Santiago Beis

Santiago Beis is an Uru-Brazilian composer, pianist, audio designer, producer, and artistic researcher. He has participated in new music festivals and residences in collaboration with ensembles such as the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, [Switch~ Ensemble], the Divertimento Ensemble (IT), and Mizzou NME. In Brazil, the Orquestra de Câmara da Cidade de Curitiba, Ensemble Nova Camerata, Ensemble Móbile, Quarteto Brasiliana, UM2UO Percussion, Orquestra filarmônica da UFPR, Orquestra à Base de Sopro de Curitiba, and Quinteto Sopro5. Prizes and selections include the XXII Funarte Prémio de Composição Clássica (Rio de Janeiro), IV Bienal Música Hoje, the Sinquefield Composition Prize in 2021, and JACK Quartet's JACK Studio 2022.

As a performer, Beis has recorded eleven albums distributed internationally, notably "Universom" (Japan Inpartmaint.inc, 2016), and recently "images-after" with the OnishiBeis Duo. In 2023 Beis will graduate with a double master's in music composition and theory at the University of Missouri Columbia.

For more information about Santiago and his music, visit Santiago Beis 

Trevor Van de Velde

Trevor Van de Velde (he/him) is an experimental composer, sound artist, instrument builder, and creative technologist based in Brooklyn, NY. His practice is oriented toward exploring the relationship between technology, play, materiality, and hybridity through a combination of custom “hacked” electronics and multi-media composition.

Trevor has had the opportunity to presents works at New Music on the Point, The Summer Institute of Contemporary Performance, Labo Montreal (2021), Yarn/Wire Institute and Ensemble Evolution. His music has been performed by JACK Quartet, members of Yarn/Wire, and Chromic Duo.

Recent projects include Hacking Grains, a meal and ritual in which the rice cooker is explored as a sonic technology and symbol of Asian futurity. Trevor is now working with sewing machines and conductive thread to make sweater instruments for an upcoming string quartet.

Trevor holds degrees in Computer Science and Music from UC Berkeley and an M.A in Digital Music from Dartmouth College. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition at NYU GSAS.

For more information about Trevor and his music, visit Trevor Van de Velde

Ali Can Puskulcu

Turkish-American composer and violinist Ali Can Puskulcu has been recently awarded a Fromm Foundation Commission from Harvard University and a Copland House Residency Award. His debut album “Gibberish Shreds” was released by New Focus Recordings, and he also performed the “Gibberish Shreds Vol. 1,” from his album, at the MATA Festival in New York City. Ali’s chamber music piece “Wired” was premiered by wild-Up ensemble at Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight series in Walt Disney Hall. He has also received the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award for his ensemble piece “Broken,” and as a chosen composer, he performed his solo violin piece “Point G” at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Ali completed his Master of Music in music composition at the University of Southern California under the guidance of Andrew Norman and Donald Crockett. He is currently a PhD candidate in composition at Brandeis University.

For more information about Ali and his music, visit Ali Can Puskulcu 

Peter Fahey

Peter Fahey writes experimental music for classical instruments, sometimes with electronics. He has been described as a composer of “alluring soundscapes” and “arresting moments” (The New York Times) and “a composer who is full of effective ideas” (The Journal of Music). His music has been performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall and the National Concert Hall Dublin by, among others, the American Composers Orchestra, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Continuum, Crash Ensemble, Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles, ensemble recherche, Ensemble SurPlus, Klangforum Wien and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. Peter began his music education in Ireland followed by studies at the Royal Northern College of Music, England, at Cornell University and, as an exchange scholar, at Columbia University. Awards include the American Composers Orchestra’s Underwood Commission, a Next Generation Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Franz Liszt Stipendium from the HfM Franz Liszt Weimar as well as fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and MacDowell.

For more information about Peter and his music, visit Peter Fahey

Kelley Sheehan

Kelley Sheehan is a composer and computer-musician moving between electro-acoustic, electronic, and performance art works. In any medium, her work constructs environments meant to merge electronic and acoustic forces into one composite organism; dependent on this merging to become more than just an extension of itself. Her work has been described as “Full of discovery, collaboration, and unpredictability” (Iannotta, Kyriakides, & Stäbler) with “Woozy Electronics” (LA Times). Named prize winner of the Gaudeamus Award 2019, winner of the 2022 Hildegard Commission, awarded first place for the 2020 ASCAP/SEAMUS commissioning competition, among others.

When not composing, she’s an avid improviser on self-made DIY electronics, no-input mixer, her AI-electric guitar hybrid called ‘other machines,’ or modular. Having performed at such venues as the Banff Center for the Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum.

She’s a PhD Candidate in Composition at Harvard University studying with Chaya Czernowin.

For more information about Kelley and her music, visit Kelley Sheehan 

Sophie Matthieu

Sophie is a composer and cellist based in Austin, TX, currently pursuing a masters degree in composition at the University of Texas. Sophie’s work is ethereal and textural, exploring the concepts of vastness and timelessness, as well as the intersection of beauty and danger in the natural world. Sophie has collaborated with ensembles including yMusic, line upon line percussion, and andPlay, and she recently earned an honorable mention from the ASCAP Morton Gould program for her orchestra piece, moons. As a cellist, Sophie is passionate about bringing the works of living composers to the forefront and exploring as many genres as possible. While pursuing her undergraduate degree at USC, she also studied baroque cello and viola da gamba. Outside of music, Sophie enjoys cooking plant-based food, playing Sid Meier’s Civilization V, and watching horror films.

For more information about Sophie and her music, visit Sophie Matthieu 

Chen Yihan

Chen Yihan, a native of Changzhou, China, is a composer and pianist based in Princeton, NJ. His music has been performed by orchestras and ensembles including the China Philharmonic Orchestra, China National Symphony Orchestra, China National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra of the China National Opera House, American Composers Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra, and Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has received honors such as the Copland House Residency Award and three ASCAP Morton Gould Awards. In 2023, he made his debut as a film composer with the Chinese-language commercial feature film "Manifesto," produced by the Shanghai Film Group Corporation.

Chen Yihan is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in composition at Princeton University and holds a master's degree in composition from the Juilliard School and bachelor's degrees in composition and piano from the Jacobs School of Music.

Max Vinetz

Max Vinetz is an American composer whose music draws inspiration from various intersections between improvisatory, popular, and classical forms and aesthetics. His recent and upcoming works address grief, the impact of media on rhetorical structures in music and our daily lives, and structures that circumvent linear narratives.

Max is a two-time recipient of ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award, a Fromm Foundation Commission, the Paul and Christiane Cooper Prize, the Gardner Prize from the American Viola Society, and was the 2019-2020 Emerging Composer Fellow for Musiqa. A graduate of both Yale and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, Max is currently pursuing his PhD Composition at Princeton University as a Naumburg Doctoral Fellow.

Pascal Le Boeuf

Described as "sleek, new" and "hyper-fluent" by the New York Times, Pascal Le Boeuf (he/him) is a Grammy-nominated composer, jazz pianist, and electronic artist whose works range from modern improvised music to hybridizing chamber music with production-based technology. Recent projects include commercial recordings and videos with JACK Quartet, Friction Quartet, Nu Deco Ensemble, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Christian Euman, Hub New Music, Barbora Kolářová, Shattered Glass, Todd Reynolds, Sara Caswell, Jessica Meyer, Nick Photinos, Four/Ten Media, Bec Plexus featuring Ian Chang (of Son Lux), Dayna Stephens, Justin Brown, JiHye Jung and Jamie Lidell. 

As a keyboardist, Pascal performed as support for D’Angelo’s Black Messiah US tour and Clean Bandit’s Rather Be tour with Australian pop artist Meg Mac. He actively performs with Le Boeuf Brothers, Friction Quartet, Allan Harris, and his piano trio "Pascal's Triangle" featuring bassist Linda May Han Oh, and drummer Justin Brown. 

As a producer, Pascal has worked with a range of artists including Annika Socolofsky, Anna Pidgorna, Jenny Beck, Alyssa Weinberg, Barbora Kolářová, Hub New Music, Nick Photinos, and Iarla Ó Lionáird. 

He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Music and Technology at Vanderbilt University, and a Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellow and Ph.D. candidate in music composition at Princeton University.

For more information about Pascal and his music, visit http://www.pascalmusic.com/.

Caterina Di Cecca

Caterina Di Cecca is an Italian composer based in Rome.

Her music has been performed in 17 different countries worldwide by renowned ensembles and orchestras such as Ensemble Mosaik (DE), Ars Nova Ensemble (FR), Riot Ensemble (UK), Neue Vocalsolisten (DE), Ensemble Échappé (US), Instrumentalists of the Orchestra and Choir of the Teatro Petruzzelli (IT), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (UK) and Orchestra della Toscana (IT).

She has been selected in about 40 international composition competitions and calls for scores, the following are worth mentioning: Open Call “SIAE Classici di Oggi 2018/2019" – Commission for Orchestra, [‘tactus] Young Composers’ Forum of Mons, George Enescu International Composition Competition of Bucharest, Franco Donatoni International Meeting for Young Composers of Milan.

She has received commissions by several organizations and institutions including Aldeburgh Festival in cooperation with Ulysses Network, Biennale Musica di Venezia, Ars Nova Ensemble in collaboration with SACEM, “SIAE – Classici di Oggi” in partnership with Orchestra della Toscana, Divertimento Ensemble supported by Ernst von Siemens Foundation, Fondazione Lirico Sinfonica Petruzzelli e Teatri di Bari, German Embassy of Rome, Puccini Festival, World Exposition 2015 and Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'Arte, for which she was also Composer-in-Residence in 2015.

Her scores are published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni of Milan.

For more information about Caterina and her music, visit http://www.caterinadicecca.com/.

Oswald Huỳnh

Oswald Huỳnh is a composer and bassoonist from Portland, Oregon. His works navigate Vietnamese aesthetics and tradition, the fragility of the natural world, and the relationship between heritage and identity. Huỳnh writes music extensively for instrumental forces to create evocative soundscapes that convey underlying narratives and emotions. His orchestral work Gia Đình calls to this by exploring the impact of intergenerational trauma, cultural inheritance, and what is lost between eras. 

As a composer, Huỳnh has collaborated with artists such as the Tacet(i) Ensemble, Fear No Music, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Del Sol String Quartet, [Switch~ Ensemble], deaf rabbit duo, Akropolis Reed Quintet, percussionist Payton MacDonald, and composer and clarinetist Yoshiaki Onishi. His music has been performed internationally at the Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Ear Taxi Festival, Constellation Chicago, Arts Letters & Numbers, Oregon Bach Festival, Northwestern University New Music Conference, and The Sheldon Concert Hall, among others. Additionally, Huỳnh has been a fellow at the International Composition Institute of Thailand and is a 2022 resident composer for the Mizzou International Composers Festival.

Huỳnh holds a Bachelor of Arts from Lewis & Clark College and is currently pursuing a Master of Music at the University of Missouri. Huỳnh’s past studies with distinguished composers have included Narong Prangcharoen, Emily Koh, George Lewis, Reiko Füting, Daron Hagen, and Gilda Lyons. During his time at Lewis & Clark, Huỳnh was presented the Rena J. Ratte Memorial Award, the highest academic honor given to students, for his compositional work at the college. His principal teachers include Stefan Freund, Carolina Heredia, Texu Kim, and Michael Johanson.

For more information about Oswald and his music, visit http://www.oswaldhuynh.com.

Jia Yi Lee

Jia Yi Lee (b. 1996) is a Singaporean composer who writes music that explores the colors and textures of sound through movement and gesture. As a composer who has “a lot of new ideas” (RTHK Radio 4), she creates imaginative sound worlds inspired by natural phenomena and processes and is interested in the perception of temporality and timbre in music. 

Jia Yi’s music has been performed by the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, KOU Musik (Singapore), Ensemble Multilatérale (Paris, France), Trio SurPlus (Freiburg, Germany), Ensemble Phoenix (Basel, Switzerland), Ensemble Linea (Strasbourg, France), Asko|Schönberg (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Ensemble Signal (New York, USA) and Talea Ensemble (New York, USA), and heard in festivals such as June in Buffalo (USA), Etchings Festival (France), soundSCAPE Festival (Italy) and Asian Composers League Festival (Vietnam). She has been awarded the Otto Ortmann Prize in Composition (2021) and 3rd Prize in the Prix D'Été Competition (2020). 

Apart from composing, Jia Yi plays the trumpet and is also passionate about music education. She is currently a Graduate Assistant in Music Theory at the Peabody Institute and teaches composition as part of the school's Junior Bach Program. In addition, she is part of the organizing team for Music for All, Music with All, a Singapore-based initiative that promotes inclusivity through music education. 

Jia Yi is currently pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts at Peabody Institute, studying with Felipe Lara. She recently completed her Master of Music at Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University, and Bachelor of Music with Honors (Highest Distinction) at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore. Her past teachers include Ho Chee Kong, Peter Edwards, and Adeline Wong.

