New York City’s Guggenheim Fellowship Names 2025 Fellows

Katherine Balch, Michael Patrick Dease, and Huang Ruo are this year’s fellows in the music composition category

Established in 1925 by Senator Simon Guggenheim, the Guggenheim Fellowship provides Fellows from a range of disciplines with a stipend to pursue top-class independent work under “the freest possible conditions.” To date, the program has awarded over $400 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 Fellows.

This year’s 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows includes 198 distinguished individuals working across 53 disciplines. Each of the Fellows were selected from a pool of nearly 3,500 applicants. 

Aged between 32 and 79, the projects in this round directly respond to themes and issues such as climate change, Indigenous studies, identity, democracy and politics, incarceration, and the evolving purpose of community. 

The Fellowship recipients in the Music Composition category are composers Katherine Balch, Michael Patrick Dease, and Huang Ruo. 

Balch’s work has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles including the LA Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, and the symphony orchestras of Pittsburgh, Dallas, Minnesota, Oregon, Albany, Indianapolis, and Tokyo. Currently, she serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at Yale School of Music. Her mentors have included George Lewis, Georg Friedrich Haas, Marcos Balter, Zosha Di Castri, Aaron Kernis, Chris Theofanidis, and David Lang.

Also a trombonist and bandleader, Dease serves as Professor of Jazz Trombone at Michigan State University, plus has taught at the University of North Texas, Scranton University, the University of Iowa, Florida State College, Broward College, and more. Among his collaborators have included Alicia Keys, Paul Simon, Paul Schaffer and the CBS Orchestra, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Illinois Jacquet, Slide Hampton & The World of Trombones, Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, WDR Big Band, George Gruntz, and Billy Harper, among others.

Ruo currently serves on the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music at the New School. He is also the artistic director and conductor of Ensemble FIRE (Future In REverse). He was the first composer-in-residence of Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and is in residence at the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan. His music has been premiered and performed by orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, National Polish Radio Orchestra. 

Other notable Guggenheim Fellows are Carolyn Moxley Rouse and Karen Strassler (Anthropology & Cultural Studies); Monica Bill Barnes & Robbie Saenz de Viteri, and Donald Byrd (Choreography); Miranda July, Nicole Krauss, and Jonathan Lethem (Fiction); Theaster Gates, Raul Guerrero, and Julie Tolentino (Fine Arts); Denis Defibaugh and Farah Al Qasimi (Photography); and Cynthia Cruz, Richie Hofmann, and Brandon D. Som (Poetry).  

“At a time when intellectual life is under attack, the Guggenheim Fellowship celebrates a century of support for the lives and work of visionary scientists, scholars, writers, and artists,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the Guggenheim Foundation. “We believe that these creative thinkers can take on the challenges we all face today and guide our society towards a better and more hopeful future.”