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Luna Composition Lab, Currently Celebrating 10th Anniversary, Announces NYC Performances this Spring
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Luna Composition Lab, Currently Celebrating 10th Anniversary, Announces NYC Performances this Spring
May 2, 2026 – Hypercube/Ensemble Ipse Performs World Premieres by Abby Harris and Aliya Salmanova at The DiMenna Center
June 1, 2026 – New York Festival of Song Performs World Premieres by Alicia Erlandson, Elisa Kain Johnson, and Devon Lee
June 4, 2026 – New Moons 2026: International Contemporary Ensemble Performs an Evening of World Premieres by Current Fellows at Carnegie Hall
“Initiatives like Luna Composition Lab… are changing the playing field.” – The New Yorker
“Luna Lab provides a critical resource for student composers
looking for inspiration and female role models.” – WQXR
New York, NY (April 22, 2026) – Luna Composition Lab – currently celebrating its tenth anniversary through Luna Lab@10, a multi-year celebration of world premiere commissions – announces three New York City performances this spring, culminating in New Moons 2026: An Evening of World Premieres by the International Contemporary Ensemble at Carnegie Hall on June 4, 2026 at 7:00pm. Spanning the 2025-26 and 2026-27 seasons, Luna Lab@10 will feature nearly 75 world premieres by 50 Luna Lab alumni, commissioned and performed by leading ensembles and presenters across the United States and abroad, including the Kronos Quartet, Imani Winds, Sandbox Percussion, The Metropolitan Opera, Louisville Orchestra, Music Academy of the West, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Norway’s Arctic Chamber Music Festival, and many more.
Ensemble Ipse and Hypercube join forces to premiere several new works on Saturday, May 2, 2026 at 7:30 PM at The DiMenna Center, including the world premiere of Luna Lab alumni Aliya Salmanova’s (2018) Fairies and Abby Harris’s (2019) Mudskip. Salmanova has performed in numerous concerts and venues across Baku, Azerbaijan, and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Computer Science at Northeastern University, expanding her expertise in software development as she often combines music and technology in her work. Harris currently studies with Robert Cuckson at Mannes School of Music as a composition major, and has studied with Timo Andres, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Tamar Muskal, and Kevin James, with work earning recognition from MATA, Jr., NFMC, Robert Avalon, and others. This program also includes world premiere work by Todd Tarantino, Erin Rogers, and Max Giteck Duykers, as well as the U.S. premiere of Ellen Lindquist’s Earth.
On Monday, June 1, 2026 at 7:00pm, New York Festival of Song presents a meditation on possibility and impossibility in The Same River Twice, featuring the world premieres of three new songs by Luna Composition Lab alumni Alicia Erlandson (2022), who was recently commissioned by Composers Now for their Second Stage Initiative (2024) and is currently pursuing a B.M. in Composition at Mannes School of Music with Kamala Sankaram; Elisa Johnson (2022), whose compositions have been performed by both professional and student musicians, including the Seattle Symphony, the Thomas More University Chorale, and the ensemble loadbang; and Devon Lee (2022), a 2025 Morton Gould Young Composer Award finalist who had their music premiered by organizations like the New York Philharmonic, The Juilliard School, The Knights, ChamberQUEER, WQXR, Ensemble For TheseTimes, Cincinnati May Festival, and New World Symphony. Soprano Jennifer Zetlan and mezzo-soprano Heather Johnson will work closely with these young composers on works written for their voices, and the program will be filled out by selections from Luna Lab’s roster of superstar mentors, chosen by NYFOS Next series curator and pianist Nathaniel LaNasa.
Finally, on Thursday, June 4, 2026 at 7:00 PM, International Contemporary Ensemble co-presents, with Luna Lab, New Moons 2026: An Evening of World Premieres at Carnegie Hall. New Moons 2026 is the culmination of the Luna Lab Fellowship for this year's cohort of six composers, following a week of workshops, rehearsals, and events in New York. The International Contemporary Ensemble joins in celebrating Luna Lab@10 by presenting a concert featuring six world premieres by the 2025-26 fellows: Chloe Kirk, Christabelle Kirkham, Anchi Wang-Hall, Andromeda Wen, Faith Wesley, and Madeline Yang. The program also features works by mentor composers: Vivian Fung’s Down and Dirty, Brittany J. Green’s Living is the journey of answering, and Angélica Negrón’s A Través del Manto Luminoso. Luna Lab is proud to immerse Fellows in professional artistic life in New York City, and this year Luna is taking composers to concerts and tours including the Met, a hands-on workshop at Figure 8 Studio, and seminars from composers such as Jeff Beal, Gabriela Lena Frank, and the Luna Lab mentors.
Founded in 2016 by composers Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid, Luna Composition Lab began as a bold and necessary intervention: a commitment to support young composers who are female, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming from the very beginning of their artistic lives – not as exceptions, but as the future of the field. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania and Tennessee, Mazzoli and Reid did not encounter a single professional female composer until their twenties – an absence that shaped Luna Lab’s founding vision. A decade later, under the leadership of Executive Director Alyssa Kayser-Hirsh, that vision has grown into an internationally recognized organization with a proven model for equity, artistic excellence, and long-term impact.
Luna Composition Lab’s mission is to close the gender gap in music composition through mentorship, performance opportunities, and sustained professional community. By empowering young composers ages 13 to 18 at a formative moment – while actively working to dismantle structural barriers to participation – Luna Lab provides a model of inclusivity that reshapes individual artistic lives and expands the future of the field itself.
