HEARING IN COLOR YOUNG COMPOSER RESIDENCY

The Hearing in Color Young Composer Residency is an immersive residency focused on engaging emerging composers of various backgrounds to write for professional ensembles and artists in the Chicago area.

During this residency, composers will work closely with Hearing in Color and our partners, professional treble ensemble La Caccina to create a piece for advanced treble voices. This portion of the residency will involve extensive mentorship from music professionals including an active composer mentor, workshops of the piece with La Caccina and its Artistic Director, Carling FitzSimmons, and written and video documentation of the process to help promote the composer and their work.

Additionally, our Composer-in-Residence will have the opportunity to create a commissioned piece for The Music Institute of Chicago’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration.

Applications are now open for the 2025-2026 Young Composer Residency!

Eligibility Requirements (2025-2026)

• High school and collegiate-aged composers are encouraged to apply. (As this is an educational residency, most successful applicants will fall within this range. However, we recognize that learning isn’t an age-specific activity, and composers outside of this range are encouraged to apply if this residency will be particularly helpful to them in developing their craft.)

• Interest in collaborating with and writing for advanced treble voice ensemble.

• Hearing in Color and La Caccina maintain our commitment to de-centering whiteness and dismantling systems of power in musical spaces. Applicants who don’t see themselves, their stories, or their communities reflected in the classical canon will be prioritized.

• Availability for the duration of the 2025-26 season. (Collaborative commissions take time to perfect. Young Composers will be asked to meet with leadership from both La Caccina and Hearing in Color throughout the composition process, and to meet strict draft and workshop deadlines. Applicants should ensure that they have the time to commit to this intensive residency before applying.)

• Young Composers need not be local to Chicago to apply.

Residency Benefits

• Mentorship with Hearing in Color and La Caccina artists

• One-on-one sessions with a professional composer, chosen specifically for the Young Composer, who will act as a mentor for the duration of the residency

• Salon-style performance of the work at a special Composer’s Forum event designed to promote the Young Composer and their work and introduce them to industry professionals

• Final live performance and recording of a choral piece by the professional singers of La Caccina

• Written and video documentation of the process to help promote the composer and their work

• $500 base-stipend; additional paid commissioning opportunities through Hearing in Color, as available.

Madeline Clara Cheng is a Taiwanese American composer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a Presidential Scholar at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, she studies composition with minors in business law and music industry.

Madeline is a 2023 YoungArts Award Winner, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award finalist, and a recipient of the ICEBERG New Music and Lift Up Our Voices scholarships. An alumna of Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid's Luna Composition Lab and the Wildflower Composers Festival, she has been commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's 150th anniversary May Festival, Ensemble for These Times, and the UUCWC Crossing Chorale.

Madeline’s compositions have also been performed by members of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Norway’s Bergen International Festival, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble for These Times, the Boston New Music Initiative, and SOLI Chamber Ensemble. She is an alumna of the Tanglewood Institute, for which she received a full scholarship, as well as the Yellow Barn Young Artists Program.

When she’s not composing, Madeline can be found designing escape rooms, music directing a show, producing interdisciplinary arts events, enjoying improv comedy, or playing piano and saxophone—sometimes simultaneously.

Young Composer Residency Commissions:

“It Becomes Habit” premiered in March 2025 by La Caccina

Previous Young
Composers-in-Residence

Interview: Inaugural Young Composer-in-Residence Gwen Maramba On “The Most Fun Piece I’ve Ever Composed”

“This residency has been the most amazing musical experience that I’ve ever had,” exclaims Gwen Maramba. “It has been a challenge, but through all of that, I’ve learned so much about myself.”

Gwen, an 18-year-old composer, is currently a freshman at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As a high school senior at Maine South High School, Gwen was chosen as the inaugural Young Composer-in-Residence for Hearing in Color and La Caccina. As part of that residency, Gwen secured an opportunity to write for a professional ensemble, working collaboratively with artists and leaders from La Caccina and Hearing in Color. Writing the piece, Gwen looked to her past, drawing inspiration from her ancestors. In particular, she was moved by her grandparents, who were born in the Philippines “with not a lot,” she recounts. “And then through their hard work and their love, they had created such a legacy.” In a time of loss and transition, Gwen says, writing the piece helped her process the recent passing of her grandmother. “I felt like I was coming up with a new connection,” she expresses, “And I definitely became a stronger person because of that.”

The residency also gave Gwen the opportunity to grow as an artist. She says she’d never before written her own lyrics, nor had she had the opportunity to have her piece performed by an ensemble of the caliber of La Caccina.

Below, hear excerpts of Gwen Maramba’s resounding original composition, Standing On the Shoulders of Giants, and hear her conversation with Hearing in Color founder and artistic director LaRob K. Rafael and La Caccina artistic director Carling FitzSimmons.