About

Condensed Biography

Ihlara McIndoe is a composer from Ōtepoti Dunedin (Aotearoa New Zealand). Her compositional work draws on themes of exploration and preservation to investigate artistic ecologies and creative modes of (re)thinking, (re)making and remembering. Her work has been performed in Aotearoa and internationally by artists including Mark Menzies, Johanna Vargas, Mayumi Miyata, Nanae Yoshimura, Gabriela Glapska, The Rhythm Method Quartet, Ensemble Court-Circuit, Les Métaboles, Multilaterale, Ensemble Semblance, Duo Nessi, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, NZ National Youth Orchestra, and Stroma; and presented at festivals and venues including the Artistic Research Creation Opus (France), Festival de Royaumont (France), Bendigo International Festival for Exploratory Music (Australia), CubaDupa (Aotearoa), the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Canada), the Composers Conference (USA), and the US National Flute Association Convention. Her collaborations with the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust have shared the sounds of Antarctica with communities through music in various settings, including concert music, installations, educational workshops, and documentary. Her 2025 work for string quartet and voices, of coral and foam, composed for The Rhythm Method Quartet, received the SOUNZ Contemporary Award, New Zealand’s premier award for contemporary music composition. Ihlara completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Otago, where she studied composition with Anthony Ritchie, Peter Adams, Chris Gendall and Dylan Lardelli. She holds an MA Musicology from McGill University, and is currently undertaking her DMA in Composition at Columbia University where she is studying with Zosha Di Castri, Marcos Balter, and George Lewis.

Full Biography

Ihlara McIndoe is a composer and musicologist from Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand, currently based in New York City, USA. Her compositional work draws on themes of exploration and preservation to investigate artistic ecologies and creative modes of (re)thinking, (re)making and remembering. Her projects span across acoustic and electroacoustic concert settings from solo instrument to orchestral scores, as well as interdisciplinary projects incorporating movement, poetry, and storytelling.

Ihlara’s work has been performed and recorded in Aotearoa, as well as in Asia, Europe, and North America, by artists and ensembles including Mark Menzies, Johanna Vargas, Gabriela Glapska, Mayumi Miyata, Nanae Yoshimura, the The Rhythm Method Quartet, Ensemble Court-Circuit, Les Métaboles, Multilaterale, Ensemble Semblance, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, NZ National Youth Orchestra, NZTrio, Orchestra Wellington, and Stroma. Her work has been presented at various festivals and venues including the Bendigo International Festival for Exploratory Music (Australia), CubaDupa (Aotearoa), the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Canada), the Artistic Research Creation Opus (France), Festival de Royaumont (France), and the US National Flute Association Convention. She was a 2025 Fromm Foundation Composer Fellow at the US Composers Conference, hosted by the Avaloch Farm Music Institute.

She was the 2025 winner of the SOUNZ Contemporary Award | Te Tohu Auaha, New Zealand’s premier music composition award, which celebrates excellence in contemporary composition, with her work of coral and foam for string quartet and voices. Her chamber work, Mirror Traps, composed in participation at the Voix Nouvelles Academy at Festival de Royaumont, was one of three finalist works in the 2024 SOUNZ Contemporary Award. She is a commissioned composer by Radio France for Anne Montaron’s 2025/26 Création mondiale season, composing a new work for the trail-blazing contemporary music group, Ensemble Semblance. As an orchestral composer, Ihlara served as Composer in Residence for the NZSO National Youth Orchestra (2021).

Ihlara’s collaborations with the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust (2020-2022) led to a series of works which share the sounds of Antarctica and the spirit of exploration with New Zealand communities, which have been presented separately around Aotearoa and internationally, as well as in a portrait concert, A Musical Journey to Antarctica, in Ōtautahi Christchurch in 2022.

Ihlara’s musicological interests stem from her background as a former lawyer, with her research focusing on the interaction between public law and the arts sector, and potential for creative policy reform to foster greater sustainability and inclusion within the arts. She has also given various presentations with the support of the Antarctic Heritage Trust and via the Global Leaders Institute for Arts Innovation on the role of music in environment education and activism. Her musicological work on (re)imaginative archiving has been published in Glissando Magazine and she was awarded the Student Paper Prize at the American Musicological Society New York State / St Lawrence chapter meeting in 2023 for this research. She is a review writer for the Cambridge University Press Tempo Journal for New Music.

As an arts administrator, Ihlara has served as Co-Convenor of the Composers Association of New Zealand National Composers Workshop, and has worked in student promotions for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Music New Zealand. She currently serves on the board of Columbia Composers, curating a series of new music concerts in New York City with some of the leading contemporary music ensembles in North America.

Ihlara is a graduate of McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, with an MA in Musicology supervised by Professor Roe-Min Kok. She holds a MusB in Composition and Piano Performance from the University of Otago, where she studied with Professor Anthony Ritchie, Professor Peter Adams, and Professor Terence Dennis, as well as an LLB and BA (1st class honours) in Gender Studies. She also holds an Executive MBA from the Global Leaders Institute for Arts Innovation. Her studies have been supported by the Dame Malvina Major Foundation Arts Excellence Award, the William Georgetti Scholarship, the Jack McGill/Creative New Zealand scholarship, the University of Otago Ida White Travelling Scholarship, and the McGill University Academic Excellence Scholarship. Ihlara is currently undertaking a DMA in Composition at Columbia University, NYC, where she is studying with Zosha Di Castri, Marcos Balter, and George Lewis.