FNMC Composer Mentorship Program Winners

Year: 2020
Winner: Lauren McCall
Picture
Lauren McCall is a composer and educator from Atlanta, Georgia. She studied for her master’s degree in music composition at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and currently she is studying music technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Lauren has had compositions performed around North America and in Europe. This includes her piece for piano, Shake the Earth, which was performed in Morehead, Kentucky at Morehead State University’s Contemporary Piano Festival, along with being performed in Eugene, Oregon at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers’ Symposium. Her arrangement of the spiritual I’m Troubled was performed in Lakeland, Florida at Florida Southern College for the Grady Rayam Prize in Sacred Music, and her graphic score composition The Fish Wife was performed in Montreal, Canada by the ensemble Amis Orgue Montreal. Along with composing Lauren also enjoys playing classical and jazz music on the clarinet and piano, nature, spending time with family and friends, and traveling.
Year: 2020
Winner: Yoshi Weinberg
Picture
​Yoshi Weinberg (they/them) is a New York City based flutist, harpist, and composer. Lauded for their “sublime tone” and “creative interpretation and technical virtuosity” (I Care If You Listen), Yoshi is a dedicated performer of contemporary and experimental works. Yoshi has performed as a soloist across North American and Europe including the Fitzgerald Theater (St. Paul, MN), the Ordway Center (St. Paul, MN), Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), Mahaiwe Theater (Great Barrington, MA). Orchestra Hall (Minneapolis, MN), Gesellschaftshaus (Magdeburg, Germany), Fondation des États-Unis (Paris, France), Conservatoire Darius Milhaud (Aix-en-Provence, France), Duomo di Pavia (Pavia, Italy), Palau de la Musica (Valencia, Spain), among many others. They currently are Co-Artistic Director of InfraSound, and is founding member and flutist for Apply Triangle, InfraSound, and KnoxTrio. Additionally, Yoshi served as Artistic Director of the Minnesota new music ensemble RenegadeEnsemble for the 2017-2018 season. As a performer-composer, Yoshi’s compositions have been described as “a stunning compositional display of polyphony and texture” (ICIYL) and their works have been premiered by InfraSound, e(L)ement duo, the dream songs project, and RenegadeEnsemble, and have been featured on Minnesota Public Radio and at the American Harp Society Summer Institute. Yoshi received their MM in Contemporary Performance from Manhattan School of Music, and their BM in Performance from Saint Olaf College.