Xavier Muzik knows his music—just don't try and label it. 

"Genre is tired, it's not for me," Muzik jokes of his musical style. "I feel like when people ask me what type of music I write, I say concert music, only because that's the setting that it's in," Muzik added. 

The 28-year-old is the latest winner of SFCM's Emerging Black Composers Project, a joint project started in 2020 with the San Francisco Symphony. "When I am blessed with opportunities like this, it really feeds into the inertia of my career and my artistry," Muzik said.  As the winner of the project, renamed the Michael Morgan Prize earlier this year, he will receive a $15,000 commission and mentorship, and his piece will premiere with the San Francisco Symphony during the 2024-2025 season. 

Though he is hesitant to point to any musical influences on his style, Muzik (Yes, his real name) comes from a musical family. His grandfather was a blues musician, and his parents encouraged him and his siblings to play instruments. As a child he started on the tuba before switching to piano, and eventually began to compose as a teenager. "The first time I took a music theory class, was the first time I thought, I am going to put all my effort into this artistic medium," he said. 

Today he is a classically trained composer who knows what he wants to say with his music. Still, it took him time to get there. "Both of my parents are biracial, so there was a lot of confusion for me growing up in that space," Muzik continued, "Music has become sort of the mechanism by which I explore that confusion." Writing music that shares his experience with the world has been at the forefront of his music, "I like to think that sometimes composition is the craft, but the artist is the why." 

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Although he is inspired by everything from contemporary music to R&B and film scores, he prefers to describe his music as "dreamy" and "glassy" and he implores the music world to take down the boundaries between music genres. "Get rid of the idea of what classical music is, even of what music is," Muzik continued, "Look at yourself as your whole story, as your whole artist's self." Muzik holds a master's degree and bachelor's degree in music composition. 

As far as the commission he'll debut with the SFS, Muzik knows he wants to create something different. "I am not the type of person who can sit down at a piano and go, 'Okay, what are we writing today?' I have to conceptualize in my head," he said. As winner of the EBCP Muzik joins Trevor Weston, Sumi Tonooka, Jonathan Bingham, Shawn Okpebholo and Jens Ibsen as winners of the ten-year project that intends to spotlight early-career Black American composers and their music.

In addition to pushing the boundaries of classical music on the concert stage, he wants to reinvent the concert experience for classical music fans by writing a piece of music that will get concertgoers at Davies Symphony Hall out of their seats, and onto their feet. "I would love for people to cheer during my music," ​​Muzik added. "You don't have to sit there like a robot, if you think something is cool, you can be like yeah, that's dope!'" 

Applications are open for next year's Emerging Black Composers Project. Applicants are encouraged to apply today. This year’s EBCP submission deadline is February 1, 2024.