2025/26 Underscore Winning Composers
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Ella Kaale (b. 2003) is a Los Angeles-based composer whose work uses collage, deconstruction, and extreme contrasts in its search for immersion and catharsis. She loves to tinker with acoustic sound colors and is never afraid to make an instrument buzz differently than it was intended. Ella is frequently inspired by the natural world and how humans interact with it, particularly in deserts and oceans.
Her music has been performed by the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, UCLA Philharmonia, USC Thornton Symphony, Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, The Living Earth Show, Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble, TAK Ensemble, CORVUS, Hub New Music, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Black House New Music, Bergamot Quartet, Perpetuum Duo, and Schroeder Umansky Duo. Kaale is an alumna of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America’s Composer Apprenticeship, Hear Now Music Festival, Composing in the Wilderness, New Music on the Point, Norfolk New Music Workshop, and Hidden Valley Music Seminars. Her career highlights include a performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall and a feature on Score Follower.
Kaale was named a 2025 Outstanding Graduate and Presser Scholar in the B.M. Composition program at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where her pedagogues included Christopher Trapani, Ted Hearne, Andrew Norman, and Donald Crockett. Her senior capstone The Allegory of Everywhere was awarded the Sadye J. Moss Endowed Musical Composition Prize. She is continuing her studies at USC with a fully-funded M.M. as an Aural Skill Teaching Assistant, and is a Teaching Artist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. When not composing, Ella can be found playing cello in her friends’ projects, watching Jeopardy!, or spending time with Laika, her corgi.
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Ilana Waniuk is a violinist, creator and curator with interests ranging from improvisation to visual arts. Along with pianist Cheryl Duvall, Ilana is a founding member and co-artistic director of Tkarón:to (Toronto) - based contemporary music ensemble Thin Edge New Music Collective, and Balancing on the Edge, a multidisciplinary production company merging contemporary music and circus arts. TENMC was the 2020 winner of the Canadian League of Composers/Canadian Music Centre Friends of Canadian Music award and has commissioned over 80 chamber works since its inception in 2011. She is also a founding member of California-based in^set, a flexible trio with Teresa Díaz de Cossio (flute) and David Aguila (trumpet) dedicated to improvisation and experimentation.
Ilana was a winner of the 2014 Orford String Quartet Award and can be heard on several recent recordings including Thin Edge New Music Collective’s Juno nominated ‘Dark Flower’ (Redshift Records, 2023). She has performed on concert stages across the U.S., Canada, Italy, Argentina, Poland, Japan, Germany, Greece, Iceland and Mexico. Ilana has toured Cape Breton and Ontario with the Bicycle Opera Project as well as performed at contemporary music festivals including High Desert Soundings, MOXsonic, The California Festival, SoundOn, Suoni per Il Popolo and Open Ears.
Her creative work explores various configurations of digital and analog materials, often merging graphic notation and improvisation with fixed and live projections. Most recently, Ilana collaborated with composer Akari Komura on ‘Notes of Care’, contributing live visuals and violin for a sound film presented by Music For Your Inbox (2025). Ilana’s scores have been performed by ensembles such as in^set, Duo Lingua, TRAMAS Collective, Acorn Projects and Missing Piece. Ilana received her Doctorate in Contemporary Music Performance from the University of California, San Diego where her research explored cross-modal perception in collaborative audiovisual performance.
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Composer João Pedro Oliveira holds the Corwin Endowed Chair in Composition for the University of California at Santa Barbara. He studied organ performance, composition, and architecture in Lisbon. He completed a Ph.D. in Music at the University of New York at Stony Brook. His music includes opera, orchestral compositions, chamber music, electroacoustic music, and experimental video. He has received over 70 international prizes and awards for his works, including the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2023, the Bourges Magisterium Prize, and the Giga-Hertz Special Award, among others. His music is played all over the world. He taught at Aveiro University (Portugal) and Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil). His publications include several articles in journals and a book on 20th century music theory.