Composers Winners

Alongside his master's studies he took lessons in African music with Dr. Ncebekazi Mnukwana and Vuyo Katsha. His current output encompasses a variety of ensembles and instrumentations and exhibits neo-classical, clazz, nuevo-tango, impressionist, R&B and ghoema influences, often featuring colourful quartal and quintal harmonic structures. In 2024, he placed 3rd in the Alexander South African Composer's Award Competition with his Suite for Orchestra. His current research is concerned with vibe theory, musical syntax and South African popular music, and he hopes to pursue doctoral studies soon.

Lize won the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra Composers’ Award in 2024, making her the first woman composer to win a South African composition prize and earning her the orchestra’s composer-in-residence position for 2024 to 2025. As a result, her work Echoes was performed in Hamburg, Germany in April 2024.

Briel’s compositions have received international recognition: Lize placed Top 5 in Africa in the European Recording Orchestra Call-for-Scores in 2025, and she received third prize at the international art competition #CreateCOP28 with ArtPartner in 2023 for her impactful work addressing societal issues. Her composition Ocean Soundscape was showcased at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in December 2023.

He performs regularly as a freelance oboist across South Africa ranging from chamber groups to professional orchestras. He teaches oboe at the Hugo Lambrechts Music Centre and dabbles in clarinet, flute, saxophone, and piano.

As a composer, Dalton has taken part in numerous competitions and events. Most notably, in the South African Composers’ Award (SACA), he placed in the top 3 on multiple occasions: 2023 (2nd), 2024 (2nd) and 2025 (1st). Dalton has been composer-in-residence for the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra since 2025 and will have a new work performed by them at the next SACA. He has received many commissions nationally, including from the University of Pretoria Symphony Orchestra, the Mizar Trio, the Symposium of South African Composers, the Hugo Lambrechts Music Centre, the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival, and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra.

Dalton’s music has also garnered some international recognition. His orchestral work Century Machines (originally written for the 2024 SACA) received its international premiere by the Xalapa Philharmonic Orchestra of Mexico in May 2026. Some of his chamber works have also been commissioned and/or performed by players in the UK and USA, including a wind quintet, a bass clarinet duet, a bass clarinet trio, and a recently completed bass clarinet quartet.

His music takes much inspiration from the works of Igor Stravinsky, John Adams, Dmitri Shostakovich, Takashi Yoshimatsu, Alfred Schnittke, and the wind band works of John Mackey.

His composition output includes works for orchestra, chamber orchestra and other various chamber music groups, as well as, most notably, "Mikromorphosis", a work for wind band that received a 2024 performance in Potsdam, Germany, marking his first step onto the international stage. He has been an active member of the South African composition community since the first Symposium of South African Composers in 2023, where he was a finalist in the Compositions for Strings category.

His new work for Brass Quintet seeks to elevate the repertoire for such an ensemble towards the standards found in other historically more established ensembles, such as string quartets and wind quintets.

A frequent performer in the central Arkansas area, Dr. Bell has also released more than 20 independent recordings ranging from jazz to contemporary classical, which have received exceptional reviews in both local and national publications as well as earning airplay on local radio stations KLRE, KUAR and KABF and nationally on NPR’s Audiophile Audition.

Rex has performed music from his recordings at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC and as a member of the Arkansas Arts on Tour roster sponsored by the Arkansas Arts Council. Dr. Bell has been honored with recent premieres of several works by performers from Arkansas Tech University, University of Central Arkansas, University of Arkansas Little Rock and Alchemia Flute Choir.

Classical music training includes piano study with Dr. Neil Rutman, Artist-in-Residence at the University of Central Arkansas, and composition study with Professor Philip Parker at Arkansas Tech University.

Five times graduated from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris (harmony, counterpoint, fugue, orchestration, piano), and holder of a PhD in mathematics (Ecole Normale Supérieure), he also graduated in engineering (master's) and philosophy (master's).

Sharad Goulam's music seeks to express the reminiscence of both experience and dreaming through a tonal-modal language of varied stylistic influences: impressionism, pop, funk, folkloric music, but also martial arts, philosophy and mathematics.

Laureate of national and international competitions, his music has been performed in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Georgia, Ukraine and the United States. He teaches at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and Pantin Conservatory.

Following studies in theoretical geophysics at ETH Zürich, he pursued a career in consulting alongside his musical activities. His compositions have received several international distinctions, including three prizes in 2025.

Grob’s music is characterised by motivic development and evolving formal processes. Small pitch and intervallic cells generate larger structures through transformation, fragmentation and redistribution. His harmonic language avoids fixed tonal hierarchies, favouring shifting centres of tension, while changes in texture, register and density articulate formal transitions.