GENRE-FLUID COMPOSERS’ LAB

Erich Barganier is a composer and multi-instrumentalist hailing from St. Petersburg, Florida, who currently resides between New York City and Montreal. He writes chamber, orchestral, film, solo instrumental and electronic music that explores experimental technology, the edge of noise, improvisation, generative processes, and new forms of notation. His music has been released on People|Places|Records, [walnut+locust], Belts and Whistles Records, Infrequent Seams, Off Latch Press, and more, and marries sonic material from jazz, noise rock, experimental electronica, and contemporary classical musical styles together. barganiermusic.com

Anuj Bhutani is a quickly emerging composer currently based in Austin, TX. His music is often concerned with visceral grooves; ethereal, meditative spaces; the use of recording studio technology with acoustic instruments; and storytelling. His work has been commissioned or performed by Ashley Bathgate, Andrew Tholl of Wild Up, Verdant Vibes, Daisy Press, Switch~ ensemble, and more. anujbhutani.com

Theodore Haber (b. 1999), is a San Francisco Bay Area-based composer and violinist. While his apartment is scattered with manuscript paper and scores, there is often also an excess of baked goods. He is a student at the Schulich School of Music studying composition. Previous teachers include John Adams, Matthew Cmiel, Nina C. Young, Ted Hearne, Samuel Carl Adams, and Donald Crockett. Theo found himself stuck in his childhood bedroom during the pandemic. Confronted with isolation and a lack of live music, he turned to songwriting and recording. In 2020, Theo released his first solo album "Floating Fields", a 40-minute work that combines dense and dissonant soundscapes with ethereal vocal harmonies and violin pads.

Haber has participated in the John Adams Young Composers Program summer workshop, The Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, and the soundSCAPE Composition and Performance Exchange. He enjoys collaboration and aims to learn about other art forms through collaborative projects. He has worked with filmmakers, actors, and dancers. He has performed with the Kronos Quartet, in the Other Minds Music Festival, and in the Switchboard Music Festival, and was a member of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. His compositions have been premiered by the Baumer String Quartet, The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, SF Sound, the Friction Quartet, the Now Ensemble, and the USC Thornton Symphony. theodorehaber.com

Native New Yorker Cassandra Jenkins writes with a singular voice and an impressionistic intimacy, making astute observations that dovetail neatly with her blend of folk and lush ambient pop. A veteran musician, Jenkins played in the touring bands of Eleanor Friedberger, Craig Finn, Lola Kirke & Purple Mountains after coming up through the East Coast folk scene playing in her family's band.

After signing with Ba Da Bing Records, Jenkins made her label debut in 2021 with the critically acclaimed An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, an enchanting, almost spiritual set recorded with Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, Muzz). "Filled with people, stories, and dialogue, the New York songwriter’s second album flows like an emotional breakthrough, tying together disparate observations into a serene and unified vision," says Pitchfork, which gave the album Best New Music. cassandrajenkins.com

Dan Langa is a composer, producer, and arranger creating music that explores bold and vivid textures. He holds a particular fascination with electroacoustic music and incorporating elements of the natural world into his work. He is a co-founder of Cmntx Records and a member of the multimedia collective, ’the present kairos.’

Dan has received awards, grants, and recognition from Du Vert à L'Infini Festival, RED NOTE New Music Festival, Hot Air Music Festival, Fire Island National Seashore, Sō Percussion Summer Institute, Fresh Inc Festival, The Ear Competition, Amherst College, New York University, and the University of South Carolina Spark Laboratory. Dan is originally from Ann Arbor, MI and is currently based in Western Massachusetts. danlanga.com

Anna Orchid is a composer, guitarist, vocalist, and producer from Nashville, Tennessee. Her work heavily focuses on forward-thinking combinations of metal, dance, industrial, ambient, horror, and classical music. She also plays in the bands Tom Violence and Gender: War Machine. annaorchid.bandcamp

Meara O’Reilly is a composer and artist focusing on perception and new musical interfaces. Her Hockets for Two Voices EP was released on Cantaloupe in 2019. It was named in several year-end Best Of lists, including Art Forum, Bandcamp, and Second Inversion. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo reviewed the EP for Talkhouse, saying it “sends you, moves you, destroys you with beauty“. Her work has been presented at Bang on a Can, National Sawdust, Los Angeles' Walt Disney Hall, SF Davies Symphony Hall, The Bauhaus Dessau, and as part of Björk's world Biophilia tour. She is co-creator of the Rhythm Necklace app, a musical sequencer that uses two-dimensional geometry to create rhythm. Most recently, she wrote, performed, and recorded vocal arrangements for several tracks on the Fleet Foxes album, Shore. mearaoreilly.com

Kalia Vandever is a trombonist, composer, and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. She released her debut album, "In Bloom" in May, 2019 which features all of her original compositions written for quartet and duo with guitar. Kalia received her Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies at the Juilliard School in 2017. She has toured and performed internationally with her quartet, as well as a side-woman, performing with artists including Joel Ross, Maria Grand, Darcy James Argue's Secret Society and others. She has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Preservation Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, The Jazz Gallery, The Blue Whale, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, SMOKE Jazz Club, the Blue Note, and the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. She has also performed on Saturday Night Live with Demi Lovato and on Samantha Bee's Full Frontal with Lizzo. While performing regularly as a bandleader and side-woman, Kalia is also an active composer and arranger. She has been commissioned to write works for groups and individuals including Tesla Quartet, The Westerlies, Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim, and Hats & Heels Duo. kaliavandever.com

Guest artist Shahzad Ismaily was born in the States to Pakistani parents who emigrated here just before his birth. He grew in a bicultural household, always following a multitude of paths and perusals. He is mostly self-taught as a musician, composer, recording engineer, and producer. He primarily plays electric bass, drums, percussion, guitar, synthesizers, and all manner of sound-makers procured in life’s travels. He has recorded and performed with a diverse crew of artMakers, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Beth Orton, Colin Stetson, Ben Frost, Bonnie Prince Billy, Damien Rice, Jolie Holland, JFDR, Secret Chiefs 3, Sam Amidon, further and further. He has been an integral member of festival/residency/collective experiences such as the People Festival (the brainchild of Bon Iver, The National, and the Michelberger), the Eau Claires festival, the Moers Festival. He has done work for dance and theater pieces, such as the film Frozen River (Oscar-nominated and Sundance award-winning), Inkboat (a butoh crew from California/Switzerland), and visual artist Laleh Khorramian. This year alone, he’ll teach in residence at BANFF, the Oklahoma Center for Contemporary Arts, the Monheim Triennale, and very happily, the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Currently based in Brooklyn and working out of the recording studio collective he founded and created, Figure 8 Recording, he has studied music extensively in Pakistan, India, Turkey, Mexico, Chile, Japan, Indonesia, Morocco, and Iceland.

Sonya Belaya is a first generation Russian-American pianist, singer, composer, and improviser, who divides her time between Michigan and New York. Committed to multiplicity, she is invested in vulnerable art and the development of strong, personal collaborations. Her work centers around the integration of womxn’s trauma as musical narrative, with a focus on storytelling as a vehicle for social change. She is a 2020-2021 Resident Artist at Roulette Intermedium. Sonya’s lead project is Dacha, a septet flowing freely through influences of creative music, jazz, folk, and contemporary music. The ensemble seeks to preserve and re-contextualize the ancestral memories of Russian folk traditions. Dacha was born out of a necessity to find a sense of home and belonging when Belaya’s mother went missing in 2014. Belaya has recorded two albums with Dacha: Songs My Mother Taught Me, and Dacha: Live at Roulette.

