2025 Composer Competition Winners announced, June 15th 2025!

We are excited to announce the winners of GroundSwell’s 2025-26 Emerging Composers Competition! Our jury, comprised of Quasar members Marie-Chantal Leclaire and Jean-Marc Bouchard and prominent Canadian composer Vincent Ho, was very impressed with the quality of the 65 submissions we received from across the country. Canada certainly has no shortage of exceptional musical talent! After careful deliberation and discussion, the jury decided on the following winners:

First Place (commission and performance): Takuto Fukuda, a post-doctoral student at Concordia University

Second Place ($750 prize): Alexandre Amat, a doctoral student at l’Université de Montréal

Third Place ($500 prize): Philippe Macnab-Séguin, who recently obtained a DMus. from McGill University

In addition to these planned prizes, the jury was so impressed with the work of Noé Petit Bohnert, a high-school student studying in Montreal, that they decided to add an Honourable Mention for her.

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to all the applicants for your excellent submissions!

Takuto Fukuda
Takuto Fukuda is a composer, sound artist, and gestural controller performer whose work explores the intersection of technology, human expression, and inclusivity. Viewing art as a medium for insight-sharing, he uses sound to foreground themes such as authenticity, neurodiversity, and human-machine co-creativity. His creative practice spans a wide range of media and styles: from mixed-media compositions integrating audiovisual content and live performers to gamified works enabling real-time, interactive, and chance-based music-making, as well as music for digital musical instruments like the T-Stick.
Fukuda’s work has been recognized internationally with accolades from the ICU International Composers Contest (Ukraine), the Andrew Svoboda Memorial Prize (Canada), and ISMIR 2020 (Canada). His compositions have been performed by leading ensembles such as Ensemble Intercontemporain (France), Vertixe Sonora Ensemble (Spain), Ensemble Paramirabo (Canada), and the Ligeti Quartet (UK), and featured at major festivals including Ars Electronica (Austria), ISCM World Music Days (South Korea), and ICMC (Slovenia, Greece, USA), among others.
He holds a Doctor of Music in Composition from McGill University and is currently pursuing a postdoctoral study at Concordia University, where he continues to develop innovative approaches to musical performance, technology, and socially engaged art.
Alexandre Amat
Alexandre Amat, né à La Rochelle (France) en 1993, est un compositeur de musique instrumentale. Après avoir étudié le cor d’harmonie et la musicologie, il suit les cours de composition de Jean-Louis Agobet au Conservatoire de Bordeaux, où il obtient son Diplôme d’Etudes Musicales en 2019. Il poursuit ensuite ses études à l’Université de Montréal où il obtient une maîtrise en composition et création sonore sous la direction de François-Hugues Leclair. Il est actuellement étudiant au Doctorat en composition à l’Université de Montréal sous la direction de Jimmie LeBlanc. Il a également participé à l’académie de musique du Domaine Forget de Charlevoix (2023) et d’Orford Musique(2024).
Dans sa musique, il explore les relations entre le calme et l’intensité, la fragilité et la saturation, le silence et le bruit, l’articulation entre différentes échelles temporelles, et le rapport physique entre le geste instrumental et la matière sonore. Son esthétique est influencée, entre autres, par la pratique du synthétiseur analogique, par les arts plastiques et par les musiques drone, minimales et noise. Ses œuvres ont été interprétées en France et au Canada par des ensembles et des solistes tels que l’Orchestre National de Bordeaux Aquitaine, l’Ensemble PTYX, l’Ensemble Prisme, l’Ensemble Éclat, Sixtrum, le Quatuor Cobalt, Vanina Santoni, Chatori Shimizu et Ethan Hill.
Philippe Macnab-Séguin
Philippe Macnab-Séguin is a composer of instrumental, fixed-media, and mixed music whose work blends diverse styles through technologies like spatial audio, live electronics, and video. His compositions explore how technology reshapes cultural identity, often evoking dreamlike states inspired by Jungian psychology and AI. His eclectic background spans metal and jazz guitar, konnakol (South Indian vocal percussion), Barbershop, and Hyperglitch production, and he performs in the prog-pop duo Greetings From The Hole.
A specialist in Aural Sonology—a method for analyzing music-as-heard developed by Lasse Thoresen—Philippe teaches this approach widely, often with Dominique Lafortune and Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière. This perceptually grounded framework deeply informs his compositional practice.
He holds a D.Mus in composition from McGill University and has received over 20 awards, including the Prix d’Europe, four SOCAN Young Composer Awards, and a JTTP award. His mentors include Jean Lesage, Denys Bouliane, Lasse Thoresen and Pierre Alexandre-Tremblay.
Noé Petit Bohnert is a 16-year-old composer and clarinettist. He studied at the Conservatoire de Reims (France) for 10 years, at the École Préparatoire de Musique de l’UQÀM and at the École de Jazz de Montréal. He has taken several courses, including composition with Yuliya Zakharava, clarinet with Diane Tessier and Thomas Zimmermann, jazz with Jason Stillman and stylistic study with Édouard Delale, and is currently pursuing his studies at the Conservatoire de Montréal. His compositional work has been recognized by Montreal’s Code d’Accès. Finally, he is a very active performer, playing B-flat and bass clarinet in numerous orchestras such as Les Langues de Bois, the OAJ and other symphonic and clarinet-only orchestras.

Winners Announced June 15th, 2023!

Watch the world premiere of Ghost Story, by Carly Toperosky-Splett, winner of GroundSwell’s 2023 Composer Competition. 

 

 

 

 

Carly Splett  

Carly Toperosky Splett is a young Canadian composer. They  obtained their Masters of Music Composition at McGill University  in 2022, and Bachelor of Music at University of Calgary in 2019.  Carly’s role as a composer is to create spaces with a set time  duration. These spaces function in the role of storytelling, and are  used to challenge perception and preconceived notions in public  audiences, musicians and academics. Their works focus heavily  on texture and structures, with these and other music materials  creating a cohesive whole through tenuous and sometimes  intangible connections.

Scott Jodoin is an eclectic composer and performer from Steinbach, MB, known for his imaginative works. He studied composition at the University of Manitoba under the tutelage of Örjan Sandred and Gordon Fitzell. He has achieved successes in composition competitions, winning the Frances Seaton Choral Composition Competition in 2018 with his piece “Springtime Melting” and earning third place in GroundSwell’s 2015 Emerging Composers Composition Competition with “rem•i•ni•scence” (with Freya Olafson)..Among his larger-scale works are the two-act opera “Mai ’68” (2015), jazz orchestra piece “Two Left Feet” (2016), and “Three Vignettes of Northwestern Ontario” for flute, cello, and live electronics (c. GroundSwell, 2019). He has enjoyed working with esteemed ensembles and musicians such as the Pearls Before Swine Quartet, Ensemble Paramibo, Allen Harrington, Sean Taubner, Martha Durkin, Victoria Sparks, and Sarah Jo Kirsch. In addition to his composition activities, Scott is also a pianist-singer-songwriter in the jazz-pop genre. With a background in software development, Scott explores the intersections between algorithmic and musical construction, while also finding inspiration in the mysteries of the everyday.

Winners Announced June 15th, 2023!

 
 
 
Winner will compose a new work for Vancouver-based pianist Corey Hamm.  The commissioned work will be for solo piano (5 minutes duration) and be premiered in the spring of 2024 in Winnipeg.  Winner’s travel and accommodation, as well as the commissioning fee, will be covered by GroundSwell.
 

 

See full details below! 

Watch the winners of our 2020 competition below!