We're thrilled to announce the five outstanding composers selected for our MAKEWAY mentorship program.
Over an intensive week of rehearsals, workshops, and mentorship, these early career artists will collaborate with outstanding professional musicians while developing the artistic and practical skills needed for a career in music. The journey culminates in a public concert of world premieres, introducing audiences to some of Canada's most exciting new musical voices.
Snow Diao
Snow Diao is a Chinese-Canadian composer and sound artist based in Vancouver, BC. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Composition at the University of Toronto, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Composition with a minor in Music Technology from the University of British Columbia. Her work explores the intersection of music and visual art, with a focus on graphic scores, interdisciplinary collaboration, and interactive multimedia performance.
Her work has been featured in Stir Vancouver’s Fall Arts Guide, which described her compositions as “elud[ing] categorization, not only musically, but also artistically,” noting the open, atmospheric quality of her scores and their invitation for performer interpretation.
Over the past four years, Snow has collaborated with and had her work premiered by ensembles and artists across the globe, including Thailand’s Tacet(i) ensemble, dancers and musicians in the Philippines, improvising musicians at the Banff Centre, and Vancouver-based ensembles such as Standing Wave, Allegra Chamber Orchestra, Orchid Ensemble, and the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra. Her primary teachers and mentors include Keith Hamel, Rita Ueda, Dorothy Chang, Bob Pritchard, Megumi Masaki, Emily Koh, and Jason Thorpe Buchanan.
Nolan Hildebrand
Nolan Hildebrand is a composer and performer based in Toronto, Canada. He composes electroacoustic, instrumental, and acousmatic music, and performs in his solo noise project, BLACK GALAXIE. Nolan’s musical practices and aesthetics are centered around noise and maximalism. He seeks to create music that is viscerally engaging, colorful, and sometimes, playful and absurd. His creative output integrates chaotic feedback networks, graphic scores, spatialized sound, computer-assisted composition, and interactive systems.
Nolan’s music has been performed at major festivals around the world including Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Germany), International Computer Music Conference (China), Forum Wallis (Switzerland), reMusik (Russia), Bang on a Can LOUD Weekend (USA), and rainy days festival (Luxembourg). He has worked with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, ECM+ Ensemble, MolOt Ensemble, United Instruments of Lucilin, and Quatour Bozzini. His research has been published in Organised Sound, and the ICMC, NIME, and KEAMSAC conference proceedings.
He is currently in the final year of his DMA (Composition) at the University of Toronto studying under Kotoka Suzuki. In 2027 he will present his doctoral thesis for large ensemble with multichannel electronics entitled ɑː.t̬ə.baɪˈɑː.ɡrə.fi.
Tom Lachance
Tom Lachance (b. 1998) is a Montreal based Canadian composer whose music is grounded in synesthesia, which is the perception of associations between different sensations. He notably uses visual or tactile input to generate musical structures and ideas. This exploration takes place in different forms using visual art and landscapes, or natural processes.
His works have been commissioned and performed by various ensembles, including the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Classique de Montréal, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Cobalt String Quartet, the TorQ Percussion Quartet, the Texas New Music Ensemble and Orchestre de l’Université de Montréal.
His music has been recognized by numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec and the McGill Schulich School of Music.
He is currently pursuing a DMus. of Music Composition with Melissa Hui. He completed a Master’s at the University of Montreal in 2022, studying with Ana Sokolović.
Yike Zhang
Yike Zhang (b. 1993, Wuhan, China) is a composer active Toronto and New York. Drawn from an early age to classical music and Chinese Buddhist philosophy, her work explores timbre, texture, and microtonality, reflecting influences from French Impressionism and post-spectralism.
Her music has been performed across China, Canada, and the United States at venues and festivals including the Asian Classical Music Initiative Conference, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the MISE-EN Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, the University of Toronto New Music Festival, Orford Musique, Wuhan Qintai Concert Hall, and Columbia University. She has served as Artist-in-Residence at Arts Letters & Numbers, given guest lectures at the CUNY Graduate Center and South China Normal University, and her music has been featured on the Society for Music Theory Podcast.
Zhang earned degrees from Wuhan Conservatory of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Toronto, where she completed her Doctor of Musical Arts with Christos Hatzis. She recently won Second Prize in the 2026 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Award and has received commissions from White Snake Projects and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra NextGen Composer Program for the 2026–27 season.
Luna Composition Lab Composer: Maya Miro Johnson
Maya Miro Johnson is a composer-performer who creates visceral music-theater exploring technology, illness, and the body. Her multidisciplinary work has been performed globally from Svalbard to Tokyo by leading artists like Ensemble Intercontemporain, De Orkest Ereprijs, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, loadbang, Tanglewood Festival, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, Next Festival, soundSCAPE, MusicON, Evan Gray, Rock School of Ballet, Barnes Foundation, Emme Meinrenken, members of Ensemble Moderne, Moab Music Festival, Baltic Sea Festival, Beth Morrison Projects, Lucerne Festival, Christina Herresthal, Kajimoto, Arctic Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and Copland House.
Her 2026/27 season includes upcoming premieres with International Contemporary Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, Yale Voxtet/Songbyrd, Line Upon Line, LIGAMENT, New Music Concerts MAKEWAY 2027, [switch~] ensemble and harpist LiShan Tan, an evening-length work with choreographer Claude “CJ” Johnson, a performance of (un)aspirated with the American Composers Orchestra, and the development of a companion opera to Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle with librettist Susan Bywaters.
Winner of a 2026 ASCAP Morton Gould Award and 2026 BMI Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prize, she is on the albums #What2020LooksLike (HOCKET), This is America (Johnny Gandelsman), Manuscripts Don’t Burn (Inna Faliks), Hildegard and Her Sisters (Katelyn Bouska), and an upcoming solo debut with Protomaterial. She received a BM (Cassella Prize) from Curtis, an MM (Dean’s Prize) from Yale, and is pursuing a PhD at Brown.