Theo Baer (aka iT Boy) is a Brooklyn-based composer and performer. His work is the result of a diverse musical upbringing and journey towards emotional healing as a black and trans artist. These compositions illustrate an intimate and vulnerable narrative channeled through the manipulation of tape loops, synthesizers, keyboards, and other, electronic voices.

Arone Dyer is a musician, composer & founding member of duos Buke and Gase & Mistresses, the Creator & Director of Dronechoir, a project which examines social dis/comfort through long-durational choral performance, and musical collaborator with an extensive resume of appearances. www.aronedyer.com

Douglas Hertz (b. 1993) is a composer, percussionist, producer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY who through sound, seeks to investigate experiences ranging from the personal to universal and from the physical to the spiritual. Through his work, he aims to connect with audiences in a way that helps them better understand themselves, one another, and the world they inhabit.

His work has appeared on programs presented by the GAIDA Festival (Lithuania), nienteForte Festival, Midwest Composers Symposium, Nief Norf Summer Festival, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, Periapsis Music and Dance, and the Deer Valley Music Festival and has been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble Dal Niente, Wet Ink Ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, American Symphony Orchestra, University of Michigan Philharmonia Orchestra, Vanguard Reed Quintet, Up/Down Percussion Quartet, BrassTaps Duo, Portland Percussion Group, and Front Porch Ensemble, among others.

Hertz is an avid collaborator and constantly seeks ways of broadening the context of his work beyond the concert hall. This has led him to regularly collaborate with choreographers, including Janice Rosario and Al Evangelista, and visual and performance artists including Call Your Mom and Lizzy Chiappini. Hertz additionally produces electronic music under the name Rare Forms, which serves as a vehicle for collaborative composition and recording projects with instrumentalists of all stripes.

Hertz completed his undergraduate degree at Bard College and earned a masters degree in music composition from the University of Michigan. His past teachers have included Kristin Kuster, Evan Chambers, Bright Sheng, George Tsontakis, Joan Tower, Kyle Gann, and Janet Weir. As a committed educator, Hertz teaches music theory and composition at the Thurnauer School of Music in Tenafly, NJ, at the Walden School Young Musicians Program in Dublin, NH, and serves as a Teaching Artist Associate in the New York Philharmonic Very Young Composers Program.

Aaron Israel Levin writes music that is guided by the emotional dynamism of storytelling and drama. He draws from a variety of musical and non-musical influences – including film, theater, and performance art – to create compositions that are both personal and wide-ranging. Aaron’s music has been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, Bent Frequency Duo, the Chelsea Symphony, Fifth House Ensemble, loadbang, the Yale Philharmonia, mezzo-sopranos Kayleigh Butcher and Lisa Neher, and percussionists Dmitrii Nilov and Sam Um.

Passionate about collaboration, Aaron frequently works with artists in theater, dance, and film, including playwright Christopher Gabriel Nuñez, choreographer Celeste Miller, and filmmaker Harris Gurney. In 2019, Aaron was selected to take part in the Underwood New Music Readings with the American Composers Orchestra under conductor Ludovic Morlot, and was subsequently awarded their Audience Choice Commission. His music has been heard across the country at Spectrum (NYC), Constellation (Chicago), New Music Gathering 2020, and the Bowdoin, Fresh Inc., Oregon Bach, and Source Song festivals. In 2021, Aaron will attend the composition program at the Aspen Music Festival under Stephen Hartke and Chris Theofanidis. Additionally, he was recently selected to partake in the Red Note New Music Festival, the New Amsterdam Records Composers Lab, and he was also the recipient of the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, Aaron is a graduate of Grinnell College (B.A.) where he studied with Eric McIntyre and John Rommereim, and the Yale School of Music (M.M.) where his teachers included Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, David Lang, Hannah Lash, and Chris Theofanidis. He is currently pursuing his D.M.A. at the University of Southern California. For more information, visit aaronisraellevin.com.

Melody McKiver’s musical work integrates electronics with Western classical music to shape a new genre of Anishinaabe compositions. Their debut EP Reckoning was nominated for an Indigenous Music Award, and they were a participant in the Banff Centre for the Arts’ inaugural Indigenous Classical Music Gathering. A frequent performer across Turtle Island, Melody has performed at the National Arts Centre, Luminato Festival, Vancouver’s Western Front, and the Toronto International Film Festival. They have shared stages with Polaris Prize winners Lido Pimienta, Tanya Tagaq, and Jeremy Dutcher, and performed with acclaimed filmmaker and musician Alanis Obomsawin. As a composer, Melody was commissioned by Soundstreams and Jumblies Theatre to write a string quartet responding to Steve Reich’s Different Trains, drawing on interviews conducted with local elders. Melody was invited to the Berlinale Talents Sound Studio as a music and composition mentor for the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. They also re-imagined Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring through an Anishinaabeg lens alongside choreographer Brian Solomon. A member of Lac Seul First Nation, Melody is also employed as a youth worker in Sioux Lookout (Treaty #3, Northwestern Ontario, Canada), providing mental health and cultural support to First Nations students. Upcoming projects include a song and music video premiering on Amplify, a new APTN show that explores musicians’ creative processes, and a full-length album in 2021.

William Tyler is a guitarist and composer who has made a number of acclaimed albums under his own name of exploratory instrumental music fusing the boundaries between Americana, New Classical, and New Age. He is a native of Nashville, Tennessee and a long-time sideman and session player. He recently completed his first feature film score for Kelly Reichardt's 'First Cow'."

Holland Andrews is an American vocalist, composer, improviser, and performance artist whose work is based on emotionality in its many forms. In their work, Andrews focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build soundscapes encompassing both catharsis and the interplay between dissonance and resonance to tell stories of the interior worlds of humanity. Frequently highlighting themes surrounding vulnerability and healing, Andrews arranges music with voice and clarinet, harnessing the innate qualities of these instruments’ power and elegance to serve as a vessel for these themes. As a vocalist, their influences stem from a dynamic range of musical stylings including contemporary opera, free jazz, musical theater, as well as ambient, drone, and noise music. In addition to creating solo work, Andrews develops and performs the soundscapes for dance, theater, and film, and whose work is still toured nationally and internationally. Andrews has gained recognition from publications such as The New York Times, Uncut Magazine, Electronic Sound, NPR, Le Monde, and more. Holland Andrews is currently based in New York City. Andrews also performs solo music under the stage name Like A Villain.

