Composer Biographies

A native of Chicago, Nhyta Taguchi is a composer of spatial timbral textures. Collaborated with Chicago-based Ensembles, Ensemble Dal Niente, Fifth House Ensemble, Fulcrum Point New Music Project, and former Chicago Symphony Orchestra Mead composer in residence Anna Clyne, Nhyta is currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree in music composition at the New England Conservatory of Music with John Mallia.

Isaac Roth Blumfield (b. 1996) is a Boston-based composer originally from Saint Paul, Minnesota. He has been honored to be a five-time first-place winner of Minnesota Music Educators Association composition awards, an MMEA Composer of the Year, a finalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, and an honorable mention for the American Composers Forum NextNotes Award. He was a three-time Schubert Club Composer Mentorship awardee, resulting in three  premieres of his chamber works at the Landmark Center. While in high school, Blumfield was selected to attend a composition course at Freie Universität Berlin where he studied privately for six weeks with renowned composer Samuel Adler. Active also as a vocalist, Isaac sings in the New England Conservatory Chamber Singers under Erica Washburn and has sung in workshops of new operas at NEC. His previous composition teachers also include Edie Hill and Shirley Mier. He currently attends the New England Conservatory where he studies with Kati Agócs.

A native of New Jersey, Matthew T. Monaco (b. 1997) is first year undergraduate student at New England Conservatory of Music where he studies composition with Kati Agócs. Originally self-taught in the techniques of composition, Matthew has nevertheless studied his craft since he was 12 years old. As a composer, Matthew has had his music performed by brass bands, chamber orchestras, and various small ensembles. As a pianist, he has performed jazz at many venues in the New York/New Jersey area, in big band, small combo, and solo settings. In 2015-2016 Matthew interned with the New York Philharmonic, working within the Very Young Composers program and other educational programs. Matthew’s music often has extra-musical inspirations, with heavy influence from film, literature, philosophy, and nature.

Ian Wiese is currently a Masters student at the New England Conservatory for Music Composition. A composer in multiple styles, his primary work now gravitates towards a mix of post-serialism composition mixed with pitch material lending itself to melodic motifs and experiments in microtonality. In the past, he has written music for international audiences with special recognition in Norway, having has premieres at the Barratt Due Institute of Music in Oslo. In the past, he also has written for Britton Matthews, the Nu Deco Ensemble, the Sembera Kubova Duo, and school groups like the Ithaca High School Chorus and String Orchestra. Recently, he won second place in the Jack Downey Choral Composition Competition and the commission for the opening fanfare of the 2016 Ithaca College Commencement Ceremony. He is currently studying with Kati Agocs, and in the past studied with Dana Wilson and Jorge Grossmann at Ithaca College; privately, he studied with Jack Gale and Keren Rosenbaum while having lessons with people including Yotam Haber, Evis Sammoutis, Zvonimir Nagy, David Rakowski, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Richardo Zohn-Muldoon, Koray Sazli, Fredrick Kaufman, and Steven Stucky.

Denis Bauerschmidt Sweeney was born on June 8th 1997, in Baltimore, Maryland. The youngest of three children, he did not begin to pursue music seriously until the age of 13, though he has been composing for as long as he's been a musician. He spent his last three years of high school as a percussion performance major at Baltimore School for the Arts. He was a self taught composer until he attended Interlochen Arts Camp as a composition major in 2014, where he studied with Rob Deemer. He then continued composition studies with Judah Adashi at the Peabody Preparatory. He now studies with Kati Agócs at the New England Conservatory as a first year undergraduate.

Austin-grown, Boston-based composer Joshua Mastel (b.1995) is finishing his second year of undergraduate study with Kati Agócs at the New England Conservatory of Music. Mastel’s music continually premieres at NEC and around Boston, with past performances including As Within, So Without at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and his 2013 string quartet, Presence: Poem of a Dream, in historic Jordan Hall. Through the summer of 2015, he studied privately with composer Tommie Haglund in Stockholm and Halmstad, Sweden, where he wrote his work, flora & fauna, for orchestra. An active improviser, guitarist, and mandolinist, Joshua has recorded and performed with bands and new music ensembles in Austin, San Antonio, Denver, and Boston. This past August, Joshua received a premiere by the 15.19 Ensemble in Pavia, Italy as part of the highSCORE composer’s festival. Joshua has been directing Tuesday Night New Music at NEC since September, 2015.

Boston native Benjamin Park first started composing music in high school, but it was not until arriving at MIT that Ben started studying and writing music more seriously.  After declaring his physics major, Ben added ambitions for a second degree in music.  Electing to follow his passion for music, Ben subsequently enrolled at the Hartt School, earning his master's degree and artist diploma there before matriculating at NEC in 2014.  He is currently a student of Kati Agócs. Highlights include a performance of his violin concerto, Huldufólk (The Hidden People), in the 2015 Dark Music Days Festival in Reykjavík, Iceland, with Gróa Margrét Valdimarsdóttir on the solo part.  Ben also teaches music theory at Boston College.

Bosba is a French-Cambodian composer. She grew up in Cambodia where she has been performing since the age of eight. In promoting Khmer heritage, Bosba has performed with the best of Cambodia’s master musicians and dancers who survived the Khmer Rouge genocide. She moved to the United States in 2012 to pursue vocal and composition studies at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts and now currently studies with Michael Gandolfi and Ken Schaphorst at NEC.

Benjamin Yee-Paulson is an internationally recognized composer. He is a seven-time finalist in the national ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Competition. He twice received the Emerging Composer award from the national Tribeca New Music Festival, and third and fourth place from the Pikes Peak Young Composers national competition. Yee-Paulson’s music was played at Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, Paris’s La Schola Cantorum, and the world opening of Microsoft’s flagship store.Yee-Paulson is a student of Kati Agócs. Previous instructions include Justin Dello Joio, Phillip Lasser, David Conte, and Rodney Lister. Master classes include Michael Gandolfi, Samuel Adler, and the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Yee-Paulson went to the European American Musical Alliance, an international composition program in Paris. Yee-Paulson was a member of the New York Youth Symphony’s Composition Program, leading to several premieres by NYYS instrumentalists. Other premieres occurred at the 2015 Bard Conductor’s Institute, and the 2016 Atlantic Music Festival. His current commission is a choir and organ piece for the Central Presbyterian Church in Denver, CO. Yee-Paulson has a Bachelors of Music from New York University, where over thirty of his compositions were premiered in concert. He is in New England Conservatory’s Masters of Music program.