Uri Kochavi, Anna-Louise Walton and Nina Fukuoka Win 2025 Charles S. Miller Award

The Department of Music is pleased to announce the 2025 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. Uri Kochavi, Anna-Louise Walton and Nina Fukuoka have won the 2025 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.

Uri Kochavi is an Israeli composer, guitar player, and improviser. His music explores the meeting point of technology and acoustic sound, with a particular emphasis on experimental organology and the physicality of music-making. His work combines traditional and homemade instruments, self-built objects, analog and digital instrument design, and a wide range of electronic applications. He has collaborated with ensembles such as Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Handwerk, Asko Schönberg, JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Meitar Ensemble, the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), among others. His music has been featured at international festivals including Gaudeamus Muziekweek, TIME:SPANS, the Cervantino Festival, and SoundON. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and a Gaudeamus Award nominee. Kochavi earned his Master's degree in Composition at McGill University, studying under Philippe Leroux, and his Bachelor's degree at the Jerusalem Academy of Music. He completed his D.M.A. at Columbia University in 2025, with a dissertation titled The Mechanisms of Instrumental Expansion – Musical Instruments and Their Gravitational Fields, supervised by Georg Friedrich Haas and Seth Cluett.

Anna-Louise Walton is an American composer of chamber, orchestral, and electronic music. In her music, she explores concepts of mimicry, the notation of improvisatory rhythms, and the utilization of household objects such as PVC pipe, shot glasses, and knitting needles. Recent projects include Mimolalia for bassoon and piano, commissioned by Ben Roidl-Ward, and Cyclic Proximity, which was premiered by Vokalensemble Zürich at Sonic Matter Festival 2025. In 2025, she completed her DMA in music composition at Columbia with the dissertation "Defamiliarizing the Voice: Approaches to Vocal Composition in the Music of Anna Korsun, Charmaine Lee, and Anna-Louise Walton."

Nina Fukuoka is a Japanese and Polish composer and performer based in New York City. She makes instrumental and computer music and uses various media and technologies to express extramusical meaning. Her works are focused on the contemporary world through the lens of horror aesthetics, video games, and feminist scholarship. 

Nina's works have been premiered at numerous festivals and venues in Europe, North America, and Japan, and performed by ensembles such as Hashtag, Garage, Adapter, Ekmeles, Distractfold, ICE, Mivos, Spółdzielnia Muzyczna, Talea, and TILT Brass.

In recent years, Nina has received a commission for a new piece from the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and was invited to a residency with K!ART Ensemble in Copenhagen, Denmark. She won the Hildegard Commission for music for a short film, which premiered in March 2025. Her recent piece for a large ensemble and live animation, commissioned by the National Polish Radio Orchestra in Katowice, Poland, also premiered in March.

Nina completed her composition and music theory studies at the Academy of Music in Lodz, Poland, and the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Belgium. She defended her dissertation in April 2025 and earned the title of Doctor in Musical Arts at Columbia University in New York.