Kyle Brenn is a New York City-based composer, drummer/percussionist, actor, music director, and copyist whose work spans contemporary music, theatre, and jazz/popular styles, often existing between them. As a creator, he is committed to navigating nuanced explorations of emotion through rigorously authentic yet sophisticated formal architectures centering process, grooves, and gesture. He holds a B.M. in Music Theory & Composition from NYU Steinhardt, where he studied with Michael Gordon, and spent his final year developing an hour-long chamber theatre piece the shape of a child. Other recent works include chamber music for various ensembles including Bearthoven and Cisum Percussion, short film scores, indie-art songs, and two EPs with jazz fusion outlet C3. He has contributed as music director and orchestrator to new imaginings of The Wizard of Oz and jane eyre at Playwrights Horizons Theater School. As a professional actor, he has performed on Broadway, at Lincoln Center, and at various other New York venues. www.kylebrenn.com

"Oliver Dubon’s music takes inspiration from such sources as modernist literature, philosophy, and the rural countryside and has been performed at the Atlantic and highSCORE Music Festivals. His work includes Truth, a seven-movement song cycle setting texts from major modern philosophical works written as a part of the Pomona College Humanities Studio’s 2019/20 series on “Post/Truth,” and to its beginning to its end, a chamber orchestra work which he composed and conducted with an ad-hoc orchestra of members from the Pomona College Orchestra and Jazz Band. In 2020, Oliver was the recipient of a Fulbright Grant to Estonia to study with the composer Toivo Tulev. Dubon’s primary teachers include composer Tom Flaherty and conductor Eric Lindholm."

inti figgis-vizueta (b. 1993) is a New York-based composer whose music focuses on combinations of various notational schemata, disparate and overlaid sonic plans, and collaborative unlearning of dominant vernaculars. She often writes magically real musics through the lens of personal identities, braiding a childhood of overlapping immigrant communities and Black-founded Freedom schools—in Chocolate City (DC)—with Andean heritage and a deep connection to the land. Reviewers say her music constantly toes the line between "all turbulence" and "quietly focused" (National Sawdust Log).

inti has been commissioned by JACK Quartet, Crash Ensemble, National Sawdust, Music from Copland House, Amanda Gookin’s Forward Music Project, and cellist Andrew Yee, among others. Her music has been performed at the Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Ecstatic Music Festival, Spoleto Festival, Seattle Symphony’s Contemporary Music Marathon, and the New Latin Wave Festival. She has collaborated with artists such as violinist Jennifer Koh, Spektral Quartet, Wild Up, Alarm Will Sound, Face the Music, and clarinetist Gleb Kanasevich as well as been featured by organizations such as American Composer’s Orchestra, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Mizzou New Music, and Montpelier Chamber Orchestra.

Her advocacy on access and education includes work with Luna Lab, Boulanger Initiative, New Music Gathering, and the International Contemporary Ensemble as well as articles for publications like American Composer’s Forum and Sound American. She curates for Score Follower, an online archive championing universal access to contemporary musics, with a focus on finding and featuring queer and poc artists. She gives regular lectures on her music, most recently at the Peabody Institute, Columbia University, and UC Boulder.

Audrey Harrer is a composer/vocalist/harpist whose work is a blend of melodic wordplay, detailed arrangements, and processed instruments. She collaborates with chamber groups, experiments with music technologists, and rethinks the concert experience. Audrey cares about process, community, and the arts as a means to create connection.

Based in Los Angeles, Harrer grew up in rural Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. She moved to Boston to study music composition and voice at Berklee College of Music, subsequently adopting the harp as a creative tool for self-accompaniment and sonic exploration. She has written pieces for a variety of organizations including the Cambridge Philharmonic, Peabody Essex Museum, and the Maine International Film Festival, and she has collaborated with ensembles such as Verdant Vibes and Hub New Music. Harrer was recently an artist-in-residence at Boston Center for the Arts where she created a multi-sensory musical installation for the Mills Gallery called Lavender. She performs nationally with her electroacoustic harp and loop pedal in environments as varied as rock clubs, museums, DIY venues, and recital halls. Her self-released album Alphabet Rain received critical praise, and she is currently in the final stages of production for her follow-up LP titled Memory Banks.

David Leon is a Cuban-American saxophonist, woodwinds player, and composer/improviser living in Brooklyn, New York.

His diverse musical output is pervaded by the exploration of nuance: in timbre by creatively manipulating saxophone technique, in pitch by tampering with equal temperament and employing microtonality, and in texture possibility through orchestration and improvisation. As the winner of the 2017 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer’s Award, David debuted a new quartet at the Newport Jazz Festival in August of that year. In November 2018, he performed alongside pianist Kris Davis as part of The Jazz Gallery’s Mentoring Series.

David plans to release his debut record as a leader Aire De Agua in Fall 2021. His other solo endeavors include the Current Obsession series - which documents improvisations with current collaborators, David Leon Trio; the co-led project Sound Underground, and various improvised configurations. An active sideperson, David has collaborated with artists including Ingrid Laubrock, Nick Dunston, Kris Davis, Justin Vernon, Brian Lynch, Adam O’Farrill, Brandon Seabrook, Kate Gentile, Chris Pitsiokos, Arturo O’Farrill, Tomas Fujiwara, Lesley Mok, Michael Formanek, Matt Mitchell, Henry Fraser, Michael Attias, Tom Rainey, and others.

Lesley Mok is a drummer, composer, and improviser who continually finds herself among Brooklyn’s most respected musicians and experimentalists. Interested in the ways social conditions shape our beings, Lesley’s work focuses on transposing, augmenting, and overacting humanness to explore ideas about normalcy, alienness, and privilege. Performing with artists such as Jen Shyu, Cory Smythe, and Tomeka Reid, Lesley has honed a unique voice as a drummer and percussionist by employing a dynamic range of timbres and orchestrations. Her most recent work, she smashed the enclosure, is a trans media work for film, music, and dance that tells stories of the dispossessed and the way wild and manic dreams unfold when we compromise our identities. Lesley received her undergraduate and master's degree at Berklee College of Music in Contemporary Performance. She is an alumni of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute and the Banff Workshop for Jazz & Creative Music. She has studied and been mentored by Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey, Henry Threadgill, Billy Hart, Danilo Perez, and Terri Lyne Carrington.

Leah Ofman is a bicoastal musician from San Francisco, usually based in New York. She sings, composes, orchestrates, and talks a lot. Leah is passionate about vocal music, and often yells at people (also called lecturing) about writing for the voice. An avid performer, Leah sings as a soloist as well as a choral singer. She is a member of C4: the Choral Composer-Conductor Collective and was previously a member of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, where her love of music first began. She holds a Bachelor of Music from New York University in Music Theory and Composition, and has studied with Caroline Shaw, Michele Merlet, and Justin Dello Joio.

Leah draws inspiration from the voice and all its capabilities in her music, regardless of instrumentation. She weaves together rhythms and inflections of speech, explorations of timbre, strange noises, and moments of unexpected beauty together in each of her pieces.

She has worked as an orchestrator for Gallatin Theater Troupe’s Uncharted Cabaret 2020, and has studied orchestration with Michele Merlet at L’ecole Normale Alfred Cortot in Paris, France.

As a consultant on vocal scores and artistic projects, Leah “dives into [complex concepts] with fervor, processing them and troubleshooting ... with clarity and charm,” according to Sara Lydia Anne Banks. Projects that she has consulted on include “Etudes of Vulnerability,” a conceptual piece exploring authenticity and vulnerability in performance, and an upcoming project which delves into the experiences of camerapeople in the face of erotic performance.

Leah is a big music theory and french music nerd, and when she’s not composing or singing, she can be found hiking, doing yoga, dancing in her room, reading excessively, listening to podcasts excessively, eating excessive amounts of eggs, or excessively laughing at something that’s probably not that funny.

David John Roche has composed pieces for vacuum cleaners and orchestra, epic planetarium shows, customised Dutch street organs, rock bands, video games, films, theatre shows, international orchestras, and anything beyond and in between. His music tends to inhabit one of two worlds. It is either celebratory and bright, consciously in opposition to the world in which it was written, or manic, detailed, and violent in response to the poverty and politics of our time. Roche’s compositions have been broadcast, televised, written about, and performed internationally to millions of people. He is the recipient of over 30 academic and professional awards.

