In our 51st season, WFC is thrilled to launch Emerging Voices, a community partnership with Chicago Public Schools.

Core to WFC’s mission of advancing the work of living composers and singers, it is important for WFC to mentor the next generation of choral singers and composers. In our inaugural year we are delighted to partner with Puja Ramaswamy and students in the advanced and intermediate choirs at Lake View High School for a year-long residency focused on the creation and performance of new choral music.

Over the course of the year, alongside composer and composer-in-residence Cristian Larios, and Music Director Christopher Windle, students will explore what it means to write choral music today.

From the conception of a piece, to the writing of its texts, vocal lines and harmonies, to the perfection of a work for premiere performance, students will engage in every aspect of the writing of a new work to be premiered on WFC’s winter concert.

In 2019, Cristian was accepted as a fellow for the PREMIERE|Project Festival in collaboration with Choral Arts Initiative. Larios has also collaborated with the School of Theatre and Dance and Kristin Schoenback on Ellen Mclaughin’s, Oedipus. Cristian enjoys the collaborative process and is always looking for new adventures and challenges.

In 2017, Larios was the recipient of the Harlan Peithman Music Scholarship for excellence in music theory and composition as well as the Illinois Minority Teachers Scholarship in 2018. Larios graduated with his  Bachelors of Music Education-Choral and his Bachelors of Music in Composition from Illinois State University where he studied composition with Martha Horst, Roger Zare, Roy Magnuson, Joshua Keeling, and Carl Schimmel. Cristian is currently pursuing his Masters of Music Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Lake View High School

Drawing students from throughout the seventy-seven neighborhoods of Chicago, Lake View High School is a public four-year high school, located in the heart of Lake View on Chicago’s north side.

Lake View High School prides itself on being “an empowering environment where individualism and collaboration co-exist, in order to ensure that our students look back on their Lake View experience with pride and progress forward in miraculous ways.”

Emerging Voices composers-in-residence Adore Alexander (2023-24)

Puja Ramaswamy

Puja Ramaswamy is the Director of Choirs at Lake View High School in Chicago. At Lake View, Ms. Ramaswamy teaches four choral groups and serves as the Music Department Chair. She believes in creating a culturally relevant curriculum where student voice guides instruction. Her students have performed in choral festivals such as Join Voices Chicago and worked with expert teaching artists through the Lyric Opera High School Residency Program. Prior to her position at Lake View, Ms. Ramaswamy was the Director of Vocal Music at Eisenhower Junior High School in Darien, Illinois where she directed numerous musicals and organized choral trips for her students to experience performing across the country.

Ms. Ramaswamy is a recipient of the 2022 Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching. She serves as the Secretary on the Illinois ACDA Board and on the Alumni Board for VanderCook College of Music.

She has had the pleasure of adjudicating and serving as a clinician for IGSMA District 7 Choral Contests and the ACDA Treble Choir Festival and has served as a guest conductor for the Waukegan Middle School Music Festival.

Ms. Ramaswamy holds degrees in Music and Philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a MMEd from VanderCook College of Music.