impressive...volatile" (Classical Voice America), Ethan Soledad (b. 1999) is a Filipino-American composer who aims to use music as a vehicle to connect with others.
His music has been performed and commissioned by organizations such as the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Musiqa, Hub New Music, True Concord Voices and Orchestra, DACAMERA Houston, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Seattle Chamber Music Society, and Chamber Music Northwest among others.
He is currently pursuing his DMA in Composition at the University of Michigan where he has studied under Kristy Kuster and Roshanne Etezady.
Check out his winning composition Cages of Jade and Poems from Angel Island or visit his YouTube to hear more!
meet our finalists
Claire Stephenson earned her Bachelor of Music from New England Conservatory (NEC), studying
with Michael Gandolfi, and is pursuing her Master’s at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with
David Garner, after beginning with Eleanor Armer (retired).
She began composing at age ten and has since written works ranging from solo pieces to orchestral and choral compositions. Claire premiered chamber works at NEC’s Tuesday Night New Music Concerts and collaborated with NEC’s Liederabend project, leading to a commission from the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts in Boston. In San Francisco, she has premiered art songs, participated in a masterclass with John Adams, and debuted a Pierrot Ensemble piece with Gabriela Frank. Michael Gandolfi describes her music as “neo-modal bordering on poly-tonal.”
Visit her website or check out her Instagram and YouTube channel to learn more!
Kiki Xiaoman Liu is a Chinese composer and pianist, currently pursuing her Master of Music in Composition at Mannes School of Music. She began piano at age eight and soon discovered her passion for composition, which she has pursued for over a decade. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Composition at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
Kiki’s music blends contemporary Western techniques with ancient Oriental culture, drawing inspiration from nature and daily life. Often described as energetic, lyrical, and atmospheric, it combines rhythmic vitality with profound harmonies and spans orchestral, chamber, and solo formats.
Performances of her works include New York, Cincinnati, Shanghai (China), Guangzhou (China), and Changsha (China).
Visit her website or check out her Instagram and Facebook pages to learn more!
Michael Pogudin (b. 2004) is an American-based composer in Philadelphia who currently attends Temple University. He began studying music in middle school and quickly took an interest in classical music and composition. Since then, he has studied with composers such as Igor Iachimciuc, Charles Peck, and David Bennet Thomas.
He has had work premiered in concerts and festivals such as the Allentown Symphony New Chamber Series and the Penn State 2025 International Symposium. Heavily influenced by both classical and jazz composers, Michael enjoys telling a story and theme in each of his pieces that usually remains unknown with the intent being that the audience creates their own story as they listen.
Check out his winning composition Narrative for Strings or visit his YouTube and Instagram to hear more!
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
The world premiere of Hydrosphere will take place on April 5, 2025
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
2023 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