Composer/performer Kristina Dutton works in a wide range of musical settings, moving freely from more traditional concert settings to interdisciplinary work. Her current compositional focus is in film, dance, and live multimedia performance events. In recent years, her work has followed a path inspired by a life-long fascination with science and the natural world. Her current projects include Fury, an immersive concert experience fusing the music of indie pop band YASSOU + Kristina Dutton with dance performed by principals from two world class ballet companies, and Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and Ice Hours, a collaboration with National Geographic photographer Camille Seaman and film artist Kim Miskowicz. She has performed at Chicago's Symphony Center, The MCA, BAMFA, The Pritzker Pavilion, The David Letterman Show, and Disney Hall. She has recorded and performed with the likes of Glen Hansard, Peter Bjorn and John, The Autumn Defense, American Football, members of Tortoise, Roscoe Mitchell, and Helado Negro. Recent awards include New Music USA, The Zellerbach Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation, The Precipice Fund, The Intermusic Musical Grant Program, The San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music Fund, and The Fleishhacker Family Foundation.

Jan Esbra is a guitarist and composer based out of New York City. He has recorded and performed with Becca Stevens, Jade Collective, Catey Esler, Bird Lite, Trace and Eva Gertz. In 2016 Jan released an album entitled "Clarity" with his band Jade Collective - a collaborative project alongside vocalist and songwriter Catey Esler. Their EP "For a Place And a Time" will be released in 2020. Jan is a faculty member at Musicambia and holds a BA in Jazz Composition & Music Business from Berklee College of Music.

deVon Russell Gray’s music reflects equal reverence for Eric B. & Rakim, Mingus, and Bartók. Factor in true love for contemporary poetry, Afrofuturism, astrophysics, Sci Fi animated series, cooking, libations, and other Renaissance activities, and a picture of Gray begins to come into view. A self-proclaimed slave to his sense of aesthetics, he envisions a world in which socially constructed divisions fade into oblivion and where concert offerings seamlessly program twentieth century modernists alongside spiritual jazz and free improvisation creators, adjacent to electronic music and progressive hip hop producers.

Gray is a polyglot organically fusing contemporary classical, jazz, hip hop, global, and popular music performance practices and styles. Gray’s music takes listeners on an outermost and deeply resonant journey. He approaches newness with a refreshing and enlightening sense of mystery, wonder, and beauty.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Raquel Acevedo Klein is an active conductor, vocalist, instrumentalist and visual artist. She is currently a touring vocalist with Anthony Braxton for his retrospective Braxton75 concert season. She conducts for the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus. She has premiered works by Philip Glass, John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Paola Prestini, Bryce Dessner, Missy Mazzoli, Shara Nova, and Aleksandra Vrebalov, to name a few. Raquel has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Celebrate Brooklyn!, National Sawdust and elsewhere. She has recorded and performed with the likes of Glen Hansard, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The National, Grizzly Bear, The Knights, NY Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble and Mariinsky Orchestra among others

Yaz Lancaster (they/them/theirs) is a performer-composer and poet. They are primarily interested in the performance of new/contemporary and underperformed works, collaboration, and the representation of minorities in art. Yaz performs in a wide variety of settings as a violinist and steel pannist, with occasional appearances as a vocalist. Their work can be described as "concentrated" and "empirical," as it almost always illuminates, reckons with, and/or pilots a specific influence like natural phenomena, history and poetics, or identity politics. They are grateful for opportunities to work with artists including Wadada Leo Smith, Andy Akiho, the National Sawdust Ensemble, Hypercube, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Sō Percussion and George Lewis, and to perform with groups like the US-based Quintilia ensemble, and the Skiffle Steel Orchestra based in San Fernando, Trinidad. Yaz loves contemporary art museums/history, bubble tea, and animated tv-shows.

Rachel Mangold plays the bass, composes experimentally, writes text, leads collective composition workshops, and collaborates with artists in other mediums. Guided by questions, she is curious about performance as a medium, using situation and time as compositional elements. Her work has been featured on the piano+ series, in the international game magazine Synzine, and on the Sounds Unexpected podcast. She performs regularly with the experimental ensemble LCollective, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, Rhymes with Opera, and performs at/produces house concerts as often as she can. As a cross-arts collaborator, she is currently developing a feminist sound and theater piece with actor Rachel Clausen.

As a collective composition workshop leader, she facilitates the process of making music with a group of people, starting from a seed of an idea and gradually grown into a full work. She has experienced and led this transformative process in workshops across the U.S. in New York City, East Hampton, Baltimore, Portland, Grand Rapids, as well as internationally in the U.K. and Argentina. She collaborates frequently with Jill Collier, founder of Creative Connections based in Grand Rapids, MI.

She holds a Bachelor’s in Double Bass Performance from Peabody Conservatory, and a Master’s in Creative Leadership from Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She is also a Teaching Artist with the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program.

Booker Stardrum is a Los Angeles-based performer-composer. His recent compositions are sculptural, involving the dense layering of instruments, a focus on pan-tonality and an intuitive approach to rhythm. Booker’s sophomore solo release ‘Temporary etc.’ (NNA, 2018) is a highly personal amalgamation of electro-acoustics, minimalism, ambient, jazz, and contemporary experimental electronic music that The Wire said “further solidifies Stardrum’s position as one of America’s most intriguing composers.” Using integrative sampler technology, Booker’s live solo set seamlessly synthesizes acoustic and electronic sounds, combining drums, cymbals, and bells with deconstructed and reimagined recorded samples of horn instruments, voice, synthesizers, and other collected sonic ephemera.

Aside from his solo practice, Booker has dedicated himself to the art of percussion across multiple platforms, having recorded and performed with rock-based groups like Cloud Becomes Your Hand, Landlady, Lee Ranaldo, and Weyes Blood, in addition to more experimental and free improvisation collaborations with Nels Cline, VaVatican, and many more.

Booker has toured in the US, Europe, Asia, and South America and has performed at such festivals as Meltdown (U.K.), Brighton (U.K), Rewire (NL), Le Guess Who (NL), Festival Bo:m (ROK), Hopscotch (US) and Ecstatic Music (US). His discography includes solo and collaborative releases on independent labels such as NNA Tapes, Northern Spy Records, Mexican Summer, Saddle Creek, Prom Night Records and Home Tapes.

Kyle Scott Wilson is an Emmy nominated composer, songwriter, singer, and multi-instrumentalist currently based in Brooklyn NY, and originally from New Mexico. An alumnus of Interlochen Arts Academy, NOLS, and Gallatin School of Individualized Study, Kyle found his first musical niches in the worlds of orchestral pop and indie as the songwriting front person of the critically acclaimed band Milagres. Milagres has released albums and toured internationally, performing at many major festivals, on television and radio along the way.

More recently, Kyle has been focused on creating music and sound for multimedia and film. He has collaborated with video journalists at The New York Times, The Guardian, TIME, and The Atlantic, and has created scores for feature films produced by Netflix, PBS, and HBO. He has scored multiple award-winning indie narrative shorts, collaborated on art installations and virtual reality experiences, been a guest educator at NYU's Tisch Film School, and his work has been heard at the Guggenheim museum in New York.

