New Scores: The Cone Composition Institute Concert

Max Eidinoff is a composer, improvisor, and educator whose music is marked by creative audacity and dramatic flair. His love of many popular and avant-garde styles creates a blend of influences resulting in soundscapes characterized as both absurd and surreal. Max writes in a variety of genres including art song, opera, concert music, computer music, film scores, and studio mixes. It is through a body of work which prioritizes storytelling and engages with ironic subtext that he aims to convey the complex adversities of the world we live in.

As an improvisor, Max plays piano and guitar. He was a member of the Peabody Improvisors Collective, performing in various Baltimore venues including An Die Musik LIVE and The Red Room at Normals Books and Records. He sees free improvisation as a space for the exploration of sonorities, both informed by and informing his compositional practice: a continuous feedback loop between his creator and creator-performer identities.

Max obtained his bachelor of music degree in classical composition from SUNY Purchase, studying with Laura Kaminsky, Gregory Spears, and Kamala Sankaram. He then attended the Peabody Institute for his master of music degree, studying composition with Du Yun and Felipe Lara. He has also been a composition student at Seal Bay Festival, Fresh Inc. Festival, zFestival, the Choral Chameleon Summer Institute, Atlantic Music Festival, The N.E.O. Voice Festival, and Brevard Summer Festival.

This year Max is participating in the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Mentoring Program for Composers, New Jersey Symphony Edward T. Cone Composition Institute, Barcelona Modern International Composition Course, and Royaumont Voix Nouvelles Academy.

Hannah Ishizaki is a composer and sound artist based in Princeton, New Jersey. Her music seeks to foster connections between musicians and the audience through the explorations of the physicality of music performance. Ishizaki finds inspiration in the process of composition, leading her to experiment with a wide range of instruments and sound-generating methods—from acoustic instruments in an orchestra to digital sensors to rocks and zippers. Immersed in the world of collaboration, Ishizaki has worked with dancers, actors, filmmakers, and visual artists, to connect the seemingly unconnected and create innovative and multidisciplinary projects.

Ishizaki is the current Composer-in-Residence with Young Concert Artists. Her work has been recognized throughout the United States and Internationally and has been performed by renowned musicians and ensembles such as Midori Goto, Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Sō Percussion, the Attacca Quartet, the National Sawdust Ensemble, and the Dresden Musikfestspiele. Recently, Ishizaki was named one of five 2023 Hildegard commission winners, which is presented by National Sawdust and generously supported by The Onassis Foundation and the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. In 2017, she became the youngest woman ever to have a world premiere with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO).

Ishizaki is currently a PhD student and Mark Nelson Fellow in Music Composition at Princeton University. She studied with Andrew Norman for composition and Areta Zhulla and Ronald Copes for violin at the Juilliard School, where she was the first composer to receive a Kovner Fellowship.

Claire Cope is an award-winning British composer, pianist, and bandleader whose work spans both contemporary classical and jazz and improvised music. Concerned primarily with emotional connectivity and story-telling, Claire’s music is often inspired by literature, with a strong sense of narrative and “journeying.” Her music has been performed in Europe and the United States, and she has performed at the Manchester Jazz Festival, the London Jazz Festival, and as part of the BBC Proms Plus Series, broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

In 2022, Claire won a Marvin Hamlisch International Music Award, and in 2023 she won a UK Arts Council DYCP grant to compose new music for her 11-piece contemporary jazz ensemble, Ensemble C. Their latest album, Every Journey, was recently released on the New York-based Adhyâropa label to widespread critical acclaim, with Ron Schepper of Textura describing it as “a tremendous realization of her vision.”

Claire has collaborated with a variety of ensembles and musicians, including saxophonist Rob Buckland and trumpeter Lucy Humphris. In 2021, she was commissioned by the ground-breaking Apollo Saxophone Quartet to compose a new work, and this piece was selected in the LunArt Festival Call for Scores 2024, receiving its US premiere in Madison, Wisconsin by the Ancia Sax Quartet.

In 2023, Claire was selected to participate in the LunArt Composer Hub with composer Dorothy Chang, and was also a fellow on the Let’s Bespoken Mentorship program. In 2024, she participated in the Three Choirs Festival New Voices Composer Academy, where The Carice Singers premiered her first choral work, In Its Light, to be performed again later this year at Spitalfields Music Festival in London.

During the 2024-2025 academic year, Claire continued her compositional studies with Gary Carpenter and Emily Howard at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, with generous support from SJM Concerts Bursary and the RNCM. She has participated in workshops with the Hallé Orchestra, and the Fairey Band premiered her first piece for brass band, Through the Spiral. In August 2025, Iva Ugrčić and Satoko Hayami will premiere Claire’s first piece for flute and piano at the National Flute Convention in Atlanta, Georgia.

Nicole Knorr (b. 1999) is a composer, performer, improviser, and interdisciplinary artist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her work investigates transformation, change, and growth—often through the lens of the natural world. Her music has been described as having “remarkable command of melody” and is characterized by gleaming lyricism, sharp counterpoint, and a fundamental, underlying sense of whimsy. Frequently, Nicole’s scores draw upon her background in visual art, incorporating intricate, hand-rendered graphic notation.

Nicole has received commissions and awards from esteemed organizations like Music Teachers National Association (MNTA) and NATS, and she is currently in composer-in-residence with NeuroArts Productions. Nicole has had the honor of collaborating with renowned ensembles such as Sinta Quartet, FLYDLPHN, Haven Trio, Estrella Consort, Brain Pocket, and VIRID duo among other groups and personal commissions.

She is passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration and frequently performs as a pianist and soprano. Recent performance-based projects include the contemporary chamber ensemble Aurora Collective’s inaugural concert (piano), and work with indie-rock band my salamander (vocals, piano). During her time at the University of Michigan, Nicole also developed Between the Lines, a concert series that brought composers, poets, and singers together for multiple evenings of art song premieres.

Nicole earned her M.M. in Music Composition from the University of Michigan, and her B.M. in Voice Performance and Piano Performance from the University of North Florida. Her mentors include Evan Chambers, Michael Daugherty, Erin K. Bennett, John Daugherty, Mathew Fuerst, and Joshua Tomlinson.