Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music

07/09/2026

Check out GLFCAM Director Gabriela Lena Frank's interview with Symphony magazine, where she mentions an exciting shift in GLFCAM programming in our 10th(!) year, focusing attention on our program "Composing Earth" and inaugurating a new Composer/Performer partner Fellowship. Applications for new GLFCAM Cycles will open later this year- stay tuned!

This spring, composer Gabriela Lena Frank marked multiple major career landmarks. Picaflor: A future myth, her large-scale orchestral work connecting Andean cosmology with environmental concerns, won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Music. And her opera with librettist Nilo Cruz, about Frida Kahlo and Die...

07/01/2026

The final virtual premiere video in our series from BER Cycle 19 is here, and it’s a banger! “Cuando La Razón Falla, La Intuición Gana” by Carlos C. Mauro Gálvez is an endlessly fascinating and energetic work. Check it out now at the link below!

The title translates to “When Reason Fails, Intuition Wins.” Carlos brings the two, often distinct, sides of his musical practice—improvisation and notated composition—together in this piece. It blends and is inspired by his backgrounds in Peruvian folkloric traditions as well as contemporary concert music. The result is an undeniably energetic and charismatic work. Listen out for some of the most impossibly delicate high flute notes you’ll ever hear paired with the profound depths of the double bass!

Our special thanks again go to our performer-mentors who recorded Carlos’ new piece: Ráyo Ray Furuta (flute), Kathryn Schulmeister (bass), and Haruka Fujii (percussion).

Congratulations Carlos, and all the Cycle 19 composers, on completing the BER program with us! What an inspiring group of people.

Cuando la Razón Falla, la Intuición Gana (2025) for flute, bass, an...

06/30/2026

Our last release in the blog series from our Cycle 19 composers is a personal, profound piece by Carlos C. Mauro Gálvez. In this blog, Carlos confronts the dialogue between Peruvian identity and his musical practice, among other salient issues of being an artist in America today. This piece moves deftly between personal writing, musings on community and music, geopolitics, and building a sense of self. It is a moving and big piece that is a must read!

Follow the link below AND stay posted for the virtual premiere of his new composition that will go live tomorrow, “Cuando La Razón Falla, La Intuición Gana”!

In the end, I think one should approach life as one would approach listening: paying attention to, appreciating, and treasuring what and who is already there. The extraordinary is often disguised as ordinary. Perhaps it is all a matter of framing.

06/24/2026

The third virtual premiere video in our series from BER Cycle 19 is here!! “Echoes” by Eliana Echeverry is ethereal and delicate musical statement.

Eliana’s new work is a delicate and lucid work that both relishes in moments of stillness and bubbles up in effervescent dialogues. The work’s title, “Echoes,” works both into the musical fabric of the piece and also the ways in which the instruments communicate to each other. Follow the link below to listen to this captivating work!

Our special thanks again go to our performer-mentors who recorded Eliana’s new piece: Ráyo Ray Furuta (flute), Kathryn Schulmeister (bass), and Haruka Fujii (percussion).

Congratulations Eliana on completing the BER program with us!

Stay tuned for the LAST blog releases and premieres next week:
Carlos C. Mauro Gálvez — Blog Drop (June 30) // Virtual Premiere (July 1)

Echoes (2025) for flute, bass, and marimbaComposer: Eliana Echever...

06/23/2026

Next in the blog series from our Cycle 19 composers is a playful and profound piece by Eliana Echeverry. Eliana considers deeply what it means to call an artist a “magician” — what is the magic that art inspires within us? She ends her blog with a powerful musing on what music has the potential to achieve:

“What I want is to be a magician... to transmute sound into connection for anyone who dares to listen; to take those sound waves—the very fabric of the universe and of music itself—and shape them into the simplest, yet most powerful mechanism we have for tuning into ourselves: our emotions.”

Want to read more?? Follow the link below AND stay posted for the virtual premiere of her new composition that will go live tomorrow, “Echoes”!

What I want is to be a magician... to transmute sound into connection for anyone who dares to listen; to take those sound waves—the very fabric of the universe and of music itself—and shape them into the simplest, yet most powerful mechanism we have for tuning into ourselves: our emotions.