For more information about Jia and her music, visit https://www.jiayilee.com.

Piyawat Louilarpprasert

“the rebel Thai composer taking music to unheard heights” (CNN News World) 

Originally from Bangkok, currently based in New York, Piyawat Louilarpprasert is a composer whose works interweave music composition, visual art, and technology. Piyawat has been awarded grants, commissions, and prizes such as the Donaueschingen Musiktage (Germany), Südwestrundfunk (SWR) Experimental Studio (Freiburg), Ruchira Mendiones Research Fellowship (USA), Guerilla Opera Underground Honor (USA), British Council: Connection Through Cultures (UK), Pro Helvetia (Switzerland), Fritz Gerber Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), ASCAP Morton Gould Awards 2018, 20 and 21 (USA), American Composer Orchestra Earshot (USA), Matan Givol International Composers Competition Prize (Israel), Northwestern University Conference (Chicago), Bowling Green New Music Festival (Ohio), the Audrey Kahin Research Fellowship (New York), Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute (USA, runner-up), Royal concerto orchestral composition prize (UK), Gabriel Prokofiev Nonclassical Music Competition (UK), Léon Goossens Prize (UK), Sergei Slonimsky Award (Russia), KulturKontakt Artist in residence (Vienna), Charles Stewart Richardson Award (UK), Japan Foundation Grants (Japan), and many more.

His works were performed at festivals including the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Lucerne Festival, Donaueschingen Musiktage, MUSIIKIN AIKA - Time of Music, Kulturkontakt Residency, China – ASEAN Music Week, Gaudeamus, Saint Petersburg New Music, and more. He also worked with renowned performers including Arditti, the Berlin Philharmonic Horn Section, International Contemporary Ensemble, Mozaik, Surplus, Platypus, Meitar, Yarn Wire, Wet Ink, Lucerne Alumni, Switch, Orkest Ereprijs, Vertixe Sonora, Vienna Improvisor Orchestra, Thailand Philharmonic, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Aguascalientes Symphony Orchestra, American Composer Orchestra, and more.

As a scholar, he was awarded the Don Michael Randel Research Fellowship in 2022 to conduct his new music course, P.I.Y. (Perform it Yourself), at Cornell University, Ithaca, where he obtained his DMA in music composition. His major teachers are Valeriy Rizayev, Dai Fujikura, Kevin Ernste, Marianthi Papalexandri Alexandri. As a performer, he is a tube-spinning trombonist and a founder of Tacet(i) Ensemble. As a curator, he is currently serving as a chair and a program curator for Int-Act Festival.

For more information about Piyawat and his music, visit https://www.piyawatmusic.com.

Niko D. Schroeder

Niko D. Schroeder’s artistic practices reflect his Midwestern (U.S.) upbringing through rugged joy, community focus, and wry humor. His works draw on regional folklore and extra-musical elements to illustrate issues of environment, identity, and perception (moves, for example, derives formal and musical material from historic chess matches, while bridge sings integrates field recordings of Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge). He is most himself when working with others, whether through co-composition or interdisciplinary collaboration.

Niko’s collaborative spirit is also reflected in his work as a bandleader, performer, and audio engineer. He has toured with rock, jazz, folk, and contemporary classical ensembles, including his polka outfit, the Bierkeller Boys Oompah Band. Cherished past projects include several ensembles dedicated to co-composition, like indie-pop band The Lake Effects and folk/classical quintet Waiting for Niko. Other performers of his music include Sō Percussion, Roomful of Teeth, Alarm Will Sound, the Sinta Quartet, Invoke string quartet, Khemia Ensemble, Grand Valley State New Music Ensemble, and members of Fifth House Ensemble. His work as a composer, performer, and engineer can be heard on Innova Recordings, Klavier, slashsound, and his own imprint—Wretched Toad Music.

Niko holds a Master of Music from the University of Missouri, Columbia, where he served as an instructor and sound engineer and was awarded the 2019 Sinquefield Prize, the university’s highest honor for a composer. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts from Grand Valley State University, where he was twice named Composer of the Year, won the Concerto Competition, and was awarded the Glenn A. Niemeyer Award—the highest distinction for student contributions to the university.

He lives in Missouri with his partner Julia and their two cats, Johnny Cash and June Carter. He is one of few full-time artists to co-own a professional sports organization.

For more information about Niko and his music, visit https://www.nikodschroeder.com.

Felipe Tovar-Henao

Characterized by a strong interest in exploring sound perception, memory, and recognition, the music of Colombian composer Felipe Tovar-Henao has been consistently awarded and performed throughout his emerging professional career. His creative work is deeply rooted in aesthetic experiences with technology, philosophy, and cinema, and is articulated through both acoustic and electroacoustic media.

Recent highlights include being a resident composer at the 2020 Mizzou International Composers Festival, being a finalist of the 2019 SEAMUS/ASCAP Award, as well as receiving the 2018 SCI/ASCAP Student Commission Award and the 2018 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award. 

His music has been performed by artists and ensembles such as Alarm Will Sound, Sound Icon, IU New Music Ensemble, AURA Contemporary Ensemble, Hear no Evil, Sociedad de Música de Cámara de Bogotá, Ensamble Periscopio, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Orquesta Sinfónica EAFIT, among many others. Similarly, he has received commissions and grants from institutions, including SCI/ASCAP, Mizzou New Music Initiative, FilarMed, Indiana University, Colombian Ministry of Culture, Alcaldía de Medellín, and Universidad EAFIT.

He has been a featured composer at a variety of international festivals such as WOCMAT (Taiwan, 2019), Electroacoustic Barn Dance (US, 2019), SCI National Conference (US, 2019), SEAMUS National Conference (US, 2019, ‘18), Seoul International Computer Music Festival (South Korea, 2017), IRCAM’s CIEE Summer Contemporary Music Creation + Critique Program and ManiFeste Academy (France, 2016), Electroacoustic Music Midwest (US, 2016), and the Midwest Composer Symposium (US, 2019, ‘16).  

He has held teaching positions as Associate Instructor and Coordinator of the IU JSoM Composition Department (2017-'20), as well as Adjunct Professor in Music Theory and Composition at Universidad EAFIT (2020-'21), in Medellín, Colombia.

He is currently the 2021/22 CCCC Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Chicago.

For more information about Felipe and his music, visit https://www.felipe-tovar-henao.com.

Cassie Wieland

Cassie Wieland (pronounced ˈkæ-si ˈwee-lənd) is an Illinois-born and Brooklyn-based composer. Praised by The New York Times as “sweetly shimmering,” Wieland masterfully experiments with timbre and texture by exploring intimate and fragile sounds to achieve the “hand-made” sound she is often looking for: imperfect, but intentional.

Cassie has been commissioned and performed by line upon line percussion, Ensemble Dal Niente, ~Nois, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Liminal Space Ensemble, clarinetist Ken Thomson, percussionist Adam Groh, and Illinois Modern Ensemble, among others. Her music has been featured at events such as the Bang on a Can Marathon, Hot Air Music Festival, MKE Unplugged, the Red Note New Music festival, and the Maryland Wind Festival. Cassie has also been twice recognized as an ASCAP Morton Gould finalist and as the 2018 composer in residence for the Maryland Wind Festival. She has recently been named a 2022 Roulette Resident Artist, a 2020 Roulette Commissioned Artist, and an inaugural Bouman Fellow for the 2019-2020 Kinds of Kings season. Her music has been featured on New Sounds, NPR, The New York Times, Financial Times, Musical America, I Care if You Listen, AnEarful, and The Road to Sound.

Cassie is currently working in Brooklyn as a freelance composer and as a Senior Coordinator for The Orchard. She holds a BM degree in Composition from Illinois State University and an MM degree in Composition from the University of Illinois.

Recent/upcoming projects include ANATOMY, a series of solo works for various instruments each focusing on a different part of the human body, as well as new works for Isabelle O’Connell and Vicky Chow.

For more information about Cassie and her music, visit https://cassiewieland.com.

Ana Paola Santillán Alcocer

Ana Paola Santillán Alcocer's music has been premiered, conducted or performed by Steven Schick, Gail Archer, Andy Costello, Gary Kulesha, The Het Trio, the Enso String Quartet, Speculuum Musicae, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Bellas Artes Chamber Orchestra, the Florida State University Orchestra, the Shepherd School of Music Orchestra, the OFUNAM Philharmonic Orchestra and Mexico’s National Symphony Orchestra, among others. 

Ana Paola has been the recipient of several awards and fellowships including the FULBRIGHT Scholarship; the Programa de Becas para Estudios en el Extranjero scholarship (FONCA-CONACYT); the UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries for Artists Programme; resident composer at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others.  Her orchestral piece NEMESIS was selected to represent Mexico at the UNESCO 57th International Rostrum of Composers in Lisbon, Portugal.  

She has been a composition fellow at the MANIFESTE festival at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM-Paris); Brevard Music Center (U.S.A.); the Czech American Summer Music Institute (CASMI-Czech Republic); the Internationale Sommer MusikaKademie (ISAM-Germany); the Fontainebleau Music Schools (France) and the Canadian Contemporary Music Workshop (Toronto, Canada). 

Her music scores are showcased and distributed at BabelScores, a digital library based in Paris, France, devoted to the promotion of contemporary music. Likewise, her piece “Fractum” for flute, Bass Clarinet & Piano is published by ALEA PUBLISHING & RECORDING.  

Ana Paola studied her doctorate with John Rea at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University. Simultaneously, she also experimented with electronic mediums at the McGill Digital Composition Studios (DCS), studying with Philippe Leroux. She was composer in residence for the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble under the direction of conductor Guillaume Bourgogne. 

She received her Master of Music degree with honors from Rice University, studying composition with Dr. Arthur Gottschalk and Shih-Hui Chen and electronic music with Kurt Stallmann. Ana Paola holds the LTCL Licentiate in music composition, with distinction, from TRINITY COLLEGE LONDON, having studied composition and piano with Vincent Carver.  

She currently teaches music composition, analysis and theory at the Centro de Investigación y Estudios de la Música (CIEM) in Mexico City. 

For more information about her music and concerts please visit: www.anapaolasa.com.

Daniel Fitzpatrick

Daniel Fitzpatrick (b. 1995) is a composer with an exceedingly diverse musical background. Having played banjo since the age of seven, bluegrass and folk music have considerable significance in his life as a composer and performer. He has been featured as a banjo soloist and composer in various concerts and recitals at the University of Missouri, Southeast Missouri University, and East Central College. Daniel performed his banjo concertino Ancient Echoes (2020) with the Mizzou New Music Ensemble for the 2020 Mizzou International Composers Festival. Within the composition, he showcased the virtuosic capabilities of the banjo while immersing the instrument into the other-worldly atmosphere of Ancient Echoes, which was created through a myriad of acoustic sound effects and modal interplay. He has also had the honor to be featured in a collaborative recital with artist Najjar Abdul-Mussawwir’s Reconstructed exhibition at Southeast Missouri State University. During this event, Daniel premiered his piece Premonition (2017) and performed traditional bluegrass music as well as works by Béla Fleck and Tony Trischka.

As a banjo player and composer, Daniel is always working on writing and arranging music to reinvent the instrument. For example, his piece Perplexion (2019) fuses the styles of bluegrass, ragtime, jazz, and contemporary classical music. Furthermore, Daniel has arranged and performed Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# minor Op. 3, No. 2 on the banjo, considerably expanding what audiences think of an often type-casted instrument. In addition to being a banjo player, Daniel also plays piano, guitar, and mandolin.

He has served as the pianist of the Mizzou New Music Ensemble and is currently a music technology graduate assistant at the University of Missouri, where he is studying for his master’s in music composition with Dr. Carolina Heredia. His past composition professors include Dr. Stefan Freund, Dr. Robert Fruehwald, and Dr. Joseph Tyldesley. Daniel’s interests in writing music are seemingly limitless as he has explored many different folk traditions in his compositions along with the genres of dubstep, glitch, pop, and modern classical music. Rather than being defined by one particular genre of music, Daniel’s compositions are characterized by the seamless integration of many musical influences. 

Paul Mortilla

Paul Mortilla has been composing music since age 11, and he began formal studies with faculty at the University of Miami at age 13. In 2014, he went on to pursue a BM in Music Composition at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, durning which he received a 2016 BMI student composer award, Lake George Music Festival Composition Competition award, as well as attended the HighScore music festival. In 2017 he was invited to participate in the Tanglewood Music Festival as a composition fellow.

After completing his undergraduate, he went on to obtain a Masters in Music from Yale School of Music, durning which he received a performance from Callithumpian Consort, Yale Philharmonia, and coordinated various concerts that premiered all new works for early instruments. In 2019 he was a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Scholarship. He recently received a premiere from Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire, and has been working on various virtual collaborative projects.