When he’s not furiously writing music or walking around in Brooklyn trying to figure out how to solve a musical problem, Kyle spends most of his free time outdoors. An avid (though amateur) mountaineer and surfer, Kyle’s relationship to the natural world is fundamental to his output as an artist. He is currently at work on his first solo release

Alexander J. Chadwell is a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-born and raised, New York City-based composer of genre-fluid music. Exposed to a vast array musical styles from a young age, his music is incapable of being categorized into traditional genre boundaries. He often works at the intersection of technology and acoustic instruments. An advocate for universal arts education and a believer in the power of arts and culture to be used to promote and facilitate equitable community development, Chadwell is an active teaching artist in New York City schools and after-school programs. He's worked with organizations such as Brooklyn Arts Council, St. Nicks Alliance, the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program, Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the Center for Arts Education, and Highbridge Voices.

Michael Lanci is a composer and educator currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. His music is viscerally engaging and stylistically diverse, drawing from a wide range of influences. Michael short comedic chamber opera Admissions, written in collaboration with librettist Kim Davies as part of the American Opera Initiative program with the Washington National Opera, was recently premiered at the Kennedy Center in January 2020. He was also a finalist for the 2018-19, Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation Competition that included the commissioning and premiere of his first opera Crude Capital, based on an original libretto by Ajax Phillips. Michael is currently working on a variety of projects exploring different musical mediums, while also participating in the Composers & the Voice Fellowship with The American Opera Project based in NYC.

Gemma Peacocke is a New Zealand-born, Brooklyn-based composer. She has a particular interest in cross-art form and multimedia projects. Her first album, Waves & Lines, which sets poems by Afghan women, was released on New Amsterdam in March 2019. Gemma is co-founder of the Kinds of Kings composer collective which is focussed on amplifying and advocating for underheard voices and producing immersive and wondrous concerts. Gemma’s music has been performed and commissioned by the Rochester Philharmonic, PUBLIQuartet, cellist Nick Photinos, Third Coast Percussion, Rubiks Collective, ~Nois saxophone quartet, the Furies, and Alarm Will Sound.

“Wieland’s visceral compositions send chills up your spine.” — The Road to Sound

Cassie Wieland is a composer of instrumental, vocal, and electroacoustic music. She delves into intimate subject matters of human connection, interaction, and expression in various ways throughout her work, ranging from exploration of found text to forming connections between natural phenomena and everyday life. Wieland masterfully experiments with timbre and texture, specifically through exploring intimate and fragile sounds, to achieve the “hand-made” sound she is often looking for: imperfect, but intentional. She is currently working in Brooklyn as a freelance composer and as a label assistant for Cantaloupe Music.

Classically trained pianist and composer Martin Zamorano is a Spanish musician based in Hamburg who exists between genres and influences like jazz, classical music, hip hop or rock. His music combines the freshness of rhythm and melody from popular music with polyphonic techniques and advanced harmonies. His classical compositions have been performed in Hamburg's Laeiszhalle, at the Opera Leipzig and at several festivals in Oxford, Madrid, Hamburg and Cologne. He often performs as a pianist, and his repertoire includes, among classical works, his own compositions and sets of improvisation. As an interpreter he focuses on the works of uncelebrated and female composers, such as Clara Schumann, Theodor Kirchner, Mompou and Morfydd Llwyn Owen.

Noah is a composer whose work ties together diverse threads. He draws from jazz, contemporary classical, and a collection of old soul and psychedelia records as a songwriter, producer, and composer. He is based in New York, attends school in Northern California, and is temporarily moving to Berlin in June.

Recently, Noah has performed in an experimental noise ensemble for local radio (KZSU), various chamber and orchestral groups, and a range of new music groups on guitar, synth, violin, and vocals. Earlier this year, Noah’s first string quartet was performed by the Puck Quartet. He is currently writing a percussion piece to be performed later this year.

Noah studied violin at LaGuardia High School, a performing arts school tucked behind Lincoln Center. He currently is a student of composition at Stanford University, mentoring with Francois Rose and Eoin Callery at CCRMA. Noah loves arable land, Bach, black coffee, Billie Holiday, anything with ginger, John Luther Adams, slightly out-of-tune pianos, and lakes.

Tei Blow is a media designer and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. Tei’s work incorporates photography, video, and sound culled from found materials and mass media alongside live instrumentation. He performs music as Frustrator on Enemies List Recordings and is one half of Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble. He has performed and designed for The Laboratory of Dmitry Krymov, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jodi Melnick, Big Dance Theater, David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group. Tei’s work has been featured at Hartford Stage, Dance Theater Workshop, PS122/PSNY, Lincoln Center Festival, The Kitchen, BAM, The Public Theater, The Broad Stage, MCA Chicago, MFA Boston, Kate Werble Gallery, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Roundabout, The Wadsworth Atheneum, and at theaters around the world. He is the recipient of a 2015 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Sound Design for David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group’s “I Understand Everything Better,”. Tei is one half of Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble, whose ongoing multipart series “The Art of Luv” is a recipient of the Creative Capital and Franklin Furnace Awards. Tei is currently a Baryshnikov Arts Center Cage/Cunningham fellow.

“A musical impressionist and supreme colorist” (Hot House Magazine) aptly characterizes the Japanese-born composer Asuka Kakitani. Her deep love for nature and animals inspires Kakitani to transform her imagination into epic musical stories that DownBeat Magazine described as brimming with “sumptuous positivity and organic flow.”

She is the founder of the 18-piece ensemble Asuka Kakitani Jazz Orchestra, and their first recording Bloom has been featured on the international radio program PRI’s The World, acknowledged as one of the best debut albums of the year by DownBeat Magazine Critics’ Poll and NPR Music Jazz Critics’ Poll, and All About Jazz called it “absolutely superb.”

Kakitani has been the recipient of grants and awards from Jerome Fund for New Music from the American Composers Forum, Brooklyn Arts Council, American Music Center, and BMI Charlie Parker Award. After she relocated to Minnesota from Brooklyn, NY, she co-founded Twin Cities Jazz Composers’ Workshop, which aims to foster creative and forward-looking composition for modern jazz orchestra in the Twin Cities area.

Aeryn Jade Santillan (she/her) is a composer, guitarist, and bassist whose work is heavily influenced by the DIY punk scene and actively aims to blur the lines between band/ensemble and song/composition.

Aeryn performs bass and vocals in Massa Nera, an experimental screamo quartet who’s toured in the USA, Canada, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan. Along with composer/guitarist Andrew Noseworthy, she co-founded this place is actually the worst, an experimental mathcore duo, and post-genre DIY label, people | places | records. She’s been commissioned by 45th Parallel Universe, Bang on a Can, Del Sol String Quartet, Gabriela Lena Frank’s Creative Academy of Music, ~Nois, percussionist Adam Groh, and more.

Aeryn holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Columbia College Chicago and a Master of Music in Theory and Composition degree from New York University. Previous mentors include Gabriela Lena Frank, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, Marcos Balter, David Reminick, Drew Baker, and Ilya Levinson. Aeryn has been a fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Toronto Creative Music Lab, and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music.

When she’s not writing music and touring with her bands, she works as an Adjunct Professor at NYU, the Sales and Marketing Assistant at Cantaloupe Music/Bang on a Can, and freelance production gigs around NYC. She enjoys skateboarding, D&D, video games, and vegan junk food. She lives in Jersey City, NJ with her partner and two cats.

Michael R. Oldham (b. 1989 Braidwood, IL) is a composer and pianist who weaves artwork, story, and imagination into his work. Whether experimenting with looping videos on Instagram as the "parts" of a piece that anyone can play (Music In Segments - 2018), utilizing repeating gif images of old silent films as inspiration for a twelve-movement work (Music In Gifs - 2019), or translating great works of art into music (The Egon Schiele Pieces - upcoming), Michael's thirst for unusual storytelling through music is never quenched.   

