BMI Composer Awards

BMI Composer Awards 2025

Classic

Performance

Vaughan String Quartet premiering Ka Spoojmai Shwa Poh Hala Ke by Seare Farhat at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Evolution: Quartet in Summer 2022.

Ka Spoojmai Shwa Poh Hala Ke (like the halo around the moon...)

This piece is constructed in 3 movements in attacca form.
I. Lac calme, réverbération des vagues ondulantes, et lumière... /
잔잔한 호수, 일렁이는 물결의 잔향, 그리고 빛...
II. Une ombre, apparaît peu à peu... /
서서히 드리워지는 그림자...
III. Le festin des éclats lumineux /
빛 파편들의 향연

Premiered in Seoul art center
by Timf ensemble

09.22.2022

Son de Lumiére- refletèe dans le lac

Premiered in Geneva
by HEM ensemble
03.06.2022

Rouge, La Couleur Provocante

La vision de l'extase II

Recorded by the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, February 2023
Conducted by Juliano Dutra Aniceto

Frika (Excerpt)

Riven BMI COMPOSER AWARD WINNER 2023 Natasha Frank ft, Suuvi

Read by the Juilliard Orchestra on April 24, 2023. 
Jeffrey Milarsky, conductor

As if sharing a joke with nothingness (2023) for orchestra

Arboreal - Maxwell Lu

Scarbo (orchestration)

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

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"