ABOUT

Gabriel Stossel (b. 2001) is a young  Canadian-American composer currently pursuing his Master’s Degree at the Schulich School of Music,  McGill University, studying with Dr. Eliot Britton.   He holds degrees in music composition and music theory from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where his teachers included  Dr. Keith Fitch , Dr. Diane Urista, Dr. Scott Hanenberg, Dr. Jack Hughes, and piano studies with Derek Nishimura.

As a composer, Stossel likes to explore relationships between broad overarching musical shapes and musical structure, making connections between a myriad of arts.  His works are often inspired by visual arts, architecture, and poetry.  Stossel  has previously studied with Nicholas Landrum, Jennifer Merkowitz, and Paul Coleman.  

Stossel was the recipient of  Donald  Erb  prize in composition for 2024. He is the first prize winner of the 2020-2021 Cleveland Composer’s Guild Collegiate Composition Contest and the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award Honorable Mention (2023). He is a second prize  winner of the 2021 OFMC Composition Contest and first prize winner of the 2022 OFMC Composition Contest. He is second prize winner of the Robert Avalon International Composition Competition (2021).  He has received a Special prize from the 1st Ise-Shima International Popular Music Composition Competition (2022). He is also a recipient of the 2020 John Phllip Soussa Award.  

Stossel has actively participated in various musical festivals, including the Bowdoin International Summer Festival (2023), the Mostly Modern Festival (2022), Summer at Eastman (2019), and CIM’s Young Composers program (2019). He was recognized as a Norfolk New Music Workshop Fellow in 2022. Stossel’s compositions have been showcased across the United States in venues such as Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Kilbourne Hall at the Eastman School of Music, Studzinski Recital Hall in Brunswick, ME, as well as Saratoga Springs, New York.