Lee Awarded 2026 Barlow Commission
Dongryul Lee, DMA, Assistant Professor of Music in Loyola University Chicago’s College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a 2026 commission from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition.
Lee was one of nine composers selected from more than 200 applicants for this year’s Barlow Endowment General and LDS commissioning programs. Together, the programs will provide $80,000 in grants to support the selected composers as they create new musical works.
Lee will use the commission to compose a violin concerto for violinist Miranda Cuckson and the New York–based Talea Ensemble, a work exploring water as both a physical phenomenon and a spiritual metaphor. He has previously collaborated with both Cuckson and musicians of the Talea Ensemble, and this new commission builds upon those longstanding artistic relationships.
“Dr. Lee’s selection for this prestigious international commission is a testament to the creativity and excellence of his work as a composer,” said Peter J. Schraeder, PhD, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “This recognition reflects the important contributions our fine and performing arts faculty make to the broader artistic community.”
“I am deeply grateful for this commission,” said Lee. “A large-scale violin concerto is something I have wanted to write for a long time, and I have envisioned this particular work for Miranda ever since we worked together in 2021. The recording she made of my solo violin work—with some of the most demanding passages I had written using microtonal tuning—was truly beyond what I had imagined possible. The musicians of Talea are extraordinarily virtuosic and versatile, making the ensemble an ideal vehicle for this vision.”
Established in 1983 through a gift from Milton A. and Gloria Barlow to Brigham Young University, the Barlow Endowment supports excellence in musical composition. Each year, the Endowment holds an international competition that attracts applications from composers around the world. A panel of musicians reviews the submissions and selects composers to receive commissions to create new works.
Lee, who also serves as Coordinator of the Theory and Composition program in Loyola’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts, writes music that entwines the acoustical nature of sound with clarity, pathos, and reinvented classical expression.
“Knowing that I can write for musicians of this caliber allows me to imagine the concerto without compromising its ambition, and the commission gives me the time and freedom to fully pursue that possibility—to work at full scale and follow the artistic idea as far as it needs to go,” added Lee.
Through the Barlow commission, Lee will join a select group of composers whose work is being supported through one of the leading international commissioning programs for new music.
About the College of Arts and Sciences
Founded in 1870, the College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest and largest of Loyola University Chicago’s 13 schools and colleges, serving as the academic home for nearly 8,000 students (roughly 50 percent of Loyola’s total student population). It is academically diverse with twenty academic departments that span an array of intellectual pursuits, ranging from the natural sciences and computational sciences to the humanities, the social sciences, and the fine and performing arts. It is also highly interdisciplinary with thirty-one interdisciplinary programs and seven interdisciplinary centers, including the mission-centric Jesuit Heritage Research Center and the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage. The College is home to over 450 full-time, award-winning faculty, who are committed to teaching and research excellence. They teach nearly 2,000 classes each semester, including 88 percent of all Core Curriculum classes taken by undergraduate students across the university. They also contribute to eleven doctoral programs whose graduates have helped propel Loyola starting in 2025 to R-1 research status (the highest research status a university can achieve). Our students and faculty are engaged internationally at Loyola Rome in Italy, as well as at dozens of university-sponsored study abroad and research sites around the world. Home to the departments that anchor the university’s Core Curriculum, the College seeks to prepare all of Loyola’s students to think critically, to engage the world of the 21st century at ever-deepening levels, and to become caring and compassionate individuals. Our faculty, staff, and students view service to others not just as one option among many, but as a constitutive dimension of their very being. In the truest sense of the Jesuit ideal, our graduates strive to be “individuals for others.”