Nina Shekhar

Nina Shekhar is a composer who explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter to create bold and intensely personal works.

Described as “vivid” (Washington Post) and “surprises and delights aplenty” (LA Times), her music has been commissioned and performed by Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, LA Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, JACK Quartet, ETHEL, violinist Jennifer Koh, Ensemble Échappé, Music from Copland House, soprano Tony Arnold, Third Angle New Music, The New York Virtuoso Singers, Lyris Quartet, Ray-Kallay Duo, New Music Detroit, and Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra. Her work has been featured by Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, National Sawdust, National Flute Association, North American Saxophone Alliance, I Care If You Listen, ScoreFollower, and WNYC/New Sounds (New York), WFMT (Chicago), and KUSC and KPFK (Los Angeles) radio. Current projects include commissions for Albany Symphony, JACK Quartet, 45th Parallel Universe, saxophonist Timothy McAllister, Quadre, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and New York Youth Symphony. Nina is a two-time recipient of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award (2015 and 2019) and the recipient of the 2018 ASCAP Foundation Leonard Bernstein Award, funded by the Bernstein family.

Aside from composing, Nina is a versatile performing artist as a flutist, pianist, and saxophonist. She has performed in the Detroit International Jazz Festival and has been featured by the National Flute Association.

Nina is currently pursuing her PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University. She completed composition graduate studies at University of Southern California and earned undergraduate degrees in composition and chemical engineering at University of Michigan. An active educator, Nina is currently a Composer Teaching Artist Fellow for Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and is on faculty at Idyllwild Arts Academy and Brightwork newmusic‘s Project Beacon initiative. She served as an inaugural Debut Fellow of the Young Musicians Foundation, mentored by violinist and social activist Vijay Gupta.

Yu Kuwabara

Tokyo-based composer Yu Kuwabara (b. 1984) makes music to ask herself who she is. She has been researching and studying traditional Japanese arts and music to go as far back as possible to her origins and to confirm her own sense of being. She has collaborated with numerous artists who use traditional Japanese art forms, including Noh performers, a Rakugo performer, a Japanese Buddhist chant group, and performers of traditional Japanese instruments.

She completed her master's degree at the Tokyo University of the Arts and has taken part in prestigious academies, including Lucerne Festival Academy Composer Seminar, Academy Voix Nouvelles Foundation Royaumont, Delian Academy for new music, IMPULS, and Akademie Schloss Solitude, among others.

Yu Kuwabara's works have been performed at numerous important international festivals (Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Ultraschall Berlin, Mostra Sonora Sueca, EXPO Milano 2015, Tongyeong International Music Festival, and Takefu International Music Festival, and others) and in many other concerts around the world with various ensembles and performers (Ensemble Modern, Trio Accanto, soloists from Ensemble Intercontemporain, Talea Ensemble, Enno Poppe and Klangforum Wien, mdi ensemble, Ensemble Proton Bern, Divertimento Ensemble, Mike Svoboda and neuverBand, loadbang, AsianArt Ensemble, Sentieri selvaggi, Ensemble Mise-en, Shomyo no Kai - Voice of A Thousand Years, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicolas Hodges, William Lang, Claire Chase, Rebekah Heller, Stefan Hussong, Camilla Hoitenga, Toshiya Suzuki, Kosei Murata, Hidejiro Honjoh, and others). Her music is published by Edition Wunn. She is a composer of Awai-Za, a chamber ensemble mixed with new music and Japanese Edo culture.

For more information about Yu and her music, visit http://3shimai.com/yu/index_Eng.html

Shuying Li

Praised as “a real talent here waiting to emerge” (Seattle Times) and with her “skillful orchestral writing, very colorful language and huge waves of sound,” Shuying Li is an award-winning composer who began her musical education in her native China. In her sophomore year at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, she won a scholarship to continue undergraduate study at the Hartt School in Connecticut. She holds a doctoral and master’s degree from the University of Michigan, and has recently been appointed to a Research Faculty position at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

Shuying’s compositions have been performed by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Hartford Opera Theater, Wellesley Conference Chamber Orchestra, Orkest de ereprijs (Netherlands), Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble, Avanti! Chamber Orchestra (Finland), ICon Arts Ensemble (Romania), Cecilia Quartet (Canada), Opera From Scratch (Canada), Donald Sinta Quartet, 15.19. Ensemble (Italy), Ascanio Quartet (Italy), Atlas Ensemble (Netherlands), University of Cincinnati Wind Orchestra, Hartt Wind Ensemble, etc. Upcoming projects include a consortium commission by 20 university/college bands including New England Conservatory, Cornell University, University of Michigan, etc; 50-minutes pocket concerto series’ album release with Albany Records; orchestral version of the 50-minutes pocket concerto series commissioned by the China National Arts Fund, among others.

Other recognition include awards from The American Prize, International Antonin Dvorak Composition Competition, New Jersey Composers’ Guild Commission Competition, International Huang Zi Composition Competition, the Michigan Music Teachers Association Commissioned Composer Competition, the NAfME Composers Competition, the Melta International Composition Competition, the Florence String Quartet Call for Scores, the Foundation for Modern Music’s International Robert Avalon Composition Competition, the MacDowell Club of Milwaukee Young Composer Competition, and the International J. Dorfman Composition Competition, among others. She was the “Composer in Residence” for the Romania ICon Arts Festival during summer 2014.

Her prior composition teachers include Michael Daugherty, Evan Chambers, Ye Guohui, Robert Carl and Larry Alan Smith. She studied conducting with Glen Adsit and Edward Cumming, and studied piano with Matthew Bengtson and Paul Rutman. Additionally, Shuying has worked with Victoria Bond, Paul Chihara, Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick, Christopher Theofanidis, and Steven Mackey. Shuying now resides in Boston and travels to Shanghai regularly for projects.

For more information about Shuying and her music, visit http://www.shuyingli.com/

Celka Ojakangas

Celebrated for her music's charm and wit, Celka Ojakangas (b. 1992) is an award-winning Los Angeles-based composer who mesmerizes audiences with quirky textures and grooves from beyond the classical idiom. Her compositions have been performed and commissioned by many artists including USC Thornton’s Wind Ensemble, yMusic, and the Portland State University Opera. Celka is the winner of the 2018-19 American Prize for new music for wind band, the honorable mention recipient of IAWM's 2018 Alex Shapiro prize, a finalist for the Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award in the years 2016-2019, and a grantee of Opera America's 2019 Discovery Grants for Female Composers. Celka is presently pursuing her doctorate at the University of Southern California, studying under Andrew Norman. Current and former mentors include Ted Hearne, Sean Friar, Frank Ticheli, Mara Gibson and Carlyle Sharpe.

For more information about Celka and her music, visit https://www.celka.net/

DM R (Diana M. Rodriguez)

DM R (Diana M. Rodriguez) was born and raised in Bogotá, has lived in Miami and Boston, and is currently based in NYC. She is a composer of electroacoustic music, a concert series curator (C3 and CanvaSound), and a 90s anime aficionado. Having its footholds in pop culture, Colombian folk, and Rock en Español, her work has been presented by artists like ICE, Yarn Wire, ECCE Ensemble, Ludovico Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva, Berrow Duo, Eric Drescher and Josh Modney at the BANFF Centre for the Arts and Creativity, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the Boston Conservatory, University of North Colorado, the Coral Gables Museum, and the New England Conservatory.

Currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, DM R holds a master’s degree from the Boston Conservatory and a bachelor’s degree from the New World School of the Arts at the University of Florida. Her ongoing projects include collaborations with TAK ensemble, Oasi Trio, and Alejandro Guardia.

To learn more about DM R and her music, visit https://music.columbia.edu/bios/diana-m-rodriguez

Andrew Tholl

Andrew Tholl is a Los Angeles based composer, violinist, and improvisor. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times’ Mark Swed as “vigorously virtuosic,” his compositions and performances have been heard across the United States and Europe.

As a composer, Tholl’s conceptual interest lies in the exploration of the passage of time, the physicality of making music, noise, nostalgia, and memory. His style is heavily informed by a synthesis of musical influences, the integration of improvisation, and the development of innovative instrumental techniques through a practice-led approach. As a soloist and chamber musician, he is dedicated to the performance of new music and the collaborative process between composer and performer. Tholl is a member and co-founder of the “superb” (Los Angeles Times) Formalist Quartet, a new-music-focused string quartet dedicated to presenting challenging new repertoire and close collaboration with composers. Tholl is also a member Wild Up, a Los Angeles based new music ensemble whose unique programming juxtaposes works across genres, to create visceral, thought-provoking performances.

Aside from his work as a “classical” musician and composer, Tholl maintains a second musical life writing and performing pop, rock, punk, noise and improvisational music as a violinist, drummer, and guitarist. Additionally, he has worked extensively in scoring for film, dance, and theater as both a performer and composer. Tholl holds degrees from Arizona State University, University of Michigan, and the California Institute of the Arts. He has served on faculty at the California Institute of the Arts and Moorpark College and currently teaches at UC Santa Barbara and Ventura College. He lives in Los Angeles where he continues to be involved with music for concert halls, art galleries, films, puppet shows, bars, garages, bedrooms, and coat closets.

For more information about Andrew and his music, visit http://www.andrewtholl.com/

Theo Chandler

Theo Chandler is a composer, currently pursuing his Doctorate of Musical Arts at the Rice University Shepherd School of Music, studying with Anthony Brandt. Chandler is the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship from the Academy of Arts and Letters and a Morton Gould Award from ASCAP. He was selected as the winner of Juilliard's Orchestra Competition, Juilliard's Gena Raps Competition, the New Juilliard Ensemble Competition, and the Maryland Wind Festival Call for Scores. Chandler has received commissions from the New York Youth Symphony, Tanglewood Music Center, Les Délices, Golden West Winds from the United States Air Force Band of the Golden West, Amir Eldan, George Sakakeeny, Alexa Still, Michael Rosen, and others. He has been a fellow at Tanglewood Music Center and Aspen Music Festival and School. For the summer of 2018, he has received a fellowship to Copland House CULTIVATE and has been invited for the I-Park Composer + Musicians Collaborative Residency. Presently, he is the Emerging Composer Fellow for Musiqa, and was previously the Young Composer in Residence for the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings. He received his previous degrees from The Juilliard School and Oberlin Conservatory, studying composition with Melinda Wagner, Samuel Adler, Steven Stucky, and Lewis Nielson.

Also an accomplished clarinetist, Chandler has performed his Modern Etude for Clarinet at the Kennedy Center and the Akron New Music Festival, his Four Homophonic Studies for Oberlin’s Commencement Recital, and his Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra for Oberlin’s Concerto Competition Finals. He has collaborated on the premieres of over one hundred pieces by fello

For more information about Theo and his music, visit https://www.theochandler.com.

inti figgis-vizueta

inti figgis-vizueta (b. 1993) is a Brooklyn-based composer whose music focuses on combinations of various notational schemata, disparate and overlaid sonic plans, and collaborative unlearning of dominant vernaculars. She/they often write 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 land(s). Reviewers say her music constantly toes the line between "all turbulence" and "quietly focused" (National Sawdust Log).

inti has most recently been named one of JACK Quartet's inaugural JACK Studio artists; won the 2019 Hildegard Competition from National Sawdust, which culminated in the commission and premiere of Openwork, Knotted object // Trellis in bloom // lightning ache; been featured in the 2019 Underwood New Music Readings, which included the American Composer's Orchestra reading Symphony for the Body; and participated in the 2019 Mizzou International Composer's Festival, which featured Alarm Will Sound premiering Primavera Crown.

inti loves reading poetry, particularly Danez Smith and Joy Harjo. She also curates for score follower, an online archive championing universal access to contemporary musics. inti honors her Quechua grandmother, who was the only woman butcher on the whole plaza central and used to fight men with a machete.

For more information about inti and their music, visit http://www.inticomposes.com.

Charles Halka

Charles Halka writes acoustic and electronic music for concert, dance, and opera, and his works are often inspired by language, visual imagery, movement, and human experience. His music has been performed in North America, Europe, Asia, and Brazil by the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra led by Marin Alsop, Alarm Will Sound, Mivos Quartet, the Mexican National Symphony Orchestra, the Lviv Philharmonic, Odessa Philharmonic, counter)induction, Callithumpian Consort, Volti, ÓNIX Ensamble (Mexico), PRO ARTE eNsemble (Russia), Aquarius (Belgium), and Jauna Muzika (Lithuania), among others, and at venues and events such as The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and Foro Internacional de Música Nueva. As a 2008-09 U.S. Fulbright grantee, he spent a year in Vilnius, Lithuania researching Lithuanian music and writing an opera in collaboration with director and librettist Marija Simona Šimulynaitė. The opera, Julius, was premiered in 2010 in Vilnius, and a choral excerpt from the opera, Dipukų Rauda, was performed at the ISCM World Music Days 2012 in Belgium. In 2011, Round and Round, based on a work by the American music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, was premiered at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress, and in 2013 he premiered a revised version in Hong Kong at the Intimacy of Creativity partnership led by composer Bright Sheng.

