BMI Composer Awards 2025

On January 11th, 2023, an 18-year-old student from Indiana University Bloomington was stabbed in the head multiple times on a local bus. The stabber assumed the student was "Chinese," saying in an interview with the police, “it would be one less person to blow up our country.”

The crime was unprovoked; the stabber and the victim did not know one another. The victim was waiting for the bus door to open in order to get off when she was suddenly assaulted with a folding knife. The attacker then put the knife back into her pocket and returned to her seat as if nothing had happened. Soon afterwards, she exited the bus. She was charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery, battery by means of a deadly weapon, and a hate crime.

I wrote Silent Theater in response to this horrific incident. It is dedicated to everyone who has suffered from racial injustice and hate. There is nothing more heartbreaking than senseless hatred and violence, enabled by ignorance, indifference, and by turning a blind eye to others’ suffering.

Silent Theater

Rail Dynamics is a large-scale work for string trio and fixed media inspired by a defunct rail line in northern New Mexico's high desert. Structured as ten landscape-style movements, Rail Dynamics explores the soundscapes of the northern New Mexican landscape while navigating the cultural and environmental impact of the rail in the Galisteo Basin, ultimately meditating on the slow deterioration of the rail line and the surrounding landscape's gradual reclamation of its previously inhabited spaces.

Intertwined among these explorations are images surrounding a tragic car accident I was in as a child that involved a collision with a train. Being by the rail in the deep quiet that characterizes so much of northern New Mexico's landscapes, however, helped me to re-contextualize my experience and facilitated my recovery; the slow dissolution of the rail into the high desert soil seemed to mirror the gradual vanishing of the scars on my face, and in a strange way I found a deep kinship with the basin, what remained of the rail, and their deeply nuanced relationship.

This piece is dedicated to my father, who, for weeks following the accident, would fall asleep at the foot of my hospital bed without mattress or pillow so I would not be there by myself.

(Rail Dynamics takes its name from a ground-breaking set of mid-century field recordings of locomotives in New York, championed today by the Smithsonian Folkways. The original Rail Dynamics can be found here: folkways.si.edu/rail-dynamics/sou…album/smithsonian as well as on Spotify and YouTube).

This work was premiered at The TANK Center for the Sonic Arts on September 22, 2024 by Jordan Grantonic (violin), Emma Reynolds (viola), and Peyton Magalhaes (cello). The TANK is well known for its uniquely intense acoustic resonance, in which sounds can last up to 50 seconds before fading away. More information about the TANK can be found here: tanksounds.org/

III. Hollow

I. Petrichor

VII. Petrichor (Revisited)

X. Shivers

IV. Whistle

IX. Four Dreamscapes

VIII. Imprint

V. Nocturne

II. Clearing

VI. Sleeping Figure

burnt sienna (2023)
for Chamber Orchestra 

Performed by the Contemporary Directions Ensemble at the University of Michigan, Jayce Ogren, conductor. 

For more information, visit colereyesmusic.com

burnt sienna (for chamber orchestra)

Performed by the Grossman Ensemble, 

conducted by Katherine Kilburn

Audio by Chris Willis

Program Note:

When I compose, I tend to personify musical elements in my head as I’m working through them. I’ll think of certain melodic lines, rhythms, or instruments as characters in a play, neighbors in an imagined musical community— friends (or enemies, as the case may be) with whom I can converse in the largely solitary stretches of the compositional process. 

The protagonist of this piece, Unfurling Dances, has a very quirky and somewhat volatile personality. When they introduce themselves at the top of the piece, they come across as brash, slightly reckless, and sort of all-over-the-place, entreating the entire ensemble to follow them blindly on their precarious and lopsided rhythmic itinerary. They get easily distracted and change paths on a whim — a jaunty string section, a crazed piano figure, a wild drum break. However, after they run out of steam, we see a more vulnerable side of them in the form of incredibly slowed-down, disjointed versions of their original iteration over a bed of lush sound.

Equipped with this newfound understanding, our protagonist attempts their original flight path once more against a more metrically grounded groove, and we learn they’re actually a pretty good dancer.

This piece is presented with immense thanks to every single member of the Grossman Ensemble for their incomparable artistry, creativity, musicianship, and incredible warmth and generosity throughout this entire process. My upmost thanks also to Phil Pierick, Augusta Read Thomas, and the CCCC for their amazing support, diligence, and stellar work in cultivating this uniquely awesome organization and making it run so brilliantly.

Unfurling Dances (2024): for large ensemble

seven dreams about my body (2023/24) for sextet
i. dream in which i float on a black sea (for toru takemitsu)
ii. dream in which my body is a flock of birds (for ben johnston) 
iii. wasps’ – nest – dream (for gyorgy ligeti)
iv. dream in which my body is a constellation (for kaija saariaho) 
v. dream in which my body is clockwork (for unsuk chin)
vi. teeth – falling – out – dream (for andrew norman)
vii. dream in which i cannot walk (for anthony cheung)


Performed at University of Chicago Tea Time Series
Justin Weiss, conductor
Paul Novak, flute
Michael Tran, clarinet
Blaise Magniere, violin
Isidora Nojkovic, cello
Winston Choi, piano
John Corkill, percussion

Image: Salvador Dalí, "Archeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus"

seven dreams about my body (2023/24) for sextet

like Clockwork, perpetuum

https://alanmackwellmusic.com/

Described as "an original composer with new ideas and a command of complex symphonic writing" (BroadStreet Journal), New Zealander-American Alan Mackwell is a BMI award-winning composer and performer based in Boulder, Colorado. In his work, Alan seeks to explore atmospheres inspired by his experiences in the Permian Basin, northern New Mexico, and Appalachian North Carolina using a highly resonant and bluegrass-influenced musical language.