Congratulations to alumni and students of the Eastman School of Music’s Composition Department on their appointments to prominent tenure-track positions beginning this academic year:
Nicolas Chuaqui ’21E (DMA) has been appointed Assistant Professor of Composition and Electronic Music at Ithaca College where he also serves as Director of their Electroacoustic Studios. A dedicated teacher and committed collaborator with a rich background in voice, piano, and conducting performance, Nicolas has composed a wide range of contemporary art music that has been heard at venues world-wide and performed by a variety of ensembles and orchestras including the esteemed Oregon Symphony, the Arditti Quartet, and NOTUS, Indiana University’s contemporary vocal ensemble. He has also lectured at several educational institutions around the country and founded the presenting organization Become New Music. Nicolas earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in music composition from Eastman.
PhD candidate Paul Coleman joins the faculty at Penn State’s College of Arts and Architecture as Assistant Professor of Composition and Audio Arts. As a composer and sound engineer, Paul has worked closely with well-known composers and artists, engineering over 200 shows at venues around the world including Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the Victoria Concert Hall Singapore, and has had pieces performed in portrait concerts throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. He is a Grammy voting member of the Recording Academy and a founding member and Sound Director for Ensemble Signal, appearing on NPR’s Tiny Desk in 2019. Prior to his appointment at Penn State, Paul was a Visiting Professor of Composition, Electronic Music, and Music Theory at SUNY Fredonia and taught courses in composition and theory at the Eastman Community Music School.Â
 Igor Santos ’12E (MA) has been named Assistant Professor of Composition by Cornell University’s Department of Music. His extensive work on mimetic relationships between found sounds, acoustic instruments, and recently with video, all of which is dramatized through repetition and the use of microtonal keyboards, has earned him such accolades as the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. His music has been performed world-wide by leading musicians, and recognized with numerous distinguished commissions and awards, including the Koussevitzky Foundation Commission (Library of Congress), Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, and the Ferruccio Busoni International Composition Prize (Akademie der Künste, Berlin). Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell, Igor served as Technical Director and staff member of Ensemble Dal Niente from 2016 to 2021 and as Visiting Professor in Music at Pomona College in 2024. After receiving his Master of Arts degree in music composition from Eastman, Igor went on to earn a PhD from the University of Chicago.
Ania Vu ’17E, 17 joins the music department at Pomona College in Claremont, California as Assistant Professor in Composition. A composer, pianist, and educator, Ania’s works explore the interplay between sound, language, time, and the laws of nature, and have been performed world-wide and featured at several celebrated music festivals. Her music has been commissioned or performed by leading ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Ensemble Dal Niente. Prior to her appointment, Ania was a lecturer in composition at both Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. After graduating from the University of Rochester with a Bachelor of Music degree in music composition and music theory from Eastman and a minor in social psychology from the College of Arts and Sciences, she went on to earn her PhD in music composition from the University of Pennsylvania. Ania returns to Eastman this October as a featured guest artist in Professor Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon’s and Daniel Pesca’s Faculty Artist Series.
Pictured in Feature Image: Top Row (L to R): Igor Santos (photo credit Evan Jenkins) and Paul Coleman. Bottom Row (L to R): Nicolas Chuaqui and Ania Vu.