06/17/2026

Our series from BER Cycle 19 continues with Keith Donaghue's “Views from the River"!

In Keith's words: "To my mind, this piece opens with a low fog drifting over a river, mountainous & slow. As I found myself reflecting on that image, feelings of stillness, repose, feelings of prayer, began to seep into the shape of the piece. And I began to think of all the significance water holds for us - how many cultures, peoples, eras, have held a body of water to be sacred? Waters are a great place to reflect. And yet with reflection comes change: subtle distortions of the original image as it flows through its new medium. Were this piece to be ‘about’ something, it’d be about holding both of these at once: balancing
the certainty of our experience, and the mystery of
interpreting it - the mystery of Faith."

Our continued thanks to the faculty performers for this cycle: Ráyo "Ray" Furuta (flute), Kathryn Schulmeister (bass), and Haruka Fujii (percussion).

Congratulations to Keith for becoming a GLFCAM alum!
Stay tuned for the following blog releases and premieres to follow:
Eliana Echeverry — Blog Drop (June 23) // Virtual Premiere (June 24)
Carlos C. Mauro Gálvez — Blog Drop (June 30) // Virtual Premiere (July 1)

06/16/2026

Continuing our summer blog series from the Fellows of Cycle 19 (Harry González, Keith Donaghue, Eliana Echeverry, and Carlos Mauro)! Stay tuned for continued blog and video premieres in the coming weeks on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Our second blog is from Fellow Keith Donaghue, a meditation on identity in our tumultuous time. You can read more in the link below and come back tomorrow for the digital premiere of Keith's "Views from the River".

written by Keith Donaghue I write this atop a snow-capped mountain in Vermont. Its quiet, except for the birds, and there are few manmade structures in sight, aside from a hand-built teahut. In that hut my friends and I will sit, as we have for years, drinking tea, sharing, listening, building… th...

06/10/2026

Woohoo!! The first virtual premiere video in our series from BER Cycle 19 is out, and it is a great one. “Unknown: Traces of the Unspoken” by Harry González is an expansive and colorful work that will keep you on your toes!

Harry’s new work creates a beautiful space of subtle musical gestures and memorable, fleeting flares of activity. In his prefatory notes for the work, Harry describes the piece as living “in that quiet space where emotion moves before it can be named—tracing what remains unspoken.” It is a truly unique work that deserves multiple replays. Check it out at the link below!

Our special thanks again go to our performer-mentors who recorded Harry’s new piece: Ráyo Ray Furuta (flute), Kathryn Schulmeister (bass), and Haruka Fujii (percussion).

Congratulations Harry on completing the BER program with us!

Stay tuned for the following exciting blog releases and premieres to follow:
Keith Donaghue — Blog Drop (June 16) // Virtual Premiere (June 17)
Eliana Echeverry — Blog Drop (June 23) // Virtual Premiere (June 24)
Carlos C. Mauro Gálvez — Blog Drop (June 30) // Virtual Premiere (July 1)

Unknown: Traces of the Unspoken (2025) for flute, bass, and percuss...

06/09/2026

This month we will be featuring blogs and virtual premieres by our amazing Cycle 19 fellows (Harry González, Keith Donaghue, Eliana Echeverry, and Carlos Mauro) who have recently completed their Bahlest Eeble Readings Residency with us! Stay tuned for blog and video premieres in the coming weeks on Tuesdays and Wednesdays!

The first release in the blog series from our Cycle 19 composers is an introspective piece by Harry González. In this blog, Harry questions why we frame creative pursuits as “finding our own voice” and investigates the pressures on an artist to brand and refine our pursuits. Instead, Harry offers a new phrase: “find your own path.”

This one is a must read for all creatives out there! Follow the link below AND stay posted for the virtual premiere of his new composition that will go live tomorrow, “Unknown”!

I, from 2016, would be shocked by the music I am doing now, and hopefully, I would be shocked by the music I write in 10 years from now. We are humans, we are constantly evolving organic matter. We change, and our ideas change with us. Maybe tomorrow I will write about the sun rising in the morning,

05/11/2026

The GLFCAM Staff would like to extend belated (but well-deserved) congratulations to our director Gabriela Lena Frank, the recipient of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her orchestral work "Picaflor: A Future Myth"!