Bring your sound to life.
The SOLI Composer Lab brings three groups of composers into the same room in January:
- San Antonio high-school Apprentices, who spend nine months writing, premiering, and performing a single work
- Early-career Fellows from across the country who draft a work in the fall and workshop and premiere it at the four-day Composer Lab in January
- Three professional composers who serve as program faculty
Add to those three groups — SOLI Chamber Ensemble — who work with all participants, guiding, performing, and recording!
Different timelines for Apprentices and Fellows, one purpose. The same four professional musicians, the same three composers on faculty, the same stage.
Faculty and Ensemble
Season 33
Feature Focus Artist
Scott Ordway (b. 1984) is an American composer and multimedia artist whose work spans classical and electronic music, text, photography, and film. His music has been presented at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and described as “exquisite” (New York Times) and “an American response to Sibelius” (Boston Globe). His compositions explore slowness, stillness, and emotional intensity, rooted in the landscapes of the American West. Recent projects include The End of Rain for Roomful of Teeth and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and The Clearing and the Forest for SOLI. He is Associate Professor and Head of Composition at Rutgers University.
Composer Faculty
Ethan Wickman (b. 1973) is a composer and oudist whose music fuses lyricism, Western harmonic richness, and modal inflections drawn from Middle Eastern traditions. Raised between the Pacific and the Sonoran Desert, he studied composition at Brigham Young, Boston University, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and later studied oud in Istanbul with Yurdal Tokcan. The New York Times calls him “a composer of facility and imagination.” Works include Shimmers of Byzantium and Ballads of the Borderland, a cantata for San Antonio’s tricentennial. He is Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Composer Faculty
Edna Alejandra Longoria (b. 1988) is a Mexican-American composer born in McAllen, Texas, and raised in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. She holds a Master of Music from the Bob Cole Conservatory at California State University, Long Beach, and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her music draws on her Latin heritage alongside minimalist and classical traditions. Longoria was one of thirty composers selected for SOLI’s 30x30x30 Project, was selected for the American Composers Orchestra’s 2024 EarShot Readings, and received the Vibrant Shores Prize. An award-winning film composer, she has premiered work across the Americas and Europe.
Ensemble
SOLI Chamber Ensemble has been a leading voice for contemporary chamber music since 1994, commissioning and premiering more than 100 works by composers including Nicolás Lell Benavides, Shulamit Ran, Kinan Azmeh, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Steve Mackey. Based in San Antonio and Ensemble-in-Residence at Trinity University since 2008, SOLI performs in diverse spaces from concert halls to jazz clubs, and has released seven commercial recordings. Its honors include a 2024 NEA Challenge America Grant and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award. Alongside performance, SOLI mentors student composers and musicians through education initiatives, including the 30x30x30 Project and SOLI Composer Lab.
Two Paths
Click on either button for more information
Click on either button for more information
What Makes This Different
January offers space for opportunity. (Fellow track) Summers are packed with music festivals and composers vying for limited program spaces. January is an open month — it’s during most winter breaks, when you’re free! (Plus who wouldn’t want to spend January in beautiful San Antonio?) AND it puts a premiere and a studio recording in your hands months ahead of spring grant deadlines and fall applications.
The ensemble isn’t a guest. It’s the faculty. (Both tracks) SOLI, four musicians who play together year-round, reads your drafts, workshops your score, and premieres the finished work. It’s the same people throughout — not players seeing your piece for the first time in a dress rehearsal.
Three generations of composers in one room. (Both tracks) Fellows mentor the Apprentices, Apprentices see where their road can lead, Fellows get teaching experience that reads as a credential. Both groups discuss and workshop their pieces with a faculty of professional composers.
Apprentices hear their piece twice. (Apprentice track) Premiere in January — Sit with the recording — Talk it through with faculty — Revise it — and hear the new version performed in May. The length of this program allows for revision, the step in the process where composers learn most.
