2026 Keith and Renata Ward Emerging Composer:
Rachel McFarlane
Rachel “Ray” McFarlane is a composer working across concert music, film, television, and interactive media, known for blending classical rigor with bold experimentation. Named one of CBC’s 30 Best Classical Musicians Under 30, she is also the 2025 Valedictorian of Berklee College of Music, where she made history as the first woman and first person of color to graduate with the Screen Scoring Double Major in Film Scoring and Games & Interactive Media Scoring.
Her achievements at Berklee were marked by both artistic excellence and leadership. She has been recognized with honors including Berklee’s Trailblazer of the Year Award, the Electronic Arts / Berklee Charting Change Scholarship, the Bill Pierce MLK Scholarship, and the Women in Game Audio Award. These honors reflect her mission to amplify underrepresented voices and expand access within the music and media industries.
Rachel’s career has accelerated rapidly since graduation. She is currently working at Riot Games, contributing to large-scale interactive storytelling, while continuing an ongoing creative partnership with Red Bull, for whom she has been a contracted composer since 2024 after her debut on the Sounds of Red Bull’s Orchestral II album. Rachel’s screen work includes scoring award-recognized projects such as I(UN)DO (2024), Bell TV's Coming Home (2025) and Delta’s Journey to Legacy (2025). She has also composed and implemented music for video games through a competitive Ubisoft and SOCAN residency, mentored by Simon Landry.
In the concert music world, Rachel has emerged as a powerful new voice. She made history as the first composer commissioned by The Royal Conservatory’s Oscar Peterson Program, writing music that honored Peterson’s legacy while empowering young musicians from underserved communities.
As an industry partner and sponsored composer with Orchestral Tools, ROLI, Eastwest Sounds, and Kali Audio, Rachel uses her social media platforms to educate, mentor, and build community. Across every project, her work is guided by intention, curiosity, and a belief that music can shape empathy on a global scale.
Sphinx's Emerging Composer Fund focuses on transforming the classical music canon by systemically increasing the volume of commissions for living composers of color. Sphinx engages in direct commissions for its various artists, including our premiere touring ensembles, the Sphinx Virtuosi, and EXIGENCE Vocal Ensemble. This fund directly supports commissioning fees, recording and publishing, performances, documentation, and dissemination of new music. Eight years ago, the percentage of composers of color whose works were being commissioned and played by major orchestras across America was effectively 0%. Last year's statistics indicate that the number collectively has grown to 23%, with more than 9% being attributed to Black composers alone. The cumulative number most affects women and BIPOC composers. Sphinx is proud to lead the charge through direct commissions, as well as its role as a regrantor and through its long-standing history in consortia commissions. We believe in investing in the voices of tomorrow while elevating and augmenting the classical music canon. Together, we can ensure that the American classical landscape is vibrant and inclusive of all voices comprising the rich mosaic of our communities nationwide.
This effort is made possible through the generous support of Keith and Renata Ward.
About the 2026 Commissioned Work
American Dialogue
As the opening work for the Sphinx Virtuosi’s celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, American Dialogue seeks to do exactly what its title suggests: begin a conversation. A genuine dialogue about a nation as layered and evolving as the United States cannot be a monologue of simple praise. It must begin with reflection.
The piece opens on a deliberately somber note. To speak of America is to enter a space shaped by contradiction: by aspiration and imperfection, by struggle and reinvention, by the distance between what is imagined and what is lived. This opening is a moment of acknowledgment, a musical recognition that becoming is rarely smooth, and that meaning is often found by facing complexity rather than turning away from it.
But a true dialogue does not remain in shadow. The initial gravity gradually gives way to something more expansive: a meditation on the extraordinary duality that defines this country and, perhaps, the human condition itself. For all its fractures and unfinished questions, America is also a story of imagination, plurality, resilience, and hope. The music evolves to reflect this, tracing the tension between memory and possibility, between what has been inherited and what might still be made.
As the opening work in the program, American Dialogue is meant to establish not only a mood but also an invitation. It honors the weight of history while setting a tone of forward motion. Its final act is a testament to hope within complexity, a reminder that even in the midst of uncertainty, there remains the possibility of renewal, and with it, a reason to imagine the next 250 years.
Emerging Composers
2026 - Rachel McFarlane: American Dialogue
2025 - Randall Goosby: Suite for Violin and Orchestra, William Grant Still (arr. for solo cello by Randall Goosby)
2024 - Levi Taylor: Daydreaming (A Fantasy on Scott Joplin)
2023 - Quenton Blache: Habari Gani