finalists

Gillian Rae Perry  is a composer and songwriter whose work is dedicated to themes of mental health, vulnerability, and interconnectedness. Her music has been described as “sweet and sensitive” (Parterre Box) as well as “gentle, introspective, caring, important, and beautiful” (Music City Review). She grew up on a bird farm in rural Texas, and her first compositions were written for the birds.

With a background in both film and music, Perry actively integrates art forms outside of music into her artistic practice. Raised in the theater, she finds immense joy in collaborating with others and holds a deep love for the theatrical. Perry is the laureate of the Antinori Foundation Grand Prize at Atlanta Opera’s New Works Festival for her chamber opera  The Sickness  with librettist David Davila.  The Sickness  will be premiered by Atlanta Opera in June of 2028.

Mo Holmes is a black queer Southern playwright, librettist and dramaturg, born in San Antonio and raised on the long stretch of road from Texas to Alabama. She is a winner of the Yale Drama Prize, the Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize and the Next Wave Initiative Lorraine Hansberry Award; and a Jane Chambers Award finalist. Her work has been developed and/or presented by The Bushwick Starr, The Fire This Time Festival, the Sam French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival and Good Apples Collective in New York; and the Playwrights’ Center, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Minnesota Opera, Atlanta Opera, DePaul University’s Climate Action New Play Collective, and others nationally. As a dramaturg and teaching artist, she has supported new play development at Good Apples Collective, the Playwrights’ Center, Guthrie Theater, Jungle Theater, Horizon Theatre Company and Columbia. MFA: Playwriting, Columbia.

JOSH SCHMIDT is a composer/sound designer/musician + educator. Film redits include THE END (2024, Joshua Oppenheimer - director). ONE FOOT IN (2021, Jack Whaley - director). Theatrical credits as Composer/Co-Author include ADDING MACHINE (Minetta Lane, NYC; Next Theatre, Evanston; Finborough, London); A MINISTER’S WIFE (Lincoln Center, NYC; Writers Theatre, Glencoe), WHIDA PERU (59E59, NYC); MIDWESTERN GOTHIC (Signature, VA); GIFT OF THE MAGI (American Players Theatre, WI); KILLING THE CAT Riverside Studios, London). Incidental music credits include WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING (Lincoln Center, NYC) FIFTY WORDS (MCC Theater, NYC). Theatrical credits as Composer/Sound Designer on Broadway include THERESE RAQUIN (Roundabout/Studio 54), HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES (Walter Kerr), BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS (Nederlander). Off Broadway projects include ABOUT ALICE (TFANA), DINNER WITH FRIENDS (Roundabout) MODEL APARTMENT (Primary Stages), 3 KINDS OF EXILE (Atlantic), WATER BY THE SPOONFUL (Second Stage), CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (59E59), many others.

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Dick Scanlan has created the musicals An Officer and A Gentleman, (book and direction, North American Tour); The Unsinkable Molly Brown (book and new lyrics, Transport Group, director Kathleen Marshall, Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Revival, Drama Desk nomination for Best Book and Best Revival), Renascence (book, also co-directed with Jack Cummings III, Transport Group, Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Musical), Everyday Rapture (book with Sherie Rene Scott, Tony and Drama Desk nominations), the musical revue Extraordinary for A.R.T./Cambridge (director Diane Paulus), and Thoroughly Modern Millie (book and lyrics, composer Jeanine Tesori, Tony Award Best Musical, Grammy nomination).  Also with Ms. Tesori, he wrote the song “The Girl in 14G” for Kristin Chenoweth, and the theme song to Ms. Chenoweth’s NBC sitcom, “Kristin.”  He served as Script Consultant to the legendary Berry Gordy in connection with Motown The Musical, on Broadway, in the West End and on tour.

