Division 1 (ages 22-35)

CONGRATULATIONS!
Paul Novak
First Prize winner
2025 Young Composer Competition

Congratulations to composer Paul Novak!  His string quartet entwining, three pieces for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, has won the national Tribeca New Music Division 1 Young Composer Competition for ages 22-35.

The "spellbinding" (Washington Post) music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak immerses listeners in shimmering and subtly crafted musical worlds full of color, motion, light, and magic. His recent projects engage with dreams and memory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. 

Novak has received commissions from American Composers Orchestra, Balourdet Quartet, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, ASCAP and Society of Composers, Inc., Music from Copland House, Lynx, Quatuor Lontano, the Boston New Music Initiative, Blackbox Ensemble, and Kinetic Ensemble, among others. His recent collaborators include the Austin Symphony, Orlando Philharmonic, Reno Philharmonic, the U.S. Army Band, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, DanceWorks Chicago, Sandbox Percussion, Ekmeles, Quince Ensemble, Decoda, InfraSound Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Dmitri Atapine, Quatuor Diotima, LIGAMENT Duo, and Tribeca New Music. 

In 2024, Novak was selected for the top prize from both the ASCAP Morton Gould Composer Awards and the BMI Composer Awards; other recent honors include a Barlow Commission and Underwood Commission, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, SCI/ASCAP Competition, Red Note Competition, League of Composers/ISCM, Lake George Music Festival, and National Association of Composers of the USA.

He has received fellowships from Aspen, Norfolk, Copland House, Millay, and I-Park, and was featured in the Washington Post's "23 for '23: Composers and Performers to Watch this Year," where he was praised for his "impressive range and restless energy" in a catalogue spanning "lithe, elastic vocal pieces...vibrant orchestral works...and evocative etudes for string quartet." Novak’s recent projects include collaborations with poets, visual artists, dancers, choreographers, and a spoken word artist. https://www.paulnovakmusic.com.

As the First Prize recipient of the 2025 Division 1 Young Composer Competition, Paul will receive a $1,000 award, and his score will be performed on the Tribeca New Music 2025-2026 Festival in NYC.  Stay tuned for details!

Honorable Mentions & Merit Awards for Division 1

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this national competition. In addition to the first prize composition, Tribeca New Music wishes to acknowledge some of the other exceptional works that were entered:

• The Honorable Mention category recognizes the top tier of compositions that were in contention to win first prize.
• The Merit Award category recognizes those who have shown great promise with their entries.

Honorable Mention

James Budinich for Apoksiomen
Che Buford for I don’t see stars where I’m from
Ian Chung for Landmarks
Will Stackpole for Here Without Trying

Merit Award

David Acevedo for Chroma
Austin Ali for Groove, Meditation, and Fugue
Alexa Canales for Through Your Eyes, Movement I
Wyatt Cannon for Oracle of the Moon
Ethan Jankowski for Purgatorium
Jorge Machain for The Grand Prismatic Spring
Yuval Medina for Focusing on Other Things
Michael Reardon for Malachite
Thacher Schreiber for Passacaglia and Fugue
Ian Schwalbe for Wijsmuller
Connor Way for Amphitheater
Sam Wu for Mass Transit
Benjamin Yee-Paulson for String Quartet No. 3
Lisa Yoshida for Hana No Tayori

Division 2 (ages 21 and under)

CONGRATULATIONS!
Asher Lurie
First Prize winner
2025 Young Composer Competition

Congratulations to composer Asher Lurie!  His percussion quartet, Core, has won the national Tribeca New Music Division 2 Young Composer Competition for ages 21 and younger.

Asher Lurie (b. 2003) is an internationally programmed composer, percussionist, and guitarist born and raised in Dallas, Texas. His orchestral work Precisely was recently recognized as a finalist in the Brevard Music Center Composition Competition. Currently a senior at the University of Miami Frost School of Music, he is studying Music Theory and Composition with Donald Scott Stinson and resident composers Matthias Pintscher and Chen Yi.

Lurie has collaborated with artists at the soundSCAPE Festival, Cortona Sessions, Brevard Music Festival, and Atlantic Music Festival. His recent projects include compositions for Sandbox Percussion, arx duo, Unheard-of//Ensemble, KHAOS Wind Quintet, and the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Beta Tau Chapter. As the 2025 All-Stamps Composer at the University of Miami, he is writing a piece for the combined Stamps woodwind quintet, brass quintet, string quartet, and jazz quintet.

Lurie began his musical journey through lessons in electric guitar and bass with Mick Cervino (bassist for Ritchie Blackmore, K.K. Downing, and Yngwie Malmsteen) where he studied rock and metal music through a neoclassical lens. Inspired by this education and his Jewish heritage, Lurie’s music regularly explores aggression, tension, and relentlessness with warm, dreamy touches emerging from the background.

As the First Prize recipient of the 2025 Division 1 Young Composer Competition, Asher will receive a $1,000 award, and his score will be performed on the Tribeca New Music 2025-2026 Festival in NYC.  Stay tuned for details!

Honorable Mentions & Emerging Composer Awards for Division 2

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this national competition. In addition to the first prize composition, Tribeca New Music wishes to acknowledge some of the other exceptional works that were entered:

• The Honorable Mention category recognizes the top tier of compositions that were in contention to win first prize.
• The Emerging Composer category recognizes those who have shown great promise with their entries.

Honorable Mention

Hudson Holland for Dream, Op. 3
Ignacio Rosado for Warp Acoustics

Emerging Composers

Ian Barnett for String Quartet in G Movement 1
Kaden Cho for Reminiscence
Jack Damon for Dark Hue No. 7
Elon Du-Chang for Three Little Rondos
Angela Jin for Rumination: Past Life
Joshua Johnson for String Quartet No. 5 in E Major (Mov. 2)
Andrew Lesniewicz for I Can Sleep
Fabian Leung for Green Currents
Lillian Liang for Tears of a Withering Flower
Ian Lin for Passacaglia
Edward Lu for Leaf Litter
Holly McMahon for Eight Miniatures
Brayden Meng for The Wayfarer
Winston Schneider for Endangered Menagerie
Aadit Shrivastava for superbloom
Elias Valle for Transfiguration
Aidan Vass for Lovey, Swampy
Brannon Warn-Johnston for A Year with Cancer