Elizabeth Younan

Elizabeth Younan (1994) is quickly gaining a reputation as one of Australia's finest young composers. Her violin solo, …your heart dreams of spring is featured on Jennifer Koh's 2022 GRAMMY award-winning album, Alone Together. Elizabeth is a Sydney Symphony Orchestra "50 Fanfares Project" composer, the composer for the podcast "Lost Women of Science" (produced in partnership with PRX and Scientific American), and has her piece, The Fertile Crescent-inspired by her Lebanese heritage-commissioned, recorded, and broadcast by ABC Classic. Elizabeth was a featured Australian composer of Musica Viva Australia's International Concert Seasons (2018, 2020), the 2021-2022 Layton Emerging Fellowship Composer (UNSW), and has composed for principal players of the Philadelphia Orchestra for their "Our City, Your Orchestra" series.

Elizabeth is currently the Composer-in-Residence at Santa Sabina College (class of 2011), and the Back to Bach Project, where she is also the Regional Director of Australia's first branch in Sydney. Accolades include a Daniel W. Dietrich II Young Alumni Fund Award from the Curtis Institute of Music, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Kendall National Violin Competition's Watermark Composition Prize, two Willgoss Prize Commissions in association with USYD and UNSW, the 102.5 Fine Music and Willoughby Symphony Young Composer Award, and the Jean Bogan Youth Prize.

Elizabeth holds a Bachelor of Music in Composition with First Class Honours (2015) and a Master of Music (2018) from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she studied with Carl Vine AO. She was awarded the Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize, a research grant from the Australia Council for her Honours thesis, and the Australian Postgraduate Award (2016-2018). Elizabeth graduated from her composition studies at the renowned Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (2021), which all students attend on full scholarship. She graduated with the Charles Miller "Alfredo Casella" Award for excellence in composition and was selected by staff and faculty to be the female graduating speaker for the class of 2021. She studied with Dr. Jennifer Higdon, Dr. David Serkin Ludwig, Dr. Richard Danielpour and Dr. Amy Beth Kirsten as the first Australian composer to be admitted to Curtis in its nearly 100-year history.

Biography taken from Australian Music Centre.
Photo: Lauren Younan