Scholarship Year: 2025

Nathan Juarez

What was your project about?

My project expanded the repertoire for singing percussionists by commissioning, composing, and performing four new works for this medium. I led the Cycles and Spheres Commission Consortium, collaborating with Pulitzer Prize 2025 winner Susie Ibarra on her piece Wind Crossing and gifted Brazilian-American modernist composer Felipe Lara on his piece Blake’s Infinity. I also commissioned Danse Domestique by Randy Stagich and composed my own five-movement song cycle, The Scholar.

Where are you now and how did your project shape the work you’re currently doing?

I am so grateful for the Cykler grant, which gave me the space to focus on my work as a singing percussionist and create three new solo/duo works for voice and percussion and my own five-movement song cycle with percussion ensemble. I am now working on the documentation phase of the Cycles and Spheres project, recording videos of the commissioned works along with a full-length album of works for voice and percussion. 

Research
Area:

Percussion Performance

Project Title:

The Cycle and Spheres Commission

Video Recordings

Other Resources

My Cykler project allowed me to further my work as a composer and singing percussionist.

More Cykler Scholars

2023
Miranda Lambert’s Feminine Persona
Music Theory
2025
Archiving the Music of The Sugar Beets
Composition
2022
The Songs of the Chilean Composer Carmela Mackenna
Piano performance
2022
Popular Songs in Shanghai from the 1920s through the 1940s
Musicology
2024
From the Margins: What Music Theory Doesn’t Want You to Know
Music Theory
2024
From the Margins: What Music Theory Doesn’t Want You to Know
Music Theory