Among Halka’s recent honors are a Barlow Endowment General Commission (2019) and the Copland House Residency Award (2015), and he was in residence with Houston’s critically acclaimed Musiqa (2014-15) and the Foundation for Modern Music (2011-14). In addition, he completed residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the M.K. Sarbievijaus Cultural Center in Kražiai, Lithuania, where he wrote a chamber opera, And Jill Came Tumbling After (libretto by John Grimmett) for the Baltic Chamber Opera Theater that was selected for Fort Worth Opera’s 2015 Frontiers showcase. Imaginary Spaces, his dance and percussion project in collaboration with Houston dance company Frame Dance Productions, was awarded support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

Halka studied music in the United States, Russia (Saint Petersburg Conservatory), and Lithuania (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater) and holds degrees in both piano and composition from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied piano with Brian Ganz and composition with Michael Hersch and Judah Adashi. He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where he studied composition with Richard Lavenda, Kurt Stallmann, Pierre Jalbert, and Arthur Gottschalk, and piano with Brian Connelly. Additionally, he studied privately with Samuel Adlerthrough the FUBiS program in Berlin and participated in master classes with several well-known composers, including Bright Sheng, Christopher Theofanidis, Roger Reynolds, and Kaija Saariaho. Previous teachers also include Osvaldas Balakauskas for composition and Stephen Drury, Nina Seryogina, and Roger Price for piano.

Halka began teaching as Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at Western Washington University in Fall 2018. He was previously on faculty at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Stephen F. Austin State University, and has taught courses at Rice University, The Peabody Conservatory, and the University of Houston. He is a member of ASCAP, the American Composers Forum, SCI, SEAMUS, and NACUSA.

For more information about Charles and his music, visit http://www.charleshalka.com/.

Chelsea Komschlies

Chelsea Komschlies, whose music has been said to possess an “ingratiating allure” (San Diego Story), recently completed a post-graduate Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she was awarded The Alfredo Casella Award for composition. At Curtis she studied with Richard Danielpour and David Ludwig. Chelsea received her Master of Music degree in composition from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she studied with Daniel Kellogg and Carter Pann and received the Thurston Manning Composition Award and Cecil Effinger Fellowship in Composition. Chelsea, who grew up creating and loving all sorts of visual art, often uses real or imagined images as inspiration for her works, and listeners frequently say her music has strong visual qualities. One of her goals is that listeners make deep, instinctual associations with her music, be they emotional, visual, or otherwise abstract.

Chelsea’s music has been performed across the United States as well as in Canada, the U.K., Finland, France, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan. She has received commissions from the the Philadelphia Bach Festival, the Rock School for Dance Education, One Book, One Philadelphia, and a distinguished composition fellow commission from the Cortona Sessions for New Music. She has had performances at events such as the Ravinia Festival and the finale concert of Make Music Chicago and has been invited to study at summer programs such as the Fontainebleau School and a number of festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Her recent projects include a piece for organ, harpsichord, and orchestra, premiered by the Curtis Institute in 2018, and an extended reality collaboration with Drexel University game design and software engineer students using the Microsoft Hololens. Upcoming projects include a commissioned oratorio for the Bach Festival of Philadelphia for voices and period instruments. Chelsea plans to pursue a doctoral degree in composition this coming fall. In her spare time, Chelsea enjoys drawing, digital painting, creating hand-sculpted jewelry, and haunting her favorite local coffee shops.

For more information about Chelsea and her music, visit https://www.komschlies.com/.

Aaron Mencher

Aaron Mencher writes “sophisticated and compelling” (Boston New Music Initiative) contemporary classical music, film scores, and incidental music. He recently worked with the St. Louis Symphony as they workshopped and premiered his piece Antrios. Additionally, Aaron has received recognition from organizations such as ASCAP, The American Modern Ensemble, The Boston New Music Initiative, NAfME, the European-American Musical Alliance, the American Prize, and the Third Millennium Ensemble.

He has worked with a variety of ensembles including the St. Louis Symphony, Deviant Septet, Third Coast Percussion, International Counterpoint, the All-National Concert Band, Drax, clarinetist Wesley Warnhoff, cellists Bjorn Ranheim and Dave Eggar, and many others. Currently, he is working on a clarinet concerto for clarinetist Wesley Warnhoff and the University of Missouri Philharmonic, and piece for violin and piano commissioned by the Sheldon Concert Hall.

In addition, he has worked on a variety of dramatic projects. Aaron scored a recent documentary directed by Katie Schnell, and the short film Maggephah directed by Atlanta-based filmmaker Brad McGaughey. Previously, he worked at the Dancing Goat Theater as the composer and sound designer for many shows including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Anne of Green Gables, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest.

Aaron attends the University of Missouri, and has studied with Carolina Heredia, Yoshiaki Onishi, Stefan Freund, and William Lackey.

For more information about Aaron and his music, visit http://menchermusic.com.

Nicole Murphy

Australian composer Nicole Murphy’s music has been described as “exquisite, sensitive and delicate”. She is the recipient of various awards, including the ICEBERG International Call for Scores (2017), Nief Norf International Call for Scores (2016), the MAFB International Commissioning Prize (2015), the Theodore Front International Orchestral Prize (2013), and the Definiens C3 International Composer’s Award (2011). She was chosen as the young composer to represent Australia at the 30th Asian Composers League Festival in Tel Aviv (2012). Recently, Nicole was selected as one of six composers to work with Steve Reich in Toronto (2016) as a part of Soundstreams celebrations of his 80th birthday.

Nicole has been commissioned by eminent arts organisations including the Australian Ballet, the Royal Academy of Dance (London), Experiments in Opera/Symphony Space (New York), the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, Wild Rumpus (San Francisco), Chamber Sounds (Singapore), and the Definiens Project (Los Angeles). Her music has been performed by ensembles such as the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, NOWensemble (New York), Ars Nova (Dallas), and Halcyon (Sydney). She has received performances at numerous festivals including the Atlantic Music Festival (Maine), the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Connecticut), the Dallas Festival of Modern Music, the Nief Norf Festival (Tennessee) and the Bowdoin International Music Festival (Maine). 

Nicole is represented as an Associate Artist by the Australian Music Centre and holds the position of Composer-in-Residence at the Queensland Academy for Creative Industries. She is the inaugural recipient of the Australia Ensemble's Emerging Composer Fellowship (2018). Her music is published by Wirripang and Nicole holds a PhD from the University of Queensland.

For more information about Nicole and her music, visit https://www.nicolemurphy.com.au.

Peter Shin

Peter S. Shin is a composer whose music navigates issues of national belonging, the co-opting and intermingling of disparate musical vernaculars, and the liminality between the two halves of his second-generation Korean-American identity. The New York Times described him as “a composer to watch” and his music “entirely fresh and personal.”

Peter’s music has been performed at Carnegie Hall through the “First Music” Commission, Walt Disney Concert Hall through the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Noon to Midnight” series, Chicago’s Symphony Center through the Civic Orchestra New Music Workshop, and the Cabrillo Festival commissioned by John Adams and Deborah O’Grady.

Current projects include a commission for Roomful of Teeth through the American Composers Forum premiering in 2019, a film score for the 2019 Mizzou International Composers Festival with Alarm Will Sound, and a chamber orchestra work for the Berkeley Symphony’s 2018/19 season.

Additional honors include an American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Scholarship, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Fulbright Research Grant, Aspen Music Festival Fellowship, Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, New York Youth Symphony “First Music” Commission, Civic Orchestra of Chicago New Music Workshop with coachings by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra International Call for Scores, and SCI/ASCAP Commission Competition in the Graduate Division, among others.

A native of Kansas City, Missouri and a graduate of the University of Michigan (B.M.) and the University of Southern California (M.M.), Peter is currently studying at the Yale School of Music (M.M.A.) and is a composer fellow of the Berkeley Symphony.

For more information about Peter and his music, visit http://peter-shin.com.

Kristina Wolfe

Kristina Wolfe is a composer, wanderer, electronic musician, maker, and multi-instrumentalist. She is of Danish and American heritage, and spent many of her formative years wandering through the forests listening to the sounds of space and place. This environment cultivated her imagination and creative focus on the spirits of the past, and has inspired her work and listening practices up to the present day.

For more information about Kristina and her music, visit https://kristinawolfemusic.wordpress.com.

Oren Boneh

Composer and trumpeter, Oren Boneh has upcoming performances from Ensemble Reconsil, Ensemble Proton Bern and the Empyrean Ensemble and previous performances by ensembles such as Ensemble Divertimento, Vertixe Sonora, Ensemble Meitar, Ensemble Regards, Ensemble Pentaèdre, the Playground, Music From Copland House Ensemble, Architek Percussion, the Eco Ensemble and the Nebula Ensemble, among others. Oren's piece Winter Walks that Gravel my Voice was chosen for First Prize in the 2017 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award Competition and his piece Behind the Forget-Me-Nots was chosen as the winner of the Random Access Music Call for Scores, for which it was performed by William Lang. Oren’s pieces have been additionally performed in festivals such as Festival Mixtur (Spain), Spaziomusica Festival (Italy), Soundstreams Emerging Composer Workshop, Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium (TIES), ExperimentalStudio Matrix 2015, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, CIRMMT Symposium, Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music (Belfast, UK), Kansas City Electronic Music Alliance, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, International Summer Academy of Music (Germany), PULSAR Festival (Copenhagen), California Summer Music Festival, Society of Composers Inc. (SCI) National Conference, the Playground Ensemble's Colorado Composer’s Concerts, and various others.

Oren has been Composer-In-Residence at the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Visby International Centre for Composers (Gotland, Sweden) and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska City, Nebraska).

In addition to his work in composition, Oren is active as a trumpeter. He has performed with various ensembles including the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra, the Colorado Wind Ensemble, Ovations Players and Main Street Players, the Boulder Philharmonic, the Arapahoe Philharmonic and many more. He has written two pieces, Enso (2011) and Eclipse (2013), for trumpet and electronics, which are available from qPress. He is quite interested in discovering new sonic and technical possibilities using the trumpet. Recently, experiments in trumpet improvisation with live electronics have become an interest through collaborations with Denver composers Ryan Fiegl and Jeff Ashear. Trumpet is how he began in music and he hopes to connect it with composition for the duration of his musical career.

Oren is currently a PhD fellow at the University of California, Berkeley where he works with Franck Bedrossian, Edmund Campion, Ken Ueno and Cindy Cox. Supported by a Fulbright fellowship during the 2015-2016 year, Oren worked in Dresden, Germany studying composition and working at the Dresden Music Cognition Lab. Oren has previously studied at McGill University, the Royal Danish Academy of Music and the University of Denver. His primary instructors have included Chris Malloy, William Hill, Hans Abrahamsen and Brian Cherney and he has participated in courses and masterclasses of composers such as Philippe Leroux, Mark Andre, Rebecca Saunders, Pierluigi Billone, Hector Parra, Ivan Fedele, Kaija Saariaho, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Mauro Lanza, Peter Ablinger, Mauricio Sotelo and others.

For more information about Oren and his music, visit http://www.orenboneh.com

Christine Burke

Christine Burke a composer from Iowa City, IA, whose music has recently been recognized by the Earle Brown Music Foundation’s International Summer Academy + Talea Ensemble, Núcleo Música Nova, the John Donald Robb Composer’s Symposium, the Chicago Civic Orchestra Composers Project, and in additional collaborations with the JACK Quartet, NOW Ensemble, Cola Guitar Quartet, Kamratōn Ensemble, and the Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra.

​Christine earned a Master's Degree from the University of Iowa, where she studied with Nomi Epstein and Josh Levine (composition) and Maurita Murphy Marx and Jorge Montilla Moreno (clarinet). She was previously a student of David Stock (composition) and Jack Howell (clarinet) at Duquesne University.

For more information about Christine and her music, visit https://www.burkechristine.com

Viet Cuong

Called “alluring” and “wildly inventive” by The New York Times, the music of Viet Cuong seeks to “leave you breathless” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) by finding ways to breathe new life into time-honored musical ideas. Viet has had works performed on six continents by musicians and ensembles such as Sō Percussion, Sandbox Percussion, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, JACK Quartet, Gregory Oakes, Mimi Stillman, Albany Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, and Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, among others. Viet’s music has been featured in diverse venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Aspen Music Festival, New Music Gathering, Midwest Clinic, International Double Reed Society Conference, Boston GuitarFest, US Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, and on American Public Radio’s Performance Today. He also enjoys composing for the wind ensemble medium, and his works for winds have amassed over one hundred performances by conservatory and university ensembles worldwide, including at WASBE and CBDNA conferences.

