Orchestral Composition Reading & Career-Development Session

The submission deadline for this year has now passed.

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, in collaboration with the Canadian Music Centre (CMC), is pleased to offer Explore the Score, an annual orchestral composition reading and career development session for early-career Canadian composers hosted by the TSO RBC Affiliate Composer Liam Ritz. This program offers composers the opportunity to hear their works rehearsed in a professional orchestral setting while also receiving valuable feedback from TSO musicians, composers, and staff.  The 25/26 Explore the Score composers are Massimo Guida, Dmytro Kyryliv, Michele Selvaggi, and Yuhan Zhou. Their works will be conducted by TSO Resident Conductor Nicholas Sharma. The Guest Composer for the 25/26 Explore the Score will be Linda Catlin Smith. 

2025/26 Guest Composer

Linda Catlin Smith

Linda Catlin Smith grew up in New York and lives in Toronto. Her music has been performed by: Vancouver and Victoria Symphony Orchestras, Tafelmusik, BBC Scottish Orchestra, Tectonics Festival (Glasgow), and many others. Recordings include: The Plains with Cheryl Duvall, (nominated for a Juno award this year), Dark Flower with Thin Edge Collective, Thought and Desire, with Eve Egoyan, and six recordings - Dirt Road, Drifter, Wanderer, Among the Tarnished Stars (with Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time) and Ballad, Flowers of Emptiness - with the label 'another timbre'. Her string trio Meadow and her choral work Folio were both recorded in Ireland by the Louth Contemporary Music Society. In 2019, her orchestral work, Nuages, (commissioned by the BBC Proms), was premiered by the BBC Scottish Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall, and received its Canadian premiere in 2023 with the Vancouver Symphony. Her works are available through Composers Edition and the Canadian Music Centre. In addition to composing, Linda has taught composition privately and at Wilfrid Laurier University (1999-2020). She was recently awarded honorary membership to the ISCM, and received an Honorary Doctorate in Music from the University of Victoria in 2023.

25/26 Explore the Score Composers

Massimo Guida

Toronto-based Italian-Canadian composer, theorist, educator, and copyist Massimo Guida was born in Modena, Italy; he completed his doctorate in composition at the University of Toronto in 2019. Described by La Scena Musicale in 2012 as a composer who writes with “a particularly strong melodic inspiration,” Massimo seeks to combine his fondness for melodic lyricism and storytelling through music with a contemporary musical language in his works. A multi-award-winning composer, in 2015 he won the Violet Archer Prize, for his song cycle Confessions (2014), and the Mississauga Festival Choir Competition for his choral work Infant Joy (2013), written for the birth of his nephew. Massimo’s compositions and arrangements have been performed in Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, and South Korea, by artists including the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra, Brantford Symphony Orchestra, North York Concert Orchestra, Fawn Chamber Creative, Slow Rise Music, Mississauga Festival Choir, Odin Quartet, Juno nominee Lindsay Schoolcraft, and pianist Alexander Panizza. His piano composition Fantasia Sopra Sei Temi di Puccini (2021) featured on Panizza’s 2024 album Everything Waits for the Lilacs. Massimo was a Composer Fellow for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2024–25 season, and the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra New Generation Affiliate Composer during the 2020–21 season. An advocate for contemporary music in Canada, Massimo sat on the board of the Canadian League of Composers from 2020 to 2022. Outside of composition, Massimo is passionate about music analysis and education and works both as a copyist and as a guitar and music theory teacher.  

Dmytro Kyryliv

Dmytro Kyryliv (Dima) is a composer, clarinetist and audio artist  working across contemporary classical music, film, and video games. While remaining true to his artistic voice, his work has been recognized with prestigious awards such as the Arkady Fomin Scholarship and the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra Stingray Rising Stars Award.

Dmytro’s music has found international recognition and has been performed by talented musicians, ensembles, and orchestras at major festivals including the North Shore Chamber Music Festival and Wien Modern, as well as in renowned venues such as the Wiener Musikverein, ORF Radiokulturhaus, das MuTH, and Steinway Salon Vienna. As a performer, he has appeared with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and is an alumnus of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra.

Alongside his concert music, Dmytro is actively involved in media composition and sound design, creating soundtracks for film and video games. He currently works with OK_XR and Overscoped Studios, contributing as a composer and sound designer.

Born in 2002 in Ternopil, Ukraine, Dmytro holds a double Bachelor of Music degree with distinction in Music Composition and Clarinet Performance from the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, and is currently completing a Master’s degree in Music Technology & Digital Media at the University of Toronto, where he also works as a Teaching Assistant and Instructor.

Michele Selvaggi

Three-time SOCAN Award Winning composer Michele Selvaggi hails from the heart of downtown Toronto with strong Southern Italian roots, and has recently returned to Canada as a Basel-postgraduate and freelance musician. With “a compositional approach that is nourished by a special sonic apparatus” (Percorsi Musicali), Michele is concerned deeply with the physiological experience of sound, notably driven by their own existential confrontation with time’s passage. Their experimental work is intensely coloured by influences from earlier scientific engagement, resulting in noisy sonic topographies and detailed electroacoustic environments often shaded by their daily life living with demanding anxiety and OCD.

Michele has both received commissions from and collaborates recurrently with organizations scattered across Europe and North America, including the impuls Festival —at which they have premiered three chamber works—UdK Berlin, Museum Tinguely, CEAM Artists, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Redshift Music, New Music Concerts, Kamratōn Ensemble, the Eastman School of Music, and the Canadian Music Centre. They were notably the resident Lead Composer for Green Room Sound Collective’s virtual installation, “The Gallery”. Michele has also been the recipient of over 20 awards and prizes including the Musik-Akademie Basel’s 2025 Eduard Brunner Composition Prize, CEC’s Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux Award, as well as a funded residency in Krakow through the Residency Prix CIME 2021. Their music has been included in the 2024 Canadian Section's official submission to World Music Days, won 3rd place in the CEC’s 25th Jeu de Temps, and led to nomination for a 2021 Rhodes Scholarship.

Yuhan Zhou

Yuhan Zhou is a composer, pianist, and producer based in Toronto, originally from China. She is currently completing her DMA in Composition at the University of Toronto. Her music draws from a wide range of influences, including Chinese opera, Asian philosophies, film scores, jazz, and literature, which she blends to create dynamic, narrative-driven compositions. Drawing from both these diverse influences and her own cultural heritage, her work merges the Western musical training she has received with the intuitive musical sense shaped by her Chinese roots.