Through Luna Lab@10, Luna Composition Lab affirms its central belief: when young composers see themselves supported, commissioned, mentored, and celebrated on major stages, the field becomes more vibrant, more innovative, and more reflective of the society it serves.
Luna Lab@10 Spring NYC Performance Calendar
Saturday, May 2, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Hypercube/Ensemble Ipse
The DiMenna Center | New York, NY
Program
Todd Tarantino – Those Flowers Were Sweet When I Pressed Them [Consortium Commission & World Premiere]
Aliya Salmanova – Fairies [Consortium Commission & World Premiere]
Abby Harris – Mudskip [Consortium Commission & World Premiere]
Erin Rogers – TBA [World Premiere]
Max Giteck Duykers – It Clings For No Reason [World Premiere]
Emma Tucker, Voided Figures [World Premiere]
Ellen Lindquist – Earth [U.S. Premiere]
Monday, June 1, 2026 at 7:00pm
New York Festival of Song Presents The Same River Twice
The Theater at 150 W 17th Street | New York, NY
Link: https://nyfos.org/nyfos-next/
World premieres by Alicia Erlandson (2022), Elisa Kain Johnson (2022), and Devon Lee (2022)
Program:
Missy Mazzoli – Self-Portrait with Disheveled Hair
Missy Mazzoli – Lorca in the Bronx
Nkeiru Okoye – 28 Bathers
Nina C Young – Swan Song
Vivian Fung – Pot Roast à la RBG
Gabriela Lena Frank – Honey
Thursday, June 4, 2026 at 7:00 PM
New Moons: World Premieres by the 2025-26 Luna Lab Fellows
Weill Music Room, Carnegie Hall | New York, NY
Link: www.eventbrite.com/e/new-moons-2026-an-evening-of-world-premieres-tickets-1986839735132
Program
Chloe Kirk, A Foreign Form [World Premiere]
Vivian Fung, Down and Dirty (Mvmnt. II & III)
Faith Wesley, I Have Come to Set Fire [World Premiere]
Anchi Wang-Hall, Negative Spaces [World Premiere]
Brittany J. Green, Living is the journey of answering
Christabelle Kirkham, (when the leaves turn) [World Premiere]
Madeline Yang, though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea [World Premiere]
Angélica Negrón, A Través del Manto Luminoso
Andromeda Wen, Echoes [World Premiere]
International Contemporary Ensemble
Josh Modney, violin
Emmalie Tello, clarinet
Clara Warnaar, percussion
Erika Dohi, piano
About Luna Composition Lab
Founded in 2016 by acclaimed composers Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid, Luna Composition Lab provides mentorship, education, and resources for young female, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming composers ages 13 to 18. Luna Composition Lab is the only initiative of its kind in the United States and has achieved international recognition as a program that not only celebrates underrepresented voices but also shapes music’s future by providing a support system for continued success.
Luna Composition Lab’s signature program – the Luna Lab Fellowship – offers six young composers one-on-one mentorship with acclaimed professional composers annually. Mentors guide fellows in the composition of a new piece of music that is premiered by a professional ensemble as part of a weeklong festival in New York City. This festival includes professional development activities, masterclasses with inspirational figures, networking events, and more. Mentor composers have included luminaries such as Valerie Coleman, Reena Esmail, Laura Karpman, Jessie Montgomery, Gabriela Ortiz, and Jeanine Tesori.
In addition, Luna Lab offers a series of experiential group composition courses – Adventures in Sound – that support female, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming musicians who are interested in creating their own music. This class is geared toward those who are just beginning their compositional journeys and may not be quite ready for a fellowship because of limited access to music education and associated resources. Adventures in Sound utilizes its own curriculum and composition workbook that foregrounds examples by female and nonbinary composers. From notation and music theory to applied and hands-on compositional practices, students come away with a renewed sense of the possibilities for what composition can be.
Each year, Luna Lab also presents a series of free, public, online Luna Lab Masterclasses with a wide range of celebrated artists and ensembles to provide access to programs for music students and viewers around the globe and showcase works in progress by Luna Lab fellows.
All composers who have completed one of Luna Lab’s programs enter an active alumni community through which they continue to access organizational resources and provide support to one another throughout their careers. This provides a lasting avenue for female, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals, still very much in the minority in the classical music industry, to connect, seek solutions for the unique challenges they face, and grow together.
As Luna Lab approaches its tenth anniversary, the organization can point to tangible, long-term results of this important work. 100% of Luna Lab alumni remain involved in music, and 75% of alumni currently in college are studying composition, many at top conservatories and universities including The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, Princeton University, Yale University, Harvard University, Mannes School of Music at The New School, Oberlin College and Conservatory, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.
This season, Luna Lab continues its signature programs and celebrates the announcement of Luna Lab@10 – a celebration that will take place over the course of the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 seasons to honor the longevity and impact of both Luna Lab and the annual Luna Lab Festival, which launched in 2017. Luna Lab@10 will feature performances of newly commissioned works by 50 of the organization’s alumni by prominent artists and ensemble partners around the world, including the Kronos Quartet, Imani Winds, Louisville Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival, Arctic Chamber Music Festival, and more. Additionally, the multi-year celebration will include professional development sessions, community connection opportunities, and celebratory high-profile performance opportunities at the 2026 and 2027 Festivals. Learn more at www.lunacompositionlab.org.
For more about Luna Composition Lab, view the EPK here.
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