Composer Oswald Huỳnh Named a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow

When Oswald Huỳnh BA ’19 composes, he often begins with the stuff of memory: a fragment of language, a family story, a cultural inheritance, a sound that seems to hold more than one meaning at once.

That approach has helped make Huỳnh a closely watched young voice in contemporary classical music. Now it has earned him one of the nation’s most prestigious honors for artists and scholars: a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition.

Announced in April by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the 2026 class includes 223 fellows working across 55 disciplines and artistic fields. Fellows were selected through a rigorous peer-review process from nearly 5,000 applicants.

For Huỳnh, a Vietnamese American composer and Portland native, the recognition arrives during a remarkable stretch of creative momentum. He is also the 2025–26 laureate of the Frederic A. Juilliard | Walter Damrosch Rome Prize in Musical Composition and has recently served as composer-in-residence with both the Louisville Orchestra and the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra.

“A Guggenheim Fellowship is an incredible honor,” says Huỳnh. “I am still stunned to have received one for my work.”

Music Rooted in Story

Huỳnh’s music is rooted in narrative, culture, and memory, with works that explore aesthetics and tradition, language and translation, and the relationship between heritage and identity.

His orchestral work Gia Đình, for example, explores intergenerational trauma, cultural inheritance, and what can be lost between eras. Other pieces draw on poetry, place, translation, and the physical textures of sound itself.

Huỳnh’s creativity has drawn the attention of major ensembles and artists in the United States and abroad. His music has been performed or presented by groups including the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Oregon Symphony, the Louisville Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, the Akropolis Reed Quintet, and more.

The Guggenheim Fellowship will support Huỳnh’s continued creative work at a moment when his practice is expanding in new directions. He plans to use the fellowship funds to create a new work for the Tacet(i) Ensemble, a leading new music ensemble based in Southeast Asia.

“I’m excited to be spending time completely focused on my music,” says Huỳnh.

 

Credit: O'Neil Arnold

Composing a Career

Huỳnh’s path as a composer includes deep ties to Lewis & Clark. He earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and music before completing a master’s degree in music composition at the University of Missouri. While at Lewis & Clark, he received the Rena Ratte Award, the undergraduate college’s highest academic honor.

“Soon after meeting Oswald, it became clear to me that this was someone who was highly motivated, dedicated, and passionate about pursuing the craft of composition,” says Michael Johanson, professor of music and director of composition and music theory. “I knew that great things were in store for him, and it is not at all surprising to me that he continues to experience such success as a composer and advocate of new music. His music is engaging, compelling, and beautiful, and it reflects a wonderfully distinctive and personal artistic voice.”

That early recognition has been followed by a steady accumulation of national and international honors. In addition to the Guggenheim, Huỳnh is the winner of the CAG Louis and Susan Meisel Prize, the Luigi Nono International Composition Prize, the New England Philharmonic Call for Scores Competition, the Musiqa Emerging Composer Commission, the IPO Classical Evolve Composer Competition, and the Black Bayou Composition Award.

Huỳnh’s current work is being shaped by his year as a Rome Prize fellow at the American Academy in Rome, where he has been exploring the musical possibilities of reclaimed materials, from wine corks and glass bottles to cardboard, ceramic vessels, and found fragments. The project reflects his interest in the material life of sound—and in how Rome’s layers of ruins, marble, scarcity, renewal, and nature might influence the way we hear the Western orchestra and its instruments.

A Liberal Arts Foundation

Huỳnh’s Guggenheim recognition offers a vivid example of the creative life a liberal arts education can help launch: interdisciplinary, technically sophisticated, and globally engaged.

It also marks the second consecutive year that Lewis & Clark alumni have been named Guggenheim Fellows; in 2025, historian Quinn Slobodian BA ’00 and poet Corey Van Landingham BA ’08 received the honor.

Music