Continuing this trend, his work as musician-as-storyteller is ever-present in the albums, EPs, and singles he has self-released digitally. Recent albums include Three Vignettes (2017), which is a work of three movements with short stories for violin and piano, The Los Angeles Miseries (2016), which is a set of pieces for solo piano on perspectives attained while driving across America from Chicago to Los Angeles, Grand Delusions on a Small Scale (2015), which features early solo piano works, as well as Fantasies for Piano (2014), which is a six-movement dissection of some of his favorite songs by artists including Fiona Apple, Dirty Projectors, My Brightest Diamond, Andrew Bird, St. Vincent, and Sufjan Stevens.

Michael earned his Bachelor's degree in Film Scoring and Composition from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, and studied briefly at Philippos Nakas Conservatory in Athens, Greece. He keeps quite busy as a pianist in and around Chicago, including recent work as music director with Chicago's illustrious improv institution, Second City.

Lately, he has been planning the release of his latest album, In Select Theaters, which is a full-length album of 15 pieces for solo piano that includes the twelve-movement work, Music In Gifs. 

Trevor Van de Velde (b. 1998) is a multi-instrumentalist and composer currently based in Berkeley, CA.

Trevor’s works are designed to explore the intrinsic relationships formed by modern performance practice. Often utilizing found objects and electronics, Trevor aims to form an aspectual interface between performer, space, and source of sound.

His works have been premiered at Hertz Hall at the University of California Berkeley, Fresno State University, and the Center for New Music (SF).

Trevor is currently a student at the University of California, Berkeley pursuing both a Bachelor of Arts in Data Science as well as Music, studying composition primarily with Ken Ueno. Other mentors include Benjamin Boone and Franck Bedrossian. He is a recipient of the 2018 Nicola de Lorenzo Prize for Music Composition.

Alicia Walter is a performing composer and multimedia artist based in New York City. Known for her “adventurously off-kilter vocal delivery” (Noisey) and her idiosyncratic avant-pop stylings, she first gained notoriety for her band and moniker ‘Oshwa,’ a “finely controlled art-pop explosion" (Wired Magazine). Her 2016 Oshwa record, “I We You Me,” “launched [her] into a stratosphere of songwriting all her own” (Consequence of Sound), and she is currently composing, producing, and performing music under her own name.

Also a dancer, Alicia choreographs contemporary dance to her own music, performed by herself and a hand-picked team of dancers. In 2018, Alicia directed a “brilliantly effusive” (ThrdCoast) music video featuring the choreography for her song, “Cosmic Joke,” a work commissioned by ESOPUS Magazine.

Most recently, Alicia is thrilled to have performed as the featured soloist with the Pacific Northwest Ballet in the 2019 world premiere of Robyn Mineko Williams’s (Hubbard Street Dance) ballet, “The Trees The Trees,” with music composed by Kyle Vegter (Manual Cinema). Alicia sang text by poet Heather Christle accompanied by full orchestra and was choreographed by Williams.

Alicia is excited to perform and release all sorts of music in the near future, and, in the meantime, you can find her on the dance floor at most DJ haunts close to her home in Ridgewood, Queens.

Leslie Allison is an interdisciplinary composer and performer investigating somatic music and cyclical time. She is co-founder of the queer performance collective Tight Braid Group, and is currently a Master's candidate in Music Composition at Wesleyan University. Her piece Menstrual Notation was recently performed by Mivos Quartet, and her writings have been published by Ugly Duckling Presse, The Brooklyn Rail, and Block Magazine.

Ben Belinski, a native of Aspen, CO, and just recently educated in Middlebury, VT, and Oxford, England, is an artist who loves to sing, compose, produce digital sounds on computers, and bang on resonant objects of various shapes and sizes. Ben’s work as a composer challenges the traditional assumptions of music in contemporary social environments, while exploring new ways of playing and producing meaningful, popular sounds—all originating from a deep-rooted sense of curiosity and joy about our shared metaphysical reality. Not only a musician, Ben is also a poet, sculptor, dancer, comedian, and actor, and is dedicated to fostering interconnected and diverse communities of multi-disciplinary art around the world. A few of of Ben’s other personal interests include astronomy, comparative religious studies, the role of an individual to their community, philosophies of deconstruction, and postmodern environmentalism. Ben’s favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate.

Annalyse Clark is a young composer whose work encompasses ambient, neoclassical, noise, experimental and spoken word.

Adam Cuthbért (b. 1988) is a Detroit-born sound designer, controllerist, and composer. His work cross-breeds acoustic instruments and synthetic digital processes to create immersive sound environments, garnering notice from NPR, DJ Mag, and the San Francisco Chronicle, which finds it “hard to resist the vigor and inventiveness of his writing.” Cuthbért has collaborated with cutting-edge ensembles like Friction Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, Bang on a Can, and the GVSU New Music Ensemble, as well as electronic artists such as Todd Reynolds, Raz Mesinai, RETCON and Almamy. He performs on trumpet and electronic instruments with skullcap5050, I-VT, and kuuma, and is a regular collaborator with choreographer Maura Donohue (#tidesproject, zero...sixty at Roulette Intermedium). Cuthbért has created sound works for dance and theatre with inmixedcompany, The Asia Society, and New York Theatre Workshop. His recording discography includes artistic credits in the catalogs of Ghostly International, Cantaloupe Music, Innova Recordings, and people places records. Also active on the industry side, Cuthbért is Licensing Manager for the Grammy-winning label Cantaloupe Music, and together with Daniel Rhode he is co-founder of slashsound records. He lives in Brooklyn, NYC with his spouse, Rebecca.

Andy Herring is a composer, saxophonist, improviser, and arts leader whose work is driven by spontaneity, open-endedness, and purposeful discourse. Much of Andy’s work lies at the intersection between jazz and various other traditions, including protestant hymn singing, aleatory, or process music. His work has been presented by District New Music Coalition, StageFree New Music, MATA Jr. Festival, Dallas Winds, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, River City Big Band, and Linglestown Community Choir. Andy has studied composition and performing arts leadership & management at Shenandoah Conservatory. In November 2018, Andy collaborated with choreographer Aaron Tonaki to premiere suffocate/respirate as part of Shenandoah’s groundbreaking Student Performance Week. His primary teachers include Jonathan Newman and David T. Little (composition), Alan Baylock (jazz arranging), Timothy Roberts, Luis Hernandez, and Tom Strohman (saxophone). After graduation, Andy plans to return to his hometown of Harrisburg, PA to work in an administrative role with Central Pennsylvania Friends of Jazz.

Jonathan Russ writes music for people to feel things to. His music has been performed throughout North America and Europe. Jonathan is a founding member of the ICEBERG New Music composers' collective, and is Composer-In-Residence with the American Chamber Ensemble and the Blueshift Ensemble. He has worked with many of today's most exciting performers including ekmeles, Mivos Quartet, loadbang, Locrian Chamber Players, Pro Coro Canada, ShoutHouse, Marimolin, clarinetist Stanley Drucker (NY Philharmonic), and pianists Marilyn Lehman and Jenny Lin. Upcoming projects include a book of piano miniatures, an opera about a hermetic young woman, and an indie rock EP. A lifelong New Yorker, Jonathan currently lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Rohan Chander is a composer, pianist, and tabla player based in New York. His work often concerns the relationship between processual elements and cognition, combining localized musical gestures evocative of popular music with the structural sensibilities of contemporary concert music. As a performer, Rohan is an award winning jazz pianist and founding member of jazz fusion collective C3. He is also active as a tabla player, performing hindustani classical music in addition to western improv in the project Tablature with guitarist and composer Sebastian Zel. Rohan also has been executive director of the Pulsing and Shaking music festival and co-founder of Manhattan based composer collective SPHERES. His teachers have included Justin Dello Joio (composition), Robert Honstein (composition), Alan Broadbent (piano), Alan Ferber (composition), Ehren Hanson (tabla), and Anindo Chatterjee (tabla).