Viet recently entered the Artist Diploma program at the Curtis Institute of Music where he studies with David Ludwig and holds the Daniel W. Dietrich II Composition Fellowship. Viet received his MFA from Princeton University as a Naumburg and Roger Sessions Fellow, and he is currently finishing his PhD there. At Princeton he studied with Steve Mackey, Donnacha Dennehy, Dan Trueman, Dmitri Tymoczko, Paul Lansky, and Louis Andriessen. Viet holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Pulitzer Prize-winner Kevin Puts and Oscar Bettison. While at Peabody, he received the Peabody Alumni Award (the Valedictorian honor), as well as the Gustav Klemm Award for excellence in composition. He was a scholarship student at the Aspen, Bowdoin, and Lake Champlain music festivals, and has also been a fellow at the Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, Cabrillo Festival’s Young Composer Workshop, Copland House’s CULTIVATE emerging composers workshop, and the RED NOTE composition workshop. Additionally, Viet is among the youngest group of composers ever to receive artist residencies from the Yaddo Artist Retreat, Copland House, Ucross Foundation, and Atlantic Center for the Arts (under Melinda Wagner, 2012 and Christopher Theofanidis, 2014).

Viet was a winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Composers Award, Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composers Award, Theodore Presser Foundation Music Award, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra Call for Scores, New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission, Cortona Prize, Dolce Suono Ensemble Young Composers Competition, Boston GuitarFest Composition Competition, Walter Beeler Memorial Prize from Ithaca College, Atlantic Coast Conference Band Directors Association Grant, National Band Association Young Composer Mentor Project, the Prix d’Été Composition Competition, and the Trio La Milpa Composition Competition. In addition, he received honorable mentions in the 2013 Harvey Gaul Composition Competition and the 2010 and 2012 ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prizes. Scholarships include the Evergreen House Foundation scholarship at Peabody, a 2010 Susan and Ford Schumann Merit Scholarship from the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the 2011 Bachrach Memorial Gift from the Bowdoin International Music Festival

For more information about Viet and his music, visit http://vietcuongmusic.com

Amanda Feery

Amanda Feery is an Irish composer, currently completing a PhD in Composition at Princeton University. She graduated from Trinity College Dublin, having completed a B.A. in Music in 2006 and an M.Phil in Music and Media Technologies in 2009. Past collaborators include RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Fidelio Trio, Ensemble Mise-en, Bearthoven, RTÉ Contempo Quartet, Dither Quartet, Dublin Guitar Quartet, Mivos String Quartet, Orkest de Ereprijs, Quince Vocal Ensemble, This is How we Fly, Lisa Moore, Michelle O'Rourke, and Paul Roe. Over the past few years, Amanda has participated as a composer fellow at festivals and residencies including Ostrava Days Festival (Czech Republic), Soundscape Festival (Italy), Bang on a Can Summer Festival (U.S) and the International Young Composers Meeting (Netherlands).

Current and future projects include a large-scale work for chamber choir based on the diary entries of Donald Crowhurst, and a piece for RTÉ ConTempo Quartet and Padraic Keane.

For more information about Amanda and her music, visit http://www.amandafeery.com

Douglas Osmun

Douglas Osmun is a composer of both acoustic and electronic music, and whose acoustic works are often informed by electroacoustic theories and techniques. He is deeply concerned with elements of sound embodiment, spatialization, and perception. In consideration of these components, he approaches the sound ideas at every level in his pieces as spatial objects to be sculpted and arranged. More recently, he has been experimenting with methods of dissecting musical form in a way that not only allows for interesting emergent structures, but also for greater performer agency over the material. His goal is to create musical works that open new channels of communication between the performer and listener through highly detailed and captivating sonic environments.

Osmun was raised on the western side of Michigan, never far from the shores of Lake Michigan. He is currently studying to receive his Master’s in Composition at the University of Missouri. He studies with Stefan Freund and Carolina Heredia. He holds an undergraduate degree in Music Composition from Western Michigan University, where he also earned a minor in Multimedia Arts Technology. This minor encompassed training in audio engineering, creative projects with digital media, and computer programming. Former teachers of his at Western Michigan University include Lisa Renée Coons and Christopher Biggs. As a graduate student, Osmun has a number of awards and accomplishments, including the Sinquefield Composition Prize and Commission, the Ron Nelson Award and Symphonic Band Commission, and an international premiere of his work at the highSCORE Festival in Italy. For his achievements, he was also named a Beulah and Harold McKee Scholar, one of three top awards for students within the WMU School of Music.

For more information about Douglas and his music, visit http://douglasosmun.com

Gemma Peacocke

I am a composer and I live in Princeton, New Jersey. I grew up in New Zealand and my childhood bedroom (in the house at 16 Kitchener St, Hamilton) was occupied before me by Richard O'Brien, who wrote the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I hope I get to meet him one day.

I write instrumental and vocal music, electronic music, and a combination of both. I like finding ways to seamlessly combine and move between electronic and acoustic sound worlds. I'm interested in how music can amplify the voices of under-heard groups of people. I love collaborating with directors, filmmakers and choreographers, and in 2016 I worked with director Benita de Wit on her play Undrown'd about asylum seekers held in offshore detention centres. This year I completed a song cycle called Waves + Lines based on landays - female Afghan folk poems - adapted from Eliza Griswold's book I Am the Beggar of the World. We premiered it at Roulette in Brooklyn with the support of a Jerome Foundation commission, and it's off to Australia in 2018. A new choir, piano four-hands and electronics piece I wrote for The Tudor Consort called Pacific was premiered on 16 September at Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul with the support of the Peace and Disarmament Education Trust (PADET). The JACK Quartet premiered a new string quartet called Erasure at the end of September.

I am currently working on several projects that I'm really excited about including a percussion and electronics piece for the indomitable Kaylie Melville called Wreak and a percussion quartet for the unbelievably talented Mari Takeda. I'm also a PhD candidate at Princeton University.

For more information about Gemma and her music, visit http://www.gemmapeacocke.com

Igor Santos

Igor Santos is a Brazilian-American composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic concert music. His works have been performed by groups such as eighth blackbird, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Spektral Quartet and the Florida Orchestra.

Igor is a current Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition at the University of Chicago. He received his master's degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied under Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez. At Eastman he was an active member of the Ossia New Music group, assisting in organizing and promoting concerts of contemporary music. He received his B.M. in composition from the University of South Florida, where he was also active as board member and pianist for the USF Composer's Consortium. Igor is currently studying under Shulamit Ran, Marta Ptaszyńska, Augusta Read Thomas, Anthony Cheung and Sam Pluta. Additional studies include workshops and festivals such as IRCAM (ManiFeste), Time of Music, Synthetis, Fontainebleau, and Brevard Music Center.

For more information about Igor and his music, visit http://igor-santos.com

Clare Glackin

Clare Glackin is a composer of instrumental and vocal concert works whose music has been performed by the Culver City Symphony, USC Symphony, Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra, and others. She seeks to craft music that is engaging, unique, and fulfilling for both performers and audiences.

Also an oboist, Clare has played in various premieres of student compositions, including performances at USC, Brevard Music Festival, and the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium. She has been a member of the USC Concert Orchestra (receiving the USC Concert Orchestra Award in 2015), and Rice Campanile.

Clare is currently based in Houston, TX, where she is studying for her MM at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. She graduated with a BM from USC’s Thornton School of Music, where she was named a Discovery Scholar and Outstanding Graduate of the composition program. Clare’s primary teachers have been Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli, Pierre Jalbert and Richard Lavenda.

For more information on Clare Glackin and her music, please visit http://www.clareglackin.com/

Selim Göncü

Selim Göncü started taking piano lessons at the age of eleven. After a year of study in Liszt Academy of Music, he became Reinhard Febel’s student in the University Mozarteum of Salzburg, graduating in 2012 with a focus on electronic music. He also served as assistant to the department for composition in Mozarteum for two years. In 2011, he was invited as a guest lecturer to the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.

He attended workshops and seminars by distinguished composers like Francesco Filidei, Franck Bedrossian, Beat Furrer, Philippe Leroux, Klaus Huber, Aaron Cassidy, Isabel Mundry and Dieter Ammann. Selim was winner of »Firenze Suona Contemporanea« (2013), was honoured with a special mention in »Risuonanze 2013« and was a Kunstuniversität Graz Jahresstipendium fellow. In 2016, he participated in IRCAM ManiFeste Festival, where his dimINNUENDO was premiered by Ensemble Intercontemporain. His works were performed and recorded in festivals and concerts in Austria, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Turkey and USA. Since 2011 he also writes on contemporary art and opera for classical music magazines »Neofilarmoni« and »AKOB«.

Selim Göncü graduated from Kunstuniversität Graz (with Clemens Gadenstätter) with the highest distinction and currently continues his studies as a PhD candidate in composition at University of California, Berkeley (with Franck Bedrossian and Ken Ueno).

For more information on Selim Göncü and his music, please visit http://www.selimgoncu.com/

Carolina Heredia

Ann Arbor-based composer Carolina Heredia creates contemporary concert works for acoustic and electronic mediums. Her work blends sounds of folk music from her home country of Argentina with textures and forms of contemporary concert music. Her compositions have been commissioned and performed by ensembles such as JACK Quartet, Wild Rumpus Collective, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the University of Michigan Chamber Choir and Symphonic Orchestra.

She recently founded Khemia Ensemble, a contemporary music ensemble that strives to create innovative concert experiences. She is a 2015 recipient of the Fromm Commission from Harvard University. Her music has been featured on the SONIC Festival, Aspen Music Festival and School, Bowling Green New Music Festival, New Music On the Point Music Festival, 3rd Bienal de Composición Argentina, National University of Bogotá New Music Residency among others.

Carolina holds a Bachelor in Music Composition from the Universidad Nacional de Villa María (Argentina), a Master in Music Composition from the University of Michigan, and it is currently in her last year for the Doctorate in Musical Arts program at University of Michigan. Her professors include Michael Daugherty, Evan Chambers, Kristin Kuster and Erik Santos. Carolina has taught as a Graduate Student Instructor for the Chair of Electronic Music at the University of Michigan.

For more information on Carolina Heredia and her music, please visit http://www.carolinaheredia.com/

Christopher Mayo

Christopher Mayo (b. 1980) is a Toronto-based composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal and electronic music. His work, variously described as “cogent, haunting and…desperately poignant” (The Times) and “a steampunk collection of gnarly machine-like noises, flashy timbres, and explosive rhythms” (Classical Voice North America), is characterized by its distinctive rhythmic language and wide range of diverse and eclectic inspirations.

Christopher’s symphonic works have been performed by leading ensembles worldwide, including London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Victoria Symphony, Esprit Orchestra and Manchester Camerata where he served as Composer-in-Residence from 2012-2013. Christopher’s music has been conducted by Susanna Mälkki, François-Xavier Roth, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Nicholas Collon, Bramwell Tovey, Alan Pierson, Tania Miller, Jurjen Hempel and Andrew Gourlay, among others.

Christopher’s chamber music has been commissioned by London Sinfonietta, Crash Ensemble, MATA Festival, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Ensemble contemporain de Montreal +, Motion Ensemble, Arraymusic, NMC Recordings, Aldeburgh Festival and the Royal Philharmonic Society. His works have additionally been performed by ensembles including ACME, L’arsenale, Aurora Orchestra, Aventa and Land’s End Ensemble, at festivals including the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, the Cheltenham Festival and the Marrakech Biennale and at venues ranging from Le Poisson Rouge to Wigmore Hall.

An active composer of vocal music, Christopher’s Death on Three-Mile Creek, for three singers and ensemble, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall. The New York Times wrote that it “resourcefully evoked Appalachian folk styles, New Orleans funeral marches and the shifting pulses of drum 'n' bass electronica in setting aphoristic eulogies by Jonathan Williams”. Commissioned by Esprit Orchestra, Under Dark Water, for four singers and orchestra, sets a fragment of text from Toby Litt’s novel deadkidsongs and was described as “the clear stand-out of the night” (Musical Toronto) and “hypnotically beautiful” (ConcertoNet).

Christopher frequently collaborates with writers, directors, visual artists, filmmakers and choreographers. In recent years, he has been commissioned to create new dance scores by Rambert Dance Company, New Movement Collective and the English National Ballet for the Coronation Gala at Buckingham Palace. His chamber opera The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered was cited as a “deft mix of documentary, pulsating drones, electric guitar and sparing percussion” (BBC Music Magazine) and a “genre-exploding delight that succeeds in provoking new and exhilarating possibilities for the form.” (A Younger Theatre). Christopher is currently developing a new, one-act multimedia opera in collaboration with video artist Tal Rosner.