Scott Davenport Richards is an award-winning composer/librettist whose creative works reside at various addresses around the intersection of Opera, Jazz, and Musical Theatre. His opera, Blind Injustice (with librettist David Cote) premiered with direction by Robin Guarino at Cincinnati Opera to a sold out run and national critical acclaim. The live CD/Album was cited by Opera News as one of the 5 Best New Opera Recordings of 2022 and the opera has received four subsequent productions at venues including the Rose Concert Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

He has completed commissions for The Public Theater; The Rumble of Myth (with Marcus Gardley) and the TONY Winning Signature Theatre (VA) The Break (with Michele Lowe). The New York City Opera has performed two Richards works as a part of its Vox Festival of new opera; A Star Across The Ocean - Paris 1965 featuring Tony Award Winner, Chuck Cooper and Charlie Crosses the Nation, an Opera in Jazz Idiom.  He was commissioned by Paulette Haupt, Artistic Director of The O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Musical Theatre Conference to compose A Thousand Words Come to Mind (with Michele Lowe) for the inaugural set of her Inner Voices one-person musical monologue series.  Other musical theatre works include music for Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing (written with Deborah Brevoort directed by Molly Smith at Perseverance Theatre/produced by Stuart Ostrow in Houston), and the original score for A Christmas Story The Musical at Kansas City Rep.

David Cote is a librettist, playwright, and arts journalist based in New York City. This season: Lucidity (with Laura Kaminsky) at Das Theater Erfurt (Germany) and La Monnaie (Belgium). Lucidity European premiere: Theater Regensburg (Germany), February 2026; also this year at Tri-Cities Opera (Binghamton, NY) and Opera in the Heights (Houston, TX). World premiere of Lucidity by On Site Opera in NYC; Northwest premiere at Seattle Opera. Recent opera: Blind Injustice (with Scott Davenport Richards) at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater; and Meltdown (with Stefan Weisman), a solo opera about climate change at National Sawdust. Other productions: Blind Injustice at Cincinnati Opera, Peak Performances (NJ), and Playhouse Square (Cleveland); Three Way (Robert Paterson) at Nashville Opera and BAM; and The Scarlet Ibis (Weisman) at Prototype festival and Chicago Opera Theater. David contributed the text for Nkeiru Okoye’s Black Lives Matter monodrama, Invitation to a Die-In (2017). Other vocal pieces: Cocoa Cantata (a sequel to Bach’s Coffee Cantata) and the datingapp song cycles In Real Life, both with Paterson. This year, David received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to support his work creating an oratorio with composer Alejandro Zuleta about anti-Mexican school segregation. David is the author of popular companion books about the Broadway hits Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Wicked, Jersey Boys and Spring Awakening. He writes about theater and culture at Cote Notices on Substack.

Composer Huang Ruo has been lauded by The New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls “Dimensionalism.”

Huang Ruo’s diverse compositional works span from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, architectural installation, multimedia, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film. His music has been premiered and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, LA Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Royal Danish Opera, Asko/Schoenberg, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, and conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Marin Alsop, Andrew Davis, Michael Tilson Thomas, and James Conlon. His opera An American Soldier (with libretto by David Henry Hwang) has recently received its world premiere at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 2018, and was named one of the best classical music events in 2018 by The New York Times. His installation opera Paradise Interrupted was premiered at the Spoleto Festival USA in 2015 and was performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2016. Another opera, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, premiered at the Santa Fe Opera in 2014.

James Schamus is an award-winning screenwriter (The Ice Storm), producer (Brokeback Mountain), and former CEO of Focus Features (Dallas Buyers Club, Lost in Translation, Milk, The Pianist). His feature directorial debut, the critically acclaimed adaptation of Philip Roth's Indignation, premiered at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals, and was released by Roadside Attractions.

Schamus recently served as Consulting Producer and writer on the Duffer Brothers new series The Boroughs, and co-wrote and produced the Mexican dark comedy El yerno, released this month on Netflix, directed by Gerardo Naranjo and produced with Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín. He is currently collaborating with composer Huang Ruo on an opera for The Met; and was showrunner on the hit Mexican limited series for Netflix, Somos. Works from his New York-based production company, Symbolic Exchange, include Kitty Green’s The Assistant, starring Julia Garner; Andrew Ahn’s Driveways, starring Hong Chau and the late Brian Dennehy; Rhys Ernst’s award-winning trans comedy Adam, starring Margaret Qualley; Minhal Baig’s acclaimed We Grown Now, which was released by Sony Classics; and Mike Ott’s McVeigh, starring Alfie Allen and Tracy Letts, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released by Decal.

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