Call for Composers!
BE Connect 2024 with Ensemble Fractales
Congratulations to the five composers selected in this years call: Dror Binder, Nava Hemyari, Arshia Samsaminia, Anibal Vidal, Massimiliano Vizzini. They were selected from a pool of 345 candidates.
More info about these composers below!
2026 composers
Dror Binder
Dror Binder is an Israeli composer based in Vienna. His work is marked by a bold and critical engagement with musical inheritance - navigating between the weight of historical tradition and the freedom of pure play. His musical language unfolds through a rich microtonal harmonic world, where the boundaries between past and present, reality and fantasy, gradually dissolve.
Binder's music has been presented at leading international festivals and venues including Wien Modern, Wiener Musikverein, Wiener Konzerthaus, ARCo, CEME, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. He has collaborated with distinguished ensembles such as Ensemble Multilatérale (France), the Wiener Volksoper Symphony Orchestra (Austria), Kebyart Quartet (Spain), Meitar Ensemble (Israel), the Wiener Concert Verein (Austria), Ensemble
ICP (Israel), Ensemble Reconsil (Austria), and Sonus Cordis Quartet (Hungary).
His work has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Startstipendium of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Culture (BMKÖS, 2025), the Israeli Prime Minister's Composition Prize (2024), the Centcelles Composition Prize, and the Abraham & Felicia Klon Prize, as well as fellowships from the Aspen Music Festival and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. Since 2023, his work has been continuously supported by composition grants from the City of Vienna and SKE.
Nava Hemyari
Nava Hemyari (born in Tehran 1993) studied composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Her works have been performed in venues such as Musikverein, Viennese Konzerthaus, London Opera House, Yale University in Connecticut, ORF National Radio House Austria, and by ensembles such as PHACE, Company of Music, Black Page Orchestra and Ensemble Platypus. Her works have been played in BLUDENZER TAGE ZEITGEMÄßER MUSIK, Listening Closely, SHIFT festival Royal Opera HOuse London, Teatri del Suono (Trieste), Musikprotokoll festival and featured in Wien Modern numerous times. She was also the composer in residence of Festival Imago Dei in 2023. In 2022 she received the yearly scholarship of the city of Vienna for her chamber opera ,Taxidermic’. In 2023 the yearly State Grant from the Federal Chancellery of Austria.
As the singer of her own ensembles, Punctum Collective, for contemporary music and Lux Brumalis Ensemble for renaissance and early baroque repertoire, she has composed numerous works for voice and choir. Her experience spans both professional and amateur ensembles, and she employs a variety of approaches, including the use of graphic notation for vocal scores.
Arshia Samsaminia
Arshia Samsaminia (born in Tehran, Iran) is a contemporary composer currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His academic background includes studies at the Sibelius Academy of Music (Finland), the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and the UdK Berlin (Germany), where he studied microtonal music under Marc Sabat. He has studied with composers such as Helena Tulve, Malin Bång, and Manolis Vlitakis, among others.
Samsaminia has delivered lectures on Persian Medieval Tones and Tunings at various universities and festivals, including the Royal College of Music in
Stockholm, the Sibelius Academy in Finland, the Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, the International Scientific Meeting for Sound, Music, and Musical Studies in Portugal, and the Catholic University of Salta in Argentina, among others.
Arshia was awarded a prize at the Remus Georgescu International Composing Competition (2024). He is also a recipient of the prestigious Fromm Foundation Fellowship of Composers Conference, which is supported by Harvard University 2025.
His works have been performed by renowned ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Collegium Novum Zurich, Zone Experimentale Ensemble, and others. His compositions have also been presented at major festivals, including the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Gaudeamus Festival, Musica Nova Helsinki, Sound of Stockholm, and others.
Anibal Vidal
Anibal Vidal is a Chilean composer based in London. His compositional
output focuses on the use of tangible symbols such as verbal language,
theatrical gestures or musical quotations as a way of inviting audiences into a shared imaginary space. The alteration of these symbols through
repetition, erosion, and recontextualisation allows him to explore different
connections between music and the cultural context in which it exists.
Through these lenses, he aims to create a sound that speaks universally.
This year 2026, he is one of the nominees for the Gaudeamus award. He
has been awarded the Ivors Classical Awards in the category Best Chamber Ensemble Composition for his trumpet chamber concerto ‘Invocación n.2: a Kintsugi Resurrection’. Vidal recently received the third edition of the Pisar Prize, awarded by The Juilliard School, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and Villa Albertine, which allowed him to premiere his orchestral work The Language that All Things Speak with Les Siècles at the Parisian theatre, which included a one-month artist residency at Juilliard School in New York with Axiom ensemble.
His compositions have been performed in Europe, America, and Asia,
collaborating with different groups such as the Ensemble
Intercontemporain, Les Siècles, Quatuor Bozzini, Britten Sinfonia, City of
London Sinfonia, Trio Xenakis, The Carice Singers, Mise-En ensemble, MI
Orchestra, East Anglia Chamber Orchestra, RCM Philharmonic, Orquesta
de Cámara de Valdivia, Divertimento ensemble, Cikada ensemble,
Ensemble U, Ensemble Taller Sonoro, Synchronos ensemble, Ensamble
Fractura, among others.
Massimiliano Vizzini
Massimiliano Vizzini is an Italian composer, multimedia artist and artistic researcher based in the Netherlands. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Ferrara Conservatory, focusing on Digital Counterpoint: Compositional Strategies for Performer–Film Interaction in Contemporary Music Performance. Central to his artistic vision is the idea of making contemporary music more accessible without compromising on research and experimentation, through new ways of engaging audiences.
His works, spanning contemporary-classical music, opera, mixed media, and electronic music, have been performed across Europe by leading institutions and ensembles, such as Opera Forward Festival, Gaudeamus Festival, MIXTUR Festival, Sax Summit Tilburg, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Fractales, Festival Contrasti, Time of Music, Dag van de Componist, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Palau de la Musica, MAX BRAND Ensemble, Latvian Radio Choir, Vlaams Radiokoor, Zubin Kanga, David Moliner, Avanti Chamber Orchestra, and Doelen Ensemble.