Christopher’s music has been commercially recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra who released his works Therma in 2013 and Panufnik Variations in 2016. NMC Recordings has released two of Christopher’s works, Supermarine, recorded by Aurora Orchestra in 2015, and The Fitful Alternations of the Rain on the 2013 album The NMC Songbook which went on to win the Classic FM Gramophone Award for Best Contemporary Album. Christopher’s music has been widely broadcast on television and radio including multiple broadcasts on BBC 1 Television, BBC Radio 3 and CBC Radio 2.

Based in the UK from 2003-2014, Christopher holds a Master’s degree from the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson and a PhD from the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Philip Cashian.

For more information on Christopher Mayo and his music, please visit http://www.christophermayo.net/

Aaron Parker

Aaron Parker (b.1991) writes loosely-defined instrumental and electronic music informed by a love of landscape, film (Jonas Mekas, Rose Lowder, Peter Bo Rappmund, Joshua Bonnetta), visual art (Anselm Keifer, Gerhard Richter, Ai Weiwei), and sound (Eliane Radigue, Rashad Becker, John Cage, Giuseppe Ielasi, Chris Watson, György Kurtág, Radiohead, & many others).

Upcoming in 2017 is a new piece for U.S.-based ensemble Alarm Will Sound, a workshop and performance of biakoulem by Kokoro (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra), performances and a record with Manchester-based multi-instrumentalist David Bainbridge, and a new LP of fractured Appalachian folk songs with vocalist Kathryn West.

2016 saw the release of his solo album Storage on SLIP imprint, the orchestral piece Captured on the LSO Live ‘Panufnik Legacies II’ CD, and a solo violin work, eppitru, on RMN Classical. Recent pieces have been commissioned by the likes of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, Psappha and ddmmyy series, and performances of his music have taken place across Europe, with broadcasts on BBC Television and Radio.

Aaron completed a BMus in Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, in 2013, studying with Gary Carpenter and Larry Goves. He has since held posts at a number of UK independent schools, teaching music and music technology and both primary and secondary levels, alongside freelance education and outreach work, including as a participating composer in Sound and Music’s 2011–12 ‘Adopt a Composer’.

For more information on Aaron Parker and his music, please visit http://www.aaron-parker.com/

Charles Peck

Charles Peck (b.1988) is an American composer whose work has been called “daring” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “vivid” (UArts Edge magazine), and “spell-binding” (Rappahannock News). His music was recently selected in the New York Youth Symphony’s First Music program as well as Call for Scores by several ensembles including the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, ensemble mise-en, and the Locrian Chamber Players. He has also been named the winner of the Lake George Music Festival’s Composition Competition, the NC New Music Initiative’s Orchestral Composition Competition, the Symphony in C’s Young Composers’ Competition, the Castleton Festival’s Young Composer’s Forum, and the OFMC Collegiate Composition Competition. Peck work has been supported by grants from the McKnight Foundation, the American Composers Forum, and the Cornell Council for the Arts and has been featured at festivals including the Aspen Music Festival, the New Music Gathering, the highSCORE Festival, and the Castleton Festival. Currently, Peck’s projects include new works for the JACK Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, and percussionist Ji Hye Jung.

Peck is a doctoral student at Cornell University where he has earned the Otto R. Stahl Memorial Award in composition. He received his Master’s in Music from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. There, he was named the winner of the Composition Competition and was awarded the Scott Huston Award for composition. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Music Industry from Drexel University.

For more information on Charles Peck and his music, please visit http://charlespeckmusic.com/

Amadeus Regucera

As an active composer, the work of Amadeus Julian Regucera (b.1984) engages with the embodied and acoustical energy of sound and its production, the erotics of performance, the musical vocabulary of popular music, and noise. He has had the opportunity to present works at ManiFeste, the Festival Musica, Voix Nouvelles (France), the Resonant Bodies Festival and the SONiC Festival (New York), the Havana Festival of Contemporary Music as part of the American Composers Forum artist delegation, the Hong Kong Modern Academy, the International Summer Courses in Darmstadt, Germany, the Impuls Academy (Austria), June in Buffalo, the Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts. His music has been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble Linea, JACK string quartet, Ensemble Intercontemporain, EXAUDI vocal ensemble, Ensemble Pamplemousse, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and Duo Cortona. In addition to concert music, his practice intersects with visual and performance art, most notably in the piece Communication (2013), which was featured at the Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten in Graz, Austria as part of the group show Seelenwäsche and a collaboration for performer, Schlachtfeld (a) with choreographer Elysa Wendi. Upcoming projects include a new piece for Ensemble Linea for the 2017 edition of the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, France and a new piece for bassoonist Adrian Morejon. Amadeus holds degrees in Music from the University of California, San Diego (B.A. 2006) and the University of California, Berkeley (PhD, 2016).

For more information on Amadeus Regucera and his music, please visit http://amadeusregucera.com/

Henry Breneman Stewart

Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Henry Breneman Stewart (b. 1992), grew up singing four-part harmony at East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church, as well as playing the piano and flute. Stewart earned a BA in music and biochemistry from Goshen College, where he studied composition with Jorge Muñiz of Indiana University South Bend and piano with Matthew Hill and Beverly Lapp. He is currently an MM Composition student at the University of Missouri, where he studies composition with Phillip Sink, Stefan Freund and piano with Janice Wenger, Natalia Bolshakova and Peter Miyamoto.

For more information on Henry Breneman Stewart and his music, please visit https://soundcloud.com/henry-breneman-stewart

Matthew Browne

Composer Matthew Browne was born in 1988 in Burlington, Vermont.  He strives to create music that meets Sergei Diaghilev’s famous challenge to Jean Cocteau: “Astonish me!”, through incorporating such eclectic influences as the timbral imagination and playfulness of György Ligeti, the shocking and humorous eclecticism of Alfred Schnittke, and the relentless rhythmic energy of Igor Stravinsky.  His music has been described as “compelling” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) and “beautifully crafted and considered” (What’s On London).

Matthew has had the honor to collaborate with such ensembles as the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Villiers Quartet, the Donald Sinta Quartet, the Tesla Quartet, and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra. His music has been performed for, and given masterclasses by such renowned artists as Otis Murphy, George Crumb, and the Kronos String Quartet.

Recently, Matthew’s music has received honors such as an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers award (2014), a BMI Student Composer award (2015), winner of the New England Philharmonic Call for Scores (2014), participant at the Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute (2016), winner of the American Viola Society’s Maurice Gardner Composition award (2014), and a residency at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s First Annual Composers Institute (2013). Matthew holds a Master of Music in Music Composition from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is currently a Doctoral of Musical Arts candidate in Music Composition from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.  Previous teachers include Michael Daugherty, Kristin Kuster, Carter Pann, and Daniel Kellogg.

For more information on Matthew Browne and his music, please visit www.matthewbrownecomposer.com.

Takuma Itoh

Takuma Itoh spent his early childhood in Japan before moving to Northern California where he grew up.  His music has been described as "brashly youthful and fresh" (New York Times).  Featured amongst one of “100 Composers Under 40” on NPR Music, he has been the recipient of awards and commissions from: the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Music Alive: New Partnerships grant with the Tucson Symphony, the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize, six ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (including the Leo Kaplan Award), the American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, the Symphony in C Young Composer Competition, the New York Youth Symphony First Music, The New York Virtuoso Singers, and the Renée B Fisher.

Itoh’s music has been performed by the Albany Symphony, the New York Youth Symphony, Symphony in C, the Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra (Poland), the Shanghai Quartet, the St. Lawrence Quartet, the Cassatt Quartet, the Momenta Quartet, violinist Joseph Lin, Syzygy Ensemble (Australia), H2 Quartet, the Music from Copland House, and the Varied Trio.  In addition, his works can be heard on Albany and Blue Griffin Records, and is published by Theodore Presser, Resolute Music, and Murphy Music Press.

Itoh has been a fellow at the Cabrillo Composer Workshop, Wellesley Composers Conference, Copland House CULTIVATE, Pacific Music Festival and the Aspen Music Festival.  He holds degrees from Cornell University, University of Michigan, and Rice University. Since 2012, Itoh has been a faculty member at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

For more information on Takuma Itoh and his music, please visit www.takumaitoh.com.

Mary Kouyoumdjian

Mary Kouyoumdjian (b. 1983) is a composer with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic pallet that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to progressively blend the old with the new.

Kouyoumdjian has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the American Composers Forum/JFund, REDSHIFT, Experiments in Opera, the Nouveau Classical Project, Friction Quartet, Ensemble Oktoplus, and the Los Angeles New Music Ensemble. Her work will be presented by the 2016 New York Philharmonic Biennial, and she has had artist residencies with Roulette/The Jerome Foundation, Montalvo Arts Center, and Exploring the Metropolis. Kouyoumdjian's music has been described as "eloquently scripted" and "emotionally wracking" by The New York Times and as "the most harrowing moments on stage at any New York performance" by New York Music Daily. In her work as a composer, orchestrator, and music editor for film, she has collaborated on a diverse array of motion pictures including orchestrating on the soundtracks to The Place Beyond the Pines (Focus Features) and Demonic (Dimension Films). Based in Brooklyn, New York, Kouyoumdjian also actively promotes the growth of new music in her native state of California.

Currently pursuing her Composition D.M.A. as a Dean's Fellow at Columbia University, Kouyoumdjian studies with composer Georg Friedrich Haas. She holds an M.A. in Scoring for Film & Multimedia from New York University and a B.A. in Music Composition from the University of California, San Diego, where she has studied contemporary composition with Chaya Czernowin, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, and Chinary Ung; new music performance withSteven Schick; and modern jazz with Anthony Davis. Kouyoumdjian is also a co-founder and the executive director of the contemporary music ensemble Hotel Elefant, co-founder of the annual new music conference New Music Gathering, and a Teaching Artist Associate at the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers Bridge Program

For more information on Mary Kouyoumdjian and her music, please visit www.marykouyoumdjian.com.

Ryan Lindveit

Ryan Lindveit (b.1994) is an American composer whose works have been performed by "The President's Own" United States Marine Band, USC Thornton Symphony, USC Thornton Wind Ensemble, the Donald Sinta Quartet, the City of Tomorrow, and FearNoMusic, in addition to numerous performances by students. He has received honors and awards from ASCAP, SCI, the American Modern Ensemble, the National Band Association, Tribeca New Music, and the Texas Music Educators Association.

Recent and upcoming projects include a work for the acclaimed new music supergroup Alarm Will Sound to premiere at the Mizzou International Composers Festival in July 2016, a piece for the Donald Sinta Quartet, a piece for saxophonist Paul Nolen to premiere at the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference in March 2016, and a work for trombone quartet and narrator for the LA-based trombone ensemble/variety group Skinny Lips and the Sound Malfunction.

Ryan currently studies at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where his teachers have included Ted Hearne, Andrew Norman, Frank Ticheli, Donald Crockett, and Stephen Hartke. Originally from the Houston area, he started formal composition studies in high school with Stephen Bachicha at Rice University. Additionally, he has participated in lessons and masterclasses with Aaron Jay Kernis, Steven Stucky, Dana Wilson, and Chen Yi.

For more information on Ryan Lindveit and his music, please visit www.ryanlindveit.com.

Trey Makler

The music of composer Trey Makler (b. 1994) explores vibrant colors and the organic development of sound and texture through blurred rhythms, lush harmonies, and angular gestures. Makler has received commissions from the Sheldon Concert Hall, the Charlotte New Music Festival, and the Mizzou New Music Initiative. His work, die Sonette an Orpheus, was the 2015 winner of the annual Boston New Music Initiative Young Composers Competition and will be performed at the Arlington Center for the Arts in April 2016.

An avid collaborator and oboist, Makler has worked with dancers, writers, and visual artists on multiple collaborative projects and regularly performs with various ensembles in the Columbia area, including the Exit 128 contemporary chamber orchestra, of which he is a founding member. He has also served as a production coordinator for the Mizzou International Composers Festival, assisting in logistical planning and event management for the duration of the festival.

Makler is currently a student at the University of Missouri where he studies composition with Drs. W. Thomas McKenney, Stefan Freund, and William J. Lackey, and oboe with Dan Willett. His upcoming projects include Hatrack, a one-act chamber opera with libretto by Katie Kull, based on an essay by Herbert Asbury about the oppressive religious culture of rural Missouri in the early 20th century, set to premiere May 2016 at the Missouri Theater in Columbia, MO.

For more information on Trey Makler and his music, please visit https://soundcloud.com/trey-anthony-makler.

Daniel Silliman

Daniel Silliman is an American composer. His work has been recognized with various awards and honors, including the 2015 William Schuman Prize from the BMI Foundation, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award (winner 2015, finalist 2012), with additional support from Copland House, the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music, American Festival for the Arts, Texas Music Teachers Association, and Access Contemporary Musi.

Born 1993 in upstate New York, Daniel grew up in Texas and is a graduate of the USC Thornton School of Music, and is currently a doctoral fellow in music at Princeton. Studies in composition with Andrew Norman, Louis Andriessen, and others.

