Luna Lab is far from the only program for young composers in the United States. Besides conservatory classes, there is the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Composer Fellowship Program, open to all high-school students from sophomore to senior year, and Wildflower Composers, which provides mentorship to female, transgender, nonbinary and genderqueer early career composers.
What’s different about Luna Lab, Mazzoli said, is its commitment to its alumni. Reid and Mazzoli remain available to former fellows for advice and networking. Yuri Lee, 21, who was in the program from 2018-19, consulted with them about where to go to college, for example. She had studied composition in Juilliard’s Preparatory Division and it was her “dream school” for college. Reid and Mazzoli — and her teachers at Juilliard — encouraged her to attend Princeton University instead, for a well-rounded undergraduate education.
Luna Lab alumni can apply for stipends, from the Toulmin Luna Composition Lab Alumni Fund, that can be applied to creating recordings, producing concerts, purchasing software, creating a website and more. Alumni can apply more than once and can receive a total of $5,000 over time.
The nonprofit also furthers alumni careers through commissions from partner organizations and special projects like 25 for 25: A New Time for Choral Music. For that, the Cincinnati May Festival, celebrating its 150th anniversary, collaborated with Luna Lab to commission 25 works by alumni for 25 different choral ensembles.
About three-quarters of Luna Lab alumni who attend college have studied composition, and virtually all continue to be involved with music. Many have gone on to graduate school in composition. And Mazzoli and Reid say they can foresee a time when alumni will be ready to return as mentors.
For many of the alumni, the Luna Lab fellowship was life-changing. Maya Miro Johnson, 25, a 2017-18 fellow, said that its impact on her life was “incalculable, because I would not be a musician or a composer.” Growing up in a low-income family in Utah, she did have dance and violin lessons as a child but, she said, she was not good at the violin.
