Collage New Music’s Fellows Program

Since 2014, the Collage Fellows Program has given emerging composers in the Boston region a commission, a premiere, and a season inside the working life of a professional new music ensemble. Eleven composers have held the fellowship, among them Katherine Balch, Gaston Gosselin, Jingmian Gong and Lingbo Ma.

Beginning in 2026–27, the fellowship expands from a one-year position into a two-year residency, with fellows' terms overlapping by one year. Emerging composers are often commissioned to write for an ensemble without any chance to work with the musicians until the first rehearsal, by which point the major artistic and practical decisions are already made. The two-year structure is built to change that. A fellow's first year is spent in preparation — attending rehearsals, meeting the composers Collage performs, working alongside the General Manager and Artistic Director, and assisting with outreach — and concludes with a spring reading session of the fellow's in-progress commissioned work by Collage's musicians. The second year brings the commissioned premiere and a public-facing role in Collage's interviews and digital content. Because the terms overlap, each incoming fellow arrives to a colleague already a year in.

Each fellow receives a commission for a new work for Collage's core sextet of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, a professionally prepared premiere, an archival recording, open access to rehearsals across both years, mentorship from the Artistic Director, and access to Collage's guest composers, conductors, and Artistic Advisory Panel.

The program welcomes advanced graduate students and early-career professionals. Collage is seeking visionary composers for whom the fellowship can provide a meaningful boost at an important point in their development.

Fellows are selected by a committee chaired by the Artistic Director. The 2026–27 committee comprised Eric Nathan, Ileana Perez Velazquez, Eun Young Lee, Ciyadh Wells, and Ann B. Teixeira.

Current Fellows

Ali Can Puskulcu, 2026–27 (Julie I. Rohwein Fellow)

Turkish-American composer and violinist Ali Can Puskulcu was recently awarded a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress. His honors include the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Foundation Commission from Harvard University, and the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. His debut album, Gibberish Shreds, was released by New Focus Recordings. His chamber work Wired was premiered by Wild Up at the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Noon to Midnight series, and his music has been performed at MATA, Lincoln Center, and Gaudeamus Muziekweek. He trained as a violinist at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf and made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2013. He holds degrees from the Robert Schumann Hochschule and USC, a PhD from Brandeis University, and teaches at Harvard and Brandeis.

Collage premieres his new work on February 28, 2027 at Longy School of Music. Concert details →

Amber Vistein, 2026–28

Composer and sound artist Amber Vistein works with timbre, texture, and gesture, drawing on affect theory, phenomenology, and psychoacoustics. She has composed for the International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Chartreuse, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and Russell Greenberg of Yarn/Wire, and has created site-specific sound installations for the deCordova Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum. They were a Composition Fellow with the American Opera Project's Composers and the Voice program, and were commissioned by Washington National Opera for the chamber opera The Barrens, premiered at the Kennedy Center in 2021. They received a 2022 Opera America Discovery Grant. Vistein holds a B.A. from New College of Florida, an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art, and a PhD in Music and Multimedia Composition from Brown University.

Collage premieres her new work in the 2027–28 season.

Past Fellows

Gaston Gosselin, 2025–26 (Julie I. Rohwein Fellow)
Jingmian Gong, 2024–25
Len Tetta, 2023–24
Lingbo Ma, 2022–23
Brian Sears, 2019–20
Benjamin Park, 2018–19
Joseph Sowa, 2017–18
Yi Yiing Chen, 2016–17
Talia Amar, 2015–16
Katherine Balch, 2014–15
Stephanie Anne Boyd, 2013–14

No fellowships were awarded in 2020–21 or 2021–22, when Collage's concert activity was suspended.

Applications

The Fellows Program was nomination-only through 2024–25 and has been open to application since 2025–26.

Application details for the 2027-29 fellowship are to be announced in 2027.