Bio

Cole Nagoda (b. 2004) is a meta-modernist composer whose music is characterized by thoughtful architectures and a predilection for counterpoint. He is an undergraduate composition major at the University of Arizona, where he also studies flute and serves as the 2nd chair flutist of the Arizona Symphony Orchestra. From 2021-2023, he participated in the Tucson Symphony Orchestra's Young Composers Project, and in 2024 he won the UA Flute Studio's Premiere Prix composition competition. Cole's music has been performed at TURN UP Multimedia Festival, the Cortona Sessions for New Music, the Valencia International Performing Arts Summer Festival, the Etchings Festival, and the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference. Additionally, he is a University of Arizona 2025 Medici Scholar.

Recently, Cole's music has explored the re-contextualization of quotes from P. Tchaikovsky's Symphonies and rigorous 24TET atonality. He is also developing a course on the contrapuntal connections between Medieval/Renaissance and 20th/21st-century musics, which will be taught at the Osher Lifelong Learning Center in Tucson beginning October 2026. Other upcoming projects include a solo guitar piece and a chamber work entitled oleander, which takes as its point of departure Wolfgang Koeppen's 1954 novel Death in Rome. After getting his Bachelor's degree, Cole plans to go to grad school, with the long-term goal of teaching composition at the university level.