DeLane is a percussionist and composer based in Milwaukee, WI. His interests in new music have led him to collaborate with many ensembles, composers, and audiences from around the world. DeLane’s compositions for dance have been performed with Li Chiao-Ping Dance, Dance Now! Miami, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Utah Valley University, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. He is currently serving on the percussion faculty at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, where he shares the joys of drumming with Milwaukee’s youth.

Jaren Feeley is an Oakland-based musician-composer. Jaren's recent work is focused on storytelling: how can music complicate or empower narratives? what kind of temporary worlds can be built with sound? Also: how far can I bicycle with 80 pounds of music equipment? Jaren has contributed music and sound to recent productions at Cutting Ball Theater, Ragged Wing Ensemble,and Custom Made Theater. You might find him performing in surprising outdoor places. More at jarenfeeley.com

Alex Groves is a British composer working across both acoustic and electronic music, often combining live instrumentalists and singers with richly-textured electronics to create hypnotic and all-enveloping soundworlds.

He's currently Composer-in-Residence at Handel & Hendrix in London and also an Associate of the LSO Soundhub scheme. Recent pieces include solo works for Jack McNeill, Gabriella Swallow & Daniel Pioro through his concert series SOLO and larger scale works for the London Contemporary Orchestra and Crash Ensemble. This year sees the release of his debut EP - Curved Form (No. 4) - featuring pianist Eliza McCarthy performing the title track alongside a selection of remixes.

His music has been performed at the Royal Opera House, V&A, Union Chapel, Snape Maltings, National Theatre Studio, King's Place and Nonclassical, broadcast on NTS Radio, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 6 Music, and released on influential Icelandic label Bedroom Community.

Composer Scott Lee writes concert music infused with the visceral sounds of popular music. Lee has worked with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, Symphony in C, the JACK Quartet, yMusic, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Deviant Septet, chatterbird, ShoutHouse, and pop artist Ben Folds. Recent commissions include the Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music Festival, loadbang, the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society, and the Raleigh Civic Symphony.

Notable honors include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, winner of the Symphony In C Young Composer’s Competition, and the grand prize in the PARMA Student Composer Competition.

As a James B. Duke Fellow, Lee recently earned a PhD in Composition at Duke University, mentored by Scott Lindroth and Steve Jaffe. Lee is currently teaching at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as well as Duke University.

Hannah Rosa Schiller is a Chicago-based writer and musician — singer, music director, arranger, and composer — working to improve new music's accessibility. Her research interests include the role of "genre" in the creation and promotion of music, and how shifts in our language might increase new music's accessibility.

As one half of the electronic music duo Dada Life, Olof Cornéer has performed all over the world, and even received two Guinness World Records; one for the world's largest pillow fight and another for most people dressed up as bananas. What do you call that? They call it dadaism.

A hospitalization a few years ago made Olof Cornéer re-evaluate a lot in life and he realized he had neglected ideas about which music he wanted to create for too long. During treatment he started to write notated music.

With bare materials, often only one note at the time, Olof Cornéer tries to capture what he thinks is the essence, defying accustomed notions of what is simple or complex.

”White noise contains all music ever written. In a way it’s very complex. But if you listen to it, it’s simply noise. When something simple becomes complex enough it becomes simple again. I want to make music that is simple, like an indivisible point floating freely in a chaotic world”, he says.

Olof Cornéer creates electronic music - under the name Night Gestalt - using similar ideas.

Olof Cornéer also creates sound installations together with Martin Lübcke. In 2010 their piece Harvest - a huge gramophone plowing and playing the earth - received an honorary mention at Ars Electronica in the Sound Art category.

Jörgen Häll is a Swedish composer, sound artist and producer who studied in the northern part of Sweden for the post-modernist composers Jan Sandström and Fredrik Högberg. In 2015 Jörgen had musical identity crisis, concerning a reconciliation between his musical background in pop/rock and the studies in contemporary classical music. Emerging from it, he has put his focus on trusting his intuition, without any conscious thought to genres or external expectations.

Jörgen's music focus on texture and timbre and has a flowing character that often express both thickness and lucidity. He's had premieres all around the world and has worked with ensembles and orchestras such as Alter Ego (ITA), Arctic Sinfonietta (NOR), Ensemble MISE-EN (USA), Senzoku Gakuen Symphony Orchestra (JPN), Esbjerg Ensemble (DNK), Norrbotten NEO (SWE), Drottningholm Baroque Orchestra (SWE) and the Symphony Orchestra of NorrlandsOperan (SWE).

Nich Landrum is an active composer, multi-instrumentalist, bass-baritone, and electronic artist whose work focuses on navigating the world between punk, electronic, and contemporary idioms.  Recently, his works focus heavily on analog synthesizers, larger formal structures, and communicating a potent personal narrative through juxtaposition of experimentation and lyricism, as well as a strong commitment to collaboration. His works have been commissioned and performed by loadbang, Musica Nova Orchestra, North Coast Winds, and the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia.  Recent performances and honors include the Dean’s Prize in Orchestral Composition from Indiana University, First Prize in the 2017 Kuttner Quartet Competition, selection as composition fellow at the 2017 Red Note Music Festival, performances at the Society of Composers Inc. National Student Conference, and with the Indiana University New Music Ensemble and Indiana University Orchestra.  Nicholas has served as associate instructor at the renowned Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, and recently joined the faculty of Cleveland Institute of Music's Young Composers’ Program.

Ryan Lindveit is a composer whose music has been performed across the United States and abroad by Alarm Will Sound, “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, Orkest de Ereprijs, the USC Thornton Symphony, numerous university wind ensembles, the Donald Sinta Quartet, FearNoMusic, and the City of Tomorrow, among others. His music has received recognition from BMI, ASCAP, SCI, the American Modern Ensemble, the National Band Association, Tribeca New Music, and the Texas Music Educators Association. Ryan grew up in Texas and is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where he was selected as Salutatorian for the class of 2016 and named the Thornton School of Music's Outstanding Graduate. He is currently a master’s student at the Yale School of Music, where studies with Aaron Jay Kernis. Recent and upcoming projects include Mysterious Butterflies for chamber ensemble and eight voices, Like an Altar with 9,000 Robot Attendants commissioned by a consortium of 30 university wind ensembles organized by conductor H. Robert Reynolds, a commission for the Big 12 Band Directors Association, and pieces for chamber ensemble and orchestra to be premiered at the Aspen Music Festival in the summer of 2018.

Ana López-Reyes is a Mexican composer, producer, keyboardist and singer currently based in Boston. Interested in mixing acoustic and electronic sound sources, Ana recently released an EP that incorporates beats, synthesizers, a brass sextet and her voice. She has been involved in diverse music projects; from writing for chamber ensembles, to producing electronic tracks, to playing synthesizers. With her solo project Nnux, Ana has performed both in the US and Mexico. Her music has been performed in diverse venues and festivals, including Jordan Hall (Boston) and MUSLAB (Argentina/France/Mexico). Ana is currently finishing her studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

Sean O'Connell is a carpenter / composer / artist living and working in Oakland, CA. Depending on the weather he can can be found either writing strange progressions for the guitar, building furniture, accompanying carnatic vocalists on the tamboura, or wistfully walking through the woods.

