Cantate’s Fifteenth Biennial Young Composers Competition

Takoma Park, Md. — Cantate is excited to announce the winner of its 15th biennial Young Composers’ Competition. Josíah Garza of Baltimore, Maryland, submitted the winning composition: “Heartship,” which judges praised for its playful innovation and challenging sophistication.

For this year’s competition, entrants were asked to submit a sample work demonstrating their skills and style in choral composition. The winner will receive a $1,500 commission to compose a new choral work, in collaboration with Artistic Director Victoria Gau, to be premiered by Cantate in the spring of 2026.

Josíah Garza is an interdisciplinary artist hailing from the Mexican-American border of South Texas. As a composer, educator, and storyteller, he roots his work in communication and collaboration with oppressed communities. As a witness to society, he aims to capture our world’s shared history and draw understanding from the hazy moments between our lives. Josíah was raised in the arts, and his childhood studying percussion, visual art, contemporary dance, and traditional Mexican ballet folklorico evolved his practice into a dialogue across artistic mediums. He blurs the borders between his work and day-to-day life as composition, texture, and gradient inform everything he is and does. Whether through music-theatre, living-art installation, or spoken-word performance, his work is an extension of the stories he seeks to tell and the moments he aims to piece together in a concept of survival known as pachada. 

Josíah is currently a Pathways to DMA Fellow of the Peabody Institute set to earn both an MM and DMA in music composition under the direction of Sky Macklay. As a Pathways Fellow, he works to establish his place as a citizen-artist who serves as a liaison between the academy and society. He has become a Presser Graduate Music Awardee to found and direct the interdisciplinary arts collective, Wieldflower Arts, by composing and producing his opéra-ballet, Kin Psalms.  He received the First Prize in Classical Composition at theInaugural Ruth Wales du Pont Collegiate Composition Competition, hosted by the American Pops Orchestra, for his work Bed of Flowers which he wrote and performed as a narrator alongside The Rhythm Method String Quartet during the 2024 Lake George Music Festival.  

Josíah was previously the composer-in-residence of the Sarah and Ernest Butler Opera Center’s 20th anniversary season, commissioned for his one-act opera, MARIA, with the librettist Demian Chavez-Galvan. Based on the life of his grandmother, this work is an effort towards healing the generational traumas of racism, domestic violence, and substance abuse. MARIA, earned the 2024 University of Texas Co-op George H. Mitchell Grand Prize for expanding the research into art-making as humanizing practice, and he was named a Presser Scholar for his achievements.

Josíah earned a BA in Music from the Butler School of Music under the principal mentorship of Yevgeniy Sharlat alongside a BSA in Biology from the University of Texas at Austin. His primary mentors in the arts have been the advocates, Douglas Kinney Frost, Alyssa Weinberg, Missy Mazzoli, inti figgis-vizueta, Michael Mikulka, Russell Podgorsek, Melissa Dunphy, Januibe Tejera, Rebeca Perez, Coty Maldonado, The “Pat” Garza, Julian Garza, and Celinda Hernandez.

Cantate’s biennial Young Composers’ Competition seeks to encourage emerging composing talent ages 35 and younger from across North America. Begun in 1994, the Young Composers’ Competition is integral to Cantate’s mission and strong commitment to innovative programming, which includes the frequent commissioning and performance of new choral works.

The three distinguished judges in this year’s contest were Dr. Andrew Simpson and Dr. Peter Kadeli. Professors of Music at The Catholic University of America; and widely published and performed DC-area composer Ashi Day. The judges worked independently to evaluate the entries, identified by pseudonyms.

We look forward to hearing more of Josíah’s work on our April Chamber Singers Concert. We hope you’ll join us!