Diana Rodriguez (DM R), Camila Agosto, Joshua Mastel, Artun Çekem, Fjóla Evans, Corie Rose Soumah Win 2026 Charles S. Miller Award
Drs. Diana Rodriguez (DM R), Camila Agosto, Joshua Mastel, Artun Çekem, Fjóla Evans, and Corie Rose Soumah have won the 2026 Charles S. Miller Awards (graduate).
The Department of Music is pleased to announce the 2026 prizes for distinction in Music Composition, awarded annually to undergraduate and graduate students who demonstrate distinction in the area of Music Composition, as determined by a committee of faculty members in the Composition area.
Drs. Diana Rodriguez (DM R), Camila Agosto, Joshua Mastel, Artun Çekem, Fjóla Evans, and Corie Rose Soumah have won the 2026 Charles S. Miller Awards (graduate). The Charles S. Miller Award is given annually to graduate students in the field of Music Composition who, in the opinion of the Faculty, have achieved distinction of the highest standard.
DM R is a Bogotá-born composer, sound artist, and educator based in New York City—and a lifelong 90s anime enthusiast. Their work sits at the intersection of cultural theory, migration, and digital culture, often drawing on the in-between feeling of immigrant life and the blur between digital and material worlds. They work with sounds pulled from digital spaces like subreddits, Instagram reels, and other corners of the internet, alongside live-processed acoustic instruments such as the Colombian gaita and violin. The music moves between dense, immersive textures and quieter, more intimate moments.
Their practice pulls from post-spectralism, ambient music, Colombian folk traditions, Rock en Español, and pop culture. Their music has been performed by groups including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, ECCE Ensemble, and TAK Ensemble, and presented at venues such as the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the DiMenna Center, Americas Society, and the MATA Festival. Recent projects include Longings, which exists both as an electroacoustic installation for the National Sawdust Ensemble and as a mixed ensemble work; Deny. Defend. Depose., an evening-length piece for the trio Sputter Box; and Let it burn, written for three accordions and gaita hembra.
DM R holds a doctorate from Columbia University, where they currently teach as a Lecturer in Music. Their dissertation examines a large-scale sound installation built from hundreds of computer fans as a lens on how contemporary music institutions, digital systems, and material infrastructures shape artistic value, authorship, and withdrawal. Through both critical analysis and collaborative creative work, the project reflects DM R’s broader interest in how artists navigate precarity, belonging, and exit across digital and physical worlds.
Camila Agosto is a composer, interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and educator based in New York City. She is drawn to the ways sound can hold memory, shape emotion, and spark connection, creating immersive sonic environments that invite deeper listening and reflection. Her work explores themes of memory, perception, psychoacoustics, and somatic experience, with a focus on how sound and vibration shape our emotional and physical relationship to music. Working across acoustic and electroacoustic concert formats, installations, improvisation, and interdisciplinary collaborations with visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers, and instrument builders, her compositions range from fully notated to improvisational works. She explores the sonic potential of acoustic and electronic instruments through extended techniques and tactile electronics, centering embodied approaches to music-making and listening that highlight the human element of live performance. Storytelling and sharing histories are integral to her work, helping to construct worlds and soundscapes that create spaces for healing. She has been commissioned and performed by leading artists and ensembles, with her work featured at venues and festivals across the U.S. and internationally. Camila was the youngest fellow accepted to the American Academy in Berlin, where she received the Fall 2023 Berlin Prize. She also recently successfully completed her doctoral degree in music composition at Columbia University. Upcoming and recent projects include Shimmer Furnace for brass quartet commissioned by Ensemble Musikfabrik, The Shape of Forgetting for chamber ensemble commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble, and In the wake of remnants for solo piano and electronics commissioned by Eunbi Kim expected to premiere 2026-2027 season. To explore more of her music and work, visit camilagosto.com
Joshua Alvarez Mastel writes instrumental and electronic music which has been performed internationally by Yarn/Wire, ekmeles, ensemble mosaik, Schallfeld Ensemble, and others. In addition to composing music, he makes sound art using field recordings, foley, motorized hardware, digital software, and other media for live performances.
Artun Çekem is a composer from Istanbul, Turkey, whose work exists at the intersection of concert music, technology, and performance. He often finds inspiration in the uncanny and, more prominently, the uncanniness that is latent within anthropomorphic entities. Recurring themes in his work include uncanny aesthetics, defamiliarization, internet subcultures, and the exploration of liminal zones between the human and the non-human. His artistic research pursues two aims: as a humanistic inquiry, to question the ontological boundaries of humanness; and as an ethical advocacy, to challenge dualistic frameworks that constrain our understanding of human physicality and moral agency.
His work has been featured in contemporary music stages across Asia, Europe, and North America, including platforms such as Gaudeamus (Netherlands), MA/IN (Italy), Mixtur (Spain), and Written for Talea (USA). He has collaborated with performers from leading ensembles including International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Talea Ensemble, Ekmeles, and Ensemble TM+, among many others. He is currently based in New York City and holds a DMA in Music Composition from Columbia University.
Fjóla Evans is a Canadian/Icelandic composer and cellist. Her work explores the visceral physicality of sound while drawing inspiration from patterns of natural phenomena. Commissions and performances have come from musicians such as eighth blackbird, the Aizuri Quartet, and the Residentie Orkest of the Netherlands. Her work has been featured on the MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, Gaudeamus Music Week, and the Cello Biennale Amsterdam 2020. Fjóla holds a doctorate in composition from Columbia University where her research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Recent and upcoming projects include Hraunflæði: a new work for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Íslenzk Ferðaflóra: a song cycle for Dúplum duo based on a taxonomy of Icelandic plant life, the release of violinist Maiani da Silva’s recording of Bloom on Sono Luminus, the score for Clement Virgo’s film Steal Away which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the German premiere—as performed by Ensemble Sjaella, Leipzig Ballett, and the Gewandhaus Orchestra—of Varð henni ljóð á munni: a piece for vocal sextet and chamber orchestra inspired by the women of the Icelandic sagas.
Corie Rose Soumah (she/her) is a Canadian composer (QC) currently based in New York. She is interested in shaping fractured and reconstructed sound components through hyper-collages and visceral physical gestures. Her approach is characterized by a keen interest in the interweaving of multiple aesthetic and sonic elements from the perspective of afrodiasporic geologies. She explores these textures through the overlay of different acoustic mediums as well as electronic and analog technologies. Her works have been performed by an extensive number of ensembles and performers such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Bozzini Quartet, Ensemble Itinéraire, Quasar, Proxima Centauri, Longleash, Hypercube, Ekmeles, Paramirabo, Sixtrum, Contemporary Insight, New Music Concerts and Wet Ink. Soumah earned a diplôme d’études supérieures en composition at the Conservatory in Montreal. In 2026, she completed her DMA in music composition at Columbia with the dissertation "New Sonic Endisms: An Analysis of Sound Making Practices Through Entangled Temporalities and Decolonial Endings."