Christopher Bell was born in Wilmington, Delaware. Having grown   up with two middle school music teachers for parents, he was involved in private lessons, and school ensembles from an early age. Entering his senior year of high school, Chris moved to Michigan to study composition at the Interlochen Arts Academy. During his time at Interlochen, Chris explored the intersection between  composition, songwriting, theatre, and dance. Currently studying composition, and theory at Vanderbilt University, Chris continues to work with artists from other mediums. This year he will be working with New Dialect, a Nashville-based modern dance company, on their “Third Voice” program for the second year. "Third Voice" is a research lab with the purpose of finding an organic collaborative voice between composer, and choreographer. 

Jasmine Lovell-Smith is a composer and soprano saxophonist from Wellington, New Zealand. Her musical interests include composing for improvisers and the intersection of jazz with folk and Western art music. Jasmine was based in New York, Connecticut and Mexico for several years, where she released two albums with her Brooklyn-based chamber jazz quintet ‘Towering Poppies,’ and completed a Masters degree at Wesleyan University studying with Paula Matthusen and Anthony Braxton. She has recently returned to Wellington to pursue a DMA in composition at the New Zealand School of Music.

Andrew Noseworthy is a Canadian composer, guitarist and arranger, whose work focuses on creating a place for underplayed musical voices. His music addresses the struggles of accepting or rejecting 'locality', while drawing from experiences of isolation within his hometown of Labrador West, the tight-knit arts commmunity of St John's, Newfoundland and the expansive scenes in New York City. He is a founding member the groups, “Transfer is Available”, “This Place is Actually the Worst”, and DIY label “people | places | records”; as well as a frequent collaborator of choreographer/dancer Angie Moon. Previous mentors include Michael Gordon and Andrew Staniland. Andrew is currently a PhD student in Music Composition at Western University, studying with David Myska and Paul Frehner.

Darian Thomas is an interdisciplinary artist. Cycling through various performing arts at a young age, including dance, ballet, painting, writing, and rapping, he found his love at the age of 11 in the violin. He has since performed in all the major venues in San Antonio as a chorister, violinist, soloist, rock band musician, and orchestral musician. He has also toured the US, England, and China. A highly active composer, Darian has had works for films, dance, and different instrumental ensembles commissioned and premiered. Highlights include having the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio premiere his string orchestra work Organic Genesis, and SA Artist Foundation Award Recipient Tamara Adira of Flamenco artist collective Arte y Pasión premiere his electro-acoustic piece Rumba | Water and Rock at multiple venues and concert halls around San Antonio. He has also worked extensively as an orchestrator for post-modern jukebox-esque band Sugar Skulls, and orchestral indie-rock band Deer Vibes. As a performer, Darian is currently touring with the Josh Abbott Band and involved in various bands/ensembles around Texas. He plays a mixture of experimental electric violin, contemporary or classical acoustic violin, synths, keys, guitar, and sings lead or backup vocals. A recent highlight was performing with Deer Vibes in an official SXSW showcase concert in 2016. He has also started an electronic duo by the name Saturn Skies, in which both musicians test the limits of their abilities as composers, songwriters, vocalists, and multi-instrumentalists. His most recent endeavor has been studying photography and videography with the assistance of local artists in San Antonio. He performed Tezcatlipoca months after starting his work in the visual art world, and more recently was commissioned to create video art for Arte y Pasion's performance during Luminaria in 2016.

Photo credit: Oscar Moreno.

Phong Tran is a Brooklyn-based composer, electronic musician, and visual artist. His work often explores the creation of large textures using a minimal source of materials. His electronic works are heavily inspired by the sound of early synthesizers and the noises and grinds of experimental electronics.

His work has been performed by the JACK Quartet (Torision), Bearthoven (Slices and Agar), Just Duet (Wood), and various other musicians and artists in Newfoundland and Labrador, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and New York. He was a semifinalist for the 2016 American Prize for Composition (Chamber Music division). He is also CEO and Co-founder of Transfer is Available, a multimedia collective based in Brooklyn. Phong holds a Master’s in Music Theory and Composition at New York University studying with Michael Gordon as well as a Bachelor’s in Music Composition from the University of Georgia, where he studied with Natalie Williams and Adrian Childs.

Interested in the possibilities of musical relationality amongst people, objects, and histories, Ben Zucker's work crosses and intentionally plays with genre and discipline, and has been performed by the Mivos Quartet, Apartment House, the New York Virtuoso Singers, Distractfold Ensemble, and Rinde Eckert. He was recognized as a "New Composer Talent" by the International Audio Branding Academy, and his work has won awards from the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, C4 Collective, San Francisco Choral Artists, and San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Additionally, he maintains an active career as a vocalist, trumpeter, pianist, and percussionist performing jazz, new music, and improvisations solo and with bands around the world, including solo albums on Not Art Records and Verz Imprint, deemed “a testament to the power of restraint and arrangement” (Decoder Magazine). Ben received a BA in music and critical theory at Wesleyan University, and recently completed postgraduate studies at Brunel University London with Jennifer Walshe and Christopher Fox. Currently, he resides in Chicago, where he has recently begun doctoral studies at Northwestern University.

Matthew Anderson is an Ohio-born, Brooklyn-based artist straddling the line between popular and art music. The past seven years have seen Anderson developing his own rhythmic and emotional language. Currently, he's interested in compositional integration (the demo recording as staff paper), metaphoric surrealism, spirituality, and the album as an art form. His current project is called Sparrow.

William Carson Graham is a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist of a variety of traditions. His music aims toward a specific and deliberate balance of integrity, interest, and familiarity. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, he has studied composition at Vanderbilt University and is now based in New York City.

Clee McCracken is a performer, composer, fashion designer, and collaborator. Clee is a maximalist at heart and his work frequently meditates on the queer body, repetition, and joy. All of his work is about clocks and time.

Nicole Murphy is an Australian composer whose work explores concepts of ambiguity, surprise and beauty, through contrasts of vast, spacious landscapes and unrelenting rhythmic chaos. Her works are often written as a response to external stimulus, collaborating frequently with writers, choreographers and fellow musicians.

Seth Olinsky is an American guitarist, singer, and composer who splits his time between Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, CA. After studying jazz performance and composition at Berklee College of Music, Seth first found success after moving to NYC as the guitarist, singer and founder of the experimental rock band Akron/Family. He has toured world wide collaborating with musicians from William Parker to Keiji Haino to Michael Gira, and has released records on Young God Records, Dead Oceans, and Lightning Records. His work also includes his rock n roll guitar shred project Cy Dune as well has multi-band orchestras Band Dialogue. His works have been performed at several festivals including Hopscotch Festival, Treefort Festival, Sled Island, and the Ecstatic Music Festival in NYC.

Jacob Taswell is adding his voice to the rapidly expanding space where pop and art music meet. Jacob’s recent work has focused on pushing the potential of electronics to alter ideas rooted in jazz piano playing and to realize a fleshed-out, immersive sound. He uses the term frozen jazz to describe his music, connoting a sense of groove and harmony informed by jazz, but a fixity due to absence of improvisation. Jacob currently lives and writes music in New Haven, Connecticut, and rock climbs in his free time.