National Sawdust Announces Winners of 2024-25 Hildegard Commissions 

The program, meant for early-career female composers and those of other marginalized genders, has selected five winners

Founded in 2015, National Sawdust is a non-profit cultural institution that commissions, produces, and presents sound projects. It also supports artists and arts organizations with new innovations through workshops, residencies, public performances, recording, mentorship, and professional development. 

Since 2017, its Hildegard Commissions program has launched the careers of wide-ranging early-career composers who are women and of other marginalized genders. 

The program’s selected artists are the American composer Danae Venson; Chinese-born composer and pianist Lingbo Ma; Los Angeles-based composer Kayla McIntyre; Japanese-Polish composer Nina Fukuoka; and composer SiHyun Uhm, who is based in Los Angeles and South Korea. 

With this year’s Hildegard Commissions focusing on cinematic collaborations and writing music for film, the winning composers were selected from over 97 submissions. 

The judging panel comprised the acclaimed film composers Germaine Franco, Laura Karpman, Laura Rossi, Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, Tamar-kali, and National Sawdust’s Artistic Director and Co-Founder Paola Prestini. 

Judges for the commission also included Angélica Negrón, Hildur Guðnadóttir, and Jeffrey Zeigler. 

The five winners will receive a $5,000 cash prize, a commission for the National Sawdust Ensemble, a live recording, plus one-on-one mentorship with members of the judging panel. 

As part of the organization’s 10th anniversary season, the Hildegard commissions will be performed and recorded by the National Sawdust Ensemble at National Sawdust on March 6, 2025. 

Additionally, three finalists for the Hildegard Commission — Mizu Issei, Katie Jenkins, and Arowah Cleaver — will receive a performance of a work from their portfolio on March 6, 2025. National Sawdust also extended an Honorable Mention to composer Dorian Wood.

“The Hildegard Commission is the cornerstone of our mentoring programs, and each year we shift its focus slightly,” said National Sawdust’s Co-Founder and Artistic Director Paola Prestini in the press release. “I am so excited by the brilliant mentorship team this year, led by Laura Karpman, with a focus on film and multimedia. Her expertise is extraordinary, as is that of all the mentors, and we feel so lucky to have her leadership and heart.”

“I am so thrilled to be involved with National Sawdust and their Hildegard commissioning program,” added mentor and judge, Laura Karpman. “I and the other judges had a spectacular experience reviewing submissions from women and gender non-binary individuals who wrote the most innovative and spectacular music. With this scholarship and ongoing mentorship, I think we can create new pipelines into film scoring, and create a new generation of composers with utterly unique voices.”