Nina C. Young

Nina C. Young (born 1984) is an American electro-acoustic composer of contemporary classical music who currently resides in New York City. She is a winner of the 2015 Rome Prize in Musical Composition and a 2014 Charles Ives Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Young was born in Nyack, New York, and raised throughout Rockland County. Her initial music education was self-taught; she began violin at the age of 12. In 2003 she graduated from Clarkstown High School North and then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to study both engineering and music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2007 Young received two degrees from MIT: a B.S. in Ocean Engineering and a B.S. in Music (studying primarily with Keeril Makan). She continued on to work as a research assistant to Tod Machover at the MIT Media Lab. Young attended McGill University's Schulich School of Music from 2008 to 2011 where she received a M.Mus. She studied composition with Sean Ferguson, orchestration with Jean Lesage, and mixed music with Philippe Leroux. While in Montreal, Young worked as a research assistant in CIRMMT's (the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology) Expanded Musical Practice Project and as a studio and teaching assistant at the McGill Digital Composition Studios. Young holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University where she studied with Brad Garton, Georg Friedrich Haas, George Lewis, and Fred Lerdahl.During her time at Columbia, she taught electronic music at the Computer Music Center (CMC).

Young is currently an Assistant Professor at University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.She is also a visiting composer at the Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute. Young has held residencies at Montalvo Arts Center and Arts Letters and Numbers. She previously taught at the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin.

In addition to her contributions as an educator and composer, Young is a promoter of contemporary music. She currently serves as General Manager of the composer collective and publisher APNM - The Association for the Promotion of New Music and is Co-Artistic Director and Composer-In-Residence of the new music sinfonietta Ensemble Échappé.

Young's compositions explore the intersection of instrumental and electroacoustic music.

The Boston Globe has described Young's "John Cage-like boldness in experimentation" and "complex instrumental and electronic soundscapes".

WQXR-FM's Q2 named Young one of the "10 Imagination-Grabbing, Trailblazing Artists of 2014" with contributor Brad Balliett stating "Nina's music is constantly surprising, but at the same time, seems predestined. Every event seems so well-placed and inevitable that one is left with the feeling that the piece could have gone only the way she has it mapped out. Echoes of Stravinsky and something spectral give way to an intensely personal voice cut through with an ear for color and balance."

• 2015 Koussevitsky Music Foundation Commission
• 2015 Rome Prize, The American Academy in Rome, Italy
• 2015 American Composers Forum National Composition Contest, wild Up ensemble commission
• 2014 Aspen Music Festival Jacob Druckman Prize, orchestral commission
• 2014 Nouvel Ensemble Moderne's 12th International Forum, Montreal, QC
• 2014 Charles Ives Prize (Charles Ives Scholarship) American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 2014 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award (Traced Upon Cinders")
• 2014 Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Composer Institute
• 2014 Libby Larsen Prize (Remnants) from theInternational Alliance for Women in Music.
• 2013 American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings (Remnants) Audience Choice Award
• 2011 Pauline Oliveros Prize (Kolokol) from theInternational Alliance for Women in Music.
• 2011 17th International Young Composers Meeting with the Orkest de ereprijs.
• 2010 BMI Foundation Student Composer Award (Kolokol)