Music Composition Student Awarded Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans

Doctoral student Polina Nazaykinskaya (Music Composition) was recently awarded a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, the premier graduate school award for immigrants and children of immigrants.
 
The $90,000 fellowship will provide funding over two years toward her degree.

Nazaykinskaya was selected from a pool of more than 1,200 applicants. Recipients are "poised to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture, or their academic fields," according to the official press release.

"Being a 2015 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow will allow me to continue pursing my dream of becoming a professional composer," she said. "Through my music I would like to transform the listening experience into an awakening of the soul, as success for me is defined primarily in terms of the ability to touch the hearts of the audience and allow them to experience a profound sense of reverence for beauty and for life."

Nazaykinskaya's first symphonic work, Winter Bells, was performed by the Minnesota Orchestra last year. Her travels to the Volga region of Russia, her homeland, have served as inspiration for her compositions.

She is a past recipient of a $7,500 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is currently studying with Distinguished Professor Tania Leon (Music).