For more information on Daniel Silliman and his music, please visit www.danielsilliman.com.

Wang A Mao

Ms. Wang A Mao is a composer of contemporary classical music. She has received recognitions through performances in both Asia and America. Her orchestral works have been read by American Composers Orchestra in its 23th Underwood New Music Readings, and by the Kansas City Symphony in 2012 and 2015 respectively. In 2013, She was awarded the Missouri Music Teachers Association Composition Commission. In 2011, Ms. Wang was selected as a winner of the Young Composer Project, held by the Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her chamber works were premiered by Third Angle ensemble, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Music from China, and her recent commissioned work is released by Albany Records. Wang has also held fellowship residencies at the Aspen Music Festival, the Intimacy of Creativity, and the Banff Centre.

Ms. Wang has performed her own chamber works at New York City’s Le Poisson Rouge, Hong Kong City Hall Theatre, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, and many Chinese music institutes. She has also played her own piano solo work at the Edgar Snow Memorial Fund Symposium and the National Association of Schools of Music concert series.

Ms. Wang is currently completing her doctoral studies at University of Missouri Kansas City with Professors Chen Yi, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, and Paul Rudy, where she received Master of Music in Composition in 2012. She has received her Bachelor of Arts in Composition from Central Conservatory of Music under the guidance of Prof. TANG Jianping.

Wang Lu

Composer Wang Lu is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow and an Assistant Professor of Music at Brown University. Her works reflect a very natural identification with influences from traditional Chinese music, urban environmental sounds, linguistic intonation and contour, and freely

improvised traditions, through the prism of contemporary instrumental techniques and new sonic possibilities.

She received her doctoral degree in composition at Columbia University in 2012, after graduating from the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music in 2005. Wang Lu's works have been performed internationally, by ensembles including the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Minnesota Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lille, Holland Symfonia, Shanghai National Chinese Orchestra, Taipei Chinese Orchestra, Musiques Nouvelles, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Holland Symfonia, Beijing New Music Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Curious Chamber Players, the Janus Trio, So Percussion, Ensemble Pamplemouse, Argento, Momenta Quartet, and counter(induction, among others.

She won the first prize at Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne's Young Composers Forum in 2010 and shared the Tactus International Young Composers Orchestra Forum Award in 2008. She was selected for a Tremplin commission by IRCAM/Ensemble Intercontemporain in 2010, the International Composition Seminar with the Ensemble Modern in 2012, and has also received two ASCAP Morton Gould awards.

She has participated in festivals such as the 2014 New York Philharmonic Biennale, MATA Festival, Cresc. Biennale in Frankfurt, Gaudeamus Music Week, Tanglewood, Cabrillo Music Festival, Beijing Modern, and Pacific and Takefu festivals. Her upcoming projects include commissions for ICE, Yarn/Wire, the Momenta Quartet, organist Mark Steinbach, and violinist Miranda Cuckson, and a residency at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.

For more information on Wang Lu and her music, please visit http://wanglu.instantencore.com/web/home.aspx.

Thomas Dougherty

Composer and violinist Thomas Dougherty (b. 1990) is pursuing his Master of Music degree in Composition from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University as a Brown Fellow. He spent his first year studying with Arthur Gottschalk and currently studies with Karim Al-Zand. Mr. Dougherty dedicates his career of writing and performing to emphasize the value of works by living composers.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mr. Dougherty attended Carnegie Mellon University as a student of Leonardo Balada during his senior year of high school. He then received bachelor's degrees in both composition and violin performance from The Eastman School of Music. While at Eastman, Mr. Dougherty studied composition with Robert Morris, Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and David Liptak. Mr. Dougherty was awarded the Anthony and Carolyn Donato Prize and the Louis Lane Prize for Composition. He was also the winner of the Eastman Orchestral Composition Competition, and as a result, his Three Pieces for Orchestra were premiered by the Eastman Philharmonia in February of 2013.

As a violinist, Mr. Dougherty was awarded 1st Prize at the 2014 Music For Mt. Lebanon Keynotes Scholarship Competition. He has served as concertmaster of the Eastman Philharmonia along with performing many of his own solo and chamber works. His primary violin teachers included Ayano Ninomiya, Lynn Blakeslee, and Hong Guang Jia.

This past summer, Mr. Dougherty was a Chamber Music Institute Fellow at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he wrote a piece for The Meadowlark Piano Trio. He spent the remainder of the summer at The American Conservatory at Fontainebleau in France, studying harmony and composition. Mr. Dougherty has also attended festivals including the 2011 FUBiS Music Composition Course at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he studied with Samuel Adler, and the 2009 Composition Course at Montserrat in Valencia Spain, studying with Leonardo Balada. Mr. Dougherty has presented his works in masterclasses to composers Steven Stucky and David Lang.

Mr. Dougherty currently lives in Houston, Texas where he studies at Rice, teaches, and is a composer and violinist for the Da Camera of Houston Young Artists Program.

For more information on Thomas Dougherty and his music, please visit: https://soundcloud.com/tommy-s-dougherty.

Emily Koh

Emily Koh is an award-winning young composer of contemporary classical music based in Boston MA, and a native of Singapore. Described as ‘the future of composing’ (The Straits Times, Singapore), her musical interest is currently directed at creating inventive instrumental timbres and acoustic spacialization. She is the recipient of awards such as the Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Prix D’Ete, and PARMA competitions, and commissions from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, Composers Conference at Wellesley College, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble and grants from New Music USA, Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy and Paul Abisheganaden Grant for Artistic Excellence.

Emily’s works have been described as “beautifully eerie” (New York Times), and “subtley spicy” (Baltimore Sun), and have been performed at various venues around the world in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Finland, Israel, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States by acclaimed ensembles and performers such as Talea Ensemble (USA), Ensemble Dal Niente (USA), New York New Music Ensemble (USA), Signal Ensemble (USA), Boston New Music Initiative (USA), New Thread Quartet (USA), Acoustic Uproar (USA), LUNAR Ensemble (USA), East Coast Contemporary Ensemble (USA/Europe), Avanti! (Finland), Israel Contemporary Players (Israel), Sentieri Selvaggi (Italy), the Next Mushroom Promotion (Japan), Chroma Ensemble (UK), The Philharmonic Orchestra (Singapore), Dingyi Music Company (Singapore) and Chamber Sounds (Singapore) among others. She graduated from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, NUS and the Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University, and is currently the Director of Concert Series at the Boston New Music Initiative, Principal Bass at the New England Philharmonic and a Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

For more information on Emily Koh and her music, please visit www.emilykoh.net.

Andrew McManus

Andrew McManus’ (b. 1985) orchestral work Strobe, premiered in June 2014 by the New York Philharmonic, was called “riveting” and “breathless…surging…hazy…sometimes all at once” by the New York Times. In May 2014 his opera Killing the Goat was premiered by eighth blackbird, the Pacifica Quartet and members of the Contempo Chamber Players at the University of Chicago. Based on the novel La Fiesta del Chivo (The Feast of the Goat) by Mario Vargas Llosa, the opera follows a Dominican woman as she confronts her decades-old traumatic memories of the Trujillo regime. In August 2014 the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble performed a chamber suite from the opera at the Aspen Music Festival and School. In 2013 Ancient Vigils, a New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission, was premiered at Carnegie Hall. He is also a creator of electronic music. His playback work Mesospherics (2011-2013), recently featured at the University of South Florida New Music Festival, weaves together a diverse collection of sounds that range from beautiful, vivid and scintillating to rough, unwieldy and cacophonous. Other works have been performed at the Wellesley Composers Conference, the Bowdoin International Music Festival and the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. A native of Massachusetts, he is currently a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, where he studies with Marta Ptaszynska, Augusta Read Thomas, Shulamit Ran and Howard Sandroff. He also holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Yale University.

For more information on Andrew McManus and his music, please visit www.andrewmcmanusmusic.com.

Justin Pounds

Justin Pounds is a graduate student currently pursuing a Master of Music degree in Composition at the University of Missouri, where he studies with Dr. Thomas McKenney and Dr. Stefan Freund, and where he also earned his Bachelor of Music degree.  This November, his new chamber opera The Outlaw was premiered by the Show-Me Opera. Justin also recently completed a work for solo piano inspired by the rhythms of Africa which was commissioned by The Sheldon Concert Hall. He was a finalist for the Sinquefield composition prize in 2012, 2013, and 2014, and he was also a finalist for the 2014 MU Collaborative Arts Initiative.  Justin spent August 2013 to August 2014 as the resident composer for Lexington, Missouri, scoring original music for audio tours of the city’s historic districts. In the spring of 2014, he wrote A Leaf on the Wind for an event at The Jewel Box for the Forest Park Forever Foundation, and that piece was also performed for the 2014 Mizzou International Composers Festival. Also in 2014, his choral work Music, When Soft Voices Die was selected by The C7 Prize as a Recommended Work.  His work Electric Brain was choreographed for dancers at Stephens College by Stephanie Reynolds and presented at the central region American College Dance Festival.  His music has been featured in masterclasses with composers John Orfe and Tod Machover, and his works have been premiered by the MU New Music Ensemble, Mizzou’s Concert Chorale, and various chamber groups.

For more information on Justin Pounds and his music, please visit https://soundcloud.com/j­pounds-2.

Alessandro Ratoci

Born in Tuscany, Italy in 1980 he studied composition, piano and electronic music at the Scuola di musica di Fiesole, at the Bologne conservatory. He obtained his master degree in composition at the Haute école de musique de genève with Michael Jarrel, Luis Naon and Eric Daubresse. Subsequently he moved to Paris to follow tuition at IRCAM in electronic and acoustic composition and electronic performance as interpreter. He is currently a professor of computer music at the Haute Ecole de Musique (HEMU) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is also a sound engineer for live performances and recordings of contemporary music.

An active composer and electronic music interpreter, he has been performed by PRIME Recorder Ensemble, Ictus Ensemble, ensemble HEM Geneve and Quartetto Fiorentino. His music has been performed in important festivals like Archipel (2012, Geneva), Milano Musica (2014 Milan), Angelica (2007 Bologna), Musica Insieme (Panicale 2007) and In My Life (Parco della Musica in Rome, 2014).

For more information on Alessandro Ratoci and his music, please visit https://soundcloud.com/alessandro-ratoci.

Christopher Stark

Described as “fetching and colorful,” (New York Times) Christopher Stark’s music has been performed in concert venues around the world from the Neue Synagoge Berlin to Carnegie Hall.

A recipient of the coveted Underwood Commission from the American Composers Orchestra, and winner of the prix de composition from the Orléans International Piano Competition, his music has been featured on NPR’s Performance Today and was broadcast as a fan-voted favorite on WQXR, New York City’s classical music station. Stark's music has been performed by such ensembles as the Sacramento Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, Los Angeles Piano Quartet, Dinosaur Annex, Oberlin Contemporary Ensemble, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and members of eighth blackbird. Most recently, Stark was awarded commissions from the Fromm Foundation and Chamber Music America, and was one of three winners of the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings Commission Project. He also recently worked with Grammy-winning country music artists, Zac Brown Band, on an arrangement of their hit song Free for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Stark currently lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri where he is Assistant Professor of Music Composition at Washington University, and in 2012 he was a resident composer at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy.

For more information on Christopher Stark and his music, please visit www.christopher­stark.com.

Anthony Vine

Anthony Vine is a Brooklyn-based composer and musician. His work has been performed and workshopped in North America and Europe, most notably by JACK Quartet, Pascal Gallois, Ensemble Besides, Quasar Saxophone Quartet, Bearthoven, Protean Duo, Inverted Space Ensemble, and members of the Columbus Symphony, among others. Vine has attended summer courses and residencies such as the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, SALT New Music Festival, and Composit New Music Festival. He has studied with a wide variety of composers in the context of private lessons and masterclasses, including Rebecca Saunders, Georges Aperghis, Brian Ferneyhough, Joshua Fineberg, Enno Poppe, Philippe Leroux, Steven Takasugi, and David Lang, among others. Vine frequently collaborates with choreographers and multimedia artists: most recently, he has been developing a site-specific project, Hallways, with Logan Company (Kathryn Logan and Katy Gilmore) and Matt Evans.

He is also the founder and artistic director of CNX: The Columbus // New York New Music Exchange, a programming and outreach initiative that seeks to build relationships between the contemporary music communities of Columbus, Ohio and New York City.

Vine holds an M.A. in composition from the University of Washington, where he studied with Huck Hodge, and a B.M. in composition from The Ohio State University, where he studied with Thomas Wells.

For more information on Anthony Vine and his music, please visit https://soundcloud.com/anthony-vine.

Conrad Winslow

Conrad Winslow’s music, often buoyant, coloristic, and deeply architectural, is characterized by “harmonic thorniness and rhythmic vitality,” according to the New York Times, and has been described as a “scenic, boisterous and bumpy ride,” by the Albany Times Union. Raised in Homer, Alaska, Conrad perhaps got the idea of making things from scratch by watching his parents chop down trees and build a log cabin home in the woods. Extended childhood road-trips through the continental United Sates and a residential stint in Hawai'i have taught him to look wide.

His instrumental music has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the American Composers Orchestra, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, New York City Ballet’s Choreographic Institute, the Juilliard Orchestra, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the NYU Symphony, and Bala and Gaudete Brass (who also recorded his work for Cedille Records), among many others.

Awards and support have come from ASCAP (ASCAPlus, multiple Morton Gould awards), The American Composers Forum & The Jerome Fund, New York Youth Symphony, Yale Glee Club, The Juilliard School (2010 Juilliard Orchestra Competition, New Juilliard Ensemble commission), and New Music USA (CAP Grants). Current projects include composing new work for Alarm Will Sound, the American Composers Orchestra, and directing Wild Shore New Music in Homer, Alaska. Recent commissions include work for the International Double Reed Society (for bassoonists Rebekah Heller & Adrian Morejon), Cadillac Moon Ensemble, and a ballet score for choreographer Justin Peck.

He holds a Master’s degree in Composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied with John Corigliano. Conrad also holds an M.M. degree in film scoring from NYU, and an Honors

A.B. degree in Music from Rollins College.

For more information on Conrad Winslow and his music, please visit www.conradwinslow.com.

Ian Dicke

Ian Dicke (b. 1982) is a composer inspired by social-political culture and interactive technology. Active in a diverse array of genres and multi-media, Dicke’s music exhibits a clarity of expression while integrating acoustic ensembles with cutting edge audio processing techniques. Praised for his “refreshingly well-structured” (Feast of Music) and “uncommonly memorable” (Sequenza 21) catalogue of works, Dicke currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Digital Composition at the University of California, Riverside.

Dicke’s music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles and festivals around the world, including the New World Symphony, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, ISCM World New Music Days, and the Atlantic Coast Center Band Director’s Association. Upcoming projects in the 2013-2014 season include a new work for the Friction Quartet and an interactive electronics and video piece for the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, Sweden.

Dicke has received grants, awards, and recognition from the Fulbright Program, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, New Music USA, New York Youth Symphony, ASCAP, and BMI, among others. He has been an artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Art342, and spent the 2012-2013 academic year living in Sweden as a Fulbright scholar researching interactive musical interfaces and environments.

In addition to his creative activities as a composer, Dicke is also the founder and curator of the Outpost Concert Series in Riverside, CA and co-directs Fast Forward Austin, a music festival held annually in Austin, TX. Both organizations are dedicated to presenting adventurous music and fostering community engagement through key outreach initiatives and collaborative projects.

Dicke holds degrees from The University of Texas at Austin (D.M.A.), University of Michigan (M.M.), and San Francisco Conservatory of Music (B.M.). For more information on works in progress, upcoming performances, commissioning, and score rentals, please visit www.iandicke.com.

Holly Harrison

Holly is currently a candidate for the Doctorate of Creative Arts in Composition under the supervision of Bruce Crossman and John Encarnacao at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. She graduated from the Bachelor of Music program with the University Medal for outstanding academic achievement and was the recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award, three APRA Composition Awards, and the Marianne Rosenberg Musicology Prize. As a performer, Holly plays trumpet, drum kit and flute in a number of experimental rock bands in Sydney.

Holly was the winner of the inaugural 2013 Pyeongchon Arts Hall International Chamber Music Composition Competition (Korea). She was the Australian representative for the Young Composers Competition  at   the   29th  Asian  Composers’  League   Conference   and   Festival, 2011 (Taiwan). Holly has been selected for a number of composer workshops, including the  Melbourne  Symphony  Orchestra’s 2012-2013 Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program, the 2013 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music Composers Workshop (USA), and is currently writing a piece for orkest de ereprijs as part of the 2014 20th International Young Composers Meeting (The Netherlands). Holly’s   music   has   been   performed and commissioned in Australia, Asia, Europe and the USA by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Minot Symphony Orchestra, Hwaum Chamber Orchestra, National Taiwan University Orchestra, Chronology Arts, Ensemble Offspring’s  Jason  Noble, and Antonietta Loffredo.

For more information on Holly Harrison and her music, visit https://soundcloud.com/hollyharrisoncomposer.

Texu Kim

Texu Kim’s works have been performed by Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Indiana University Symphonic Choir, Ensemble Reconsil Vienna, Contemporary Directions Ensemble, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble TIMF, among others. His music has earned awards and honors from Minnesota Composer Institute, the Aspen Music Festival and School, Isang Yun International Composition Prize, Joong-Ang Music Concours, Tongyeong International Music Festival Asian Composers Showcase et al.  His upcoming performances include those in ACDA Cincinnati Regional Convention, in Ensemble Reconsil Exploring World Festival, and in AGO Boston National Convention.

Along with his contemporary music, Mr. Kim’s arrangement/orchestration works have been commissioned and performed widely, as in Insbrook Music Festival, in Piece & Piano Festival, by Ensemble Mode, and by Chamber Music Society of Kumho Art Hall, to name a few recent examples.  His arrangements are featured on three albums of soprano Sumi Jo – “Libera”, “Ich Liebe Dich”, and “Missing You”. He has also participated as an arranger in albums of harpist Jung Kwak, violinists Chee-Yun and Suyoen Kim, pianist Yeol-Eum Son, Daegum (Korean traditional wind instrument) player Jeong-Seung Kim, et al.  Additionally, he wrote more than 50 songs for toddlers, which were published by Bicycle Korea.

Texu’s principal teachers are Claude Baker, Unsuk Chin, Sven-David Sandström, David Dzubay, and Sangjick Jun.  He is currently pursuing a doctorate in composition with minor in electronic music under Jeffrey Hass and John Gibson as well as in music theory at Indiana University, where he serves as an Associate Instructor in music theory.  He holds a master’s and a bachelor’s degree in composition from Seoul National University, where he also earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. In 1998 he was a silver medal winner at the International Chemistry Olympiad in Melbourne, Australia.

For more information on Texu Kim and his music, visit https://soundcloud.com/texu-kim.

José Guillermo Martínez Rubiano

Colombian composer and percussionist born in Cali, Valle del Cauca in 1983. He obtained his diploma in performance and composition at the Conservatory of Music at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá in 2009.  He studied percussion with Mario Sarmiento and Federico Demmer and composition with Harold Vásquez-Castañeda, Moisés Bertrán and Gustavo Parra.

In 2009 he received the National Composition Prize for Young composers (under 25 years) from the National Ministry of Culture for his piece Suamox for Vibraphone and Marimba. This piece was in the same year premiered and recorded by him. In 2011 he won the XIV National Composition Contest “Ciudad de Bogotá” for the piece Monólogo III – For Flute solo and percussion quintet.

His music is focused on the development of percussion and most of his works are set for these instruments but he has also written several pieces for other chamber ensembles like his String quartet No.1 and his Brass quintet Oxímoron, Sobre uno mismo (About one self) for solo flute and ensemble, premiered for the Spanish group “Taller Sonoro”. Last year he composed a Double Marimba Concerto to be premiered this year. His latest works are Monologue II for vibraphone and live electronics and Mutaciones I (Mutations I) for Orchestra, for this last piece he recently received the IX National Cultural Prize from the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia. His current projects are a song cycle upon Latin-American Poetry called Canciones de la Ausencia (Songs of the Absence) and his String quartet no. 2.

As percussionist he won at 2004 the National Musical Performance Contest “Ciudad de Bogotá” and as soloist he has performed in the most important concert hall in Colombia. As Chamber musician he has been part of the percussion ensembles Contempo, Sinergia Ensamble, Octopus and is the current music director for Ictu5 percussion ensemble. He was co-founder of the of the Conservatory’s Contemporary Music Ensemble at the National University of Colombia.

Currently he is a Master of Music in Composition student at the University of Missouri where he is working with Dr. Thomas McKenney and Dr. William Lackey.

Nicholas S. Omiccioli

Nicholas S. Omiccioli (b. 1982) is currently a resident with the Charlotte Street Urban Culture Project in Kansas City and production coordinator of newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. He was recently awarded a 2013 residency at Copland House and was a finalist for the 2013 Rome Prize. His works have been performed in Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Austria, Lithuania, Thailand, New Zealand, China, Sweden, and throughout the United States. Nick has worked with the Jasper String Quartet, Calder Quartet, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Curious Chamber Players, DuoSolo, Ensemble Platypus, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, l’Orchestre de la francophonie, Society for New Music, Brave New Works, Contemporaneous, Wild Rumpus New Music Collective, Kansas City Chorale, and the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers, among others. In 2014, Nick will participate in the Berkeley Symphony's Under Construction New Music Readings through the American Composers Orchestra Earshot program. Nick has been commissioned by the Wellesley Composers Conference, Aspen Music Festival and School, Shouse Institute at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, National Arts Centre in Canada, Third Angle Ensemble, and Animus Ensemble. In addition to many awards, grants, fellowships, Nick was a finalist in representing the United States at ISCM 2014 World Music Days in Warsaw, Poland. His primary composition teachers include James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Brian Bevelander, Paul Rudy, and Zhou Long, and has additionally studied with João Pedro Oliveira and Stephen Hartke. Nick holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he was a Preparing Future Faculty Fellow and Heidelberg University.

For more information on Nicholas S. Omiccioli and his music, visit http://nicholasomiccioli.com.

Michael Lee Schachter

Michael Schachter (b.1987) is a composer, pianist, theorist and teacher based in Ann Arbor, MI.  His music draws from an eclectic brew of influences including jazz and New Orleans, Renaissance polyphony, Jewish liturgy and klezmer, and South Indian classical music.  Recent and upcoming projects include premieres with the New York Virtuoso Singers, the Vocal Essence Ensemble Singers, and the Aurea Silva Trio, as well as collaborations with the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, bass-baritone Davone Tines, saxophonist Eddie Goodman, and vina virtuoso Karaikudi S. Subramanian. In 2013, on the occasion of a historic partnership with the Gershwin family, the University of Michigan commissioned him to compose a mash-up of the University's fight song Hail to the Victors and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. The resulting Rhapsody in Maize and Blue was premiered by Kenneth Kiesler and the University Symphony Orchestra in a concert featuring singer Audra McDonald. Michael has received recognition from BMI, ASCAP, and the American Composers Forum. His orchestral work Freylekhe Tanzen was selected for the 2015 Minnesota Orchestra Institute.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Michael earned his BA from Harvard in 2009, where he directed the Harvard Chamber Singers and founded and directed the Harvard Jazz Collective.  As a jazz pianist, he has performed in concerts and master classes with Herbie Hancock, Joshua Redman, Roy Haynes, Roy Hargrove, Don Byron, and many others.  He spent the 2009-2010 academic year in Chennai, India studying South Indian classical singing and vina playing.  He is currently working towards a Ph.D. in Music Theory and Composition at the University of Michigan, where he has worked with Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng, Paul Schoenfield, and Evan Chambers. He watched the Red Sox win Game 6 of the World Series at Fenway Park this past fall and can now die in peace.

For more information on Michael Lee Schachter and his music, visit http://www.michaelschachter.com.

Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang

Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang is a Taiwanese composer whose work draws on her eclectic musical palette, ranging from Western and non-Western classics to jazz and pop. She seeks to capture the transience of momentary beauty and individual identity through the juxtaposition of musical oppositions and through constant transformation and flow, revealing complexity within simplicity.

Ms. Wang’s music has been performed across North America, Europe, and Asia at venues including Carnegie Hall, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Aspen Music Festival, MASS MoCA, Logos Foundation, Herz Jesu-Kirche, Kitara Hall, and Hong Kong Arts Centre. She has collaborated with performers such as Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, MIVOS Quartet, conductors David Gilbert, Brad Lubman, Paul Chiang, and visual artists Alice Grassi and Takeshi Moro.

Recent honors include the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music competition, 21st century piano commission, Look and Listen Festival Composition Prize, an Encore Grant from the American Composers Forum, a Composer Assistance Program of New Music USA Award, among others. Her music can be heard on the ArpaViva Foundation Inc label, WQXR, and WNYC. Her scores are now available on BabelScores.

For more information on Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang and her music, visit http://www.ashleywang.com.

Christopher Weiss

Christopher Weiss’ music has been hailed by the New York Times as “wonderfully fluid [with a] cinematic grasp of mood and lighting.” He has received commissions and performances from the Huntsville Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, the Boston Chamber Orchestra, the Lancaster Symphony, the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic, the Columbia Orchestra, and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer-in-Residence at Twickenham Fest and Young Composer-in-Residence at Music from Angel Fire.

Christopher’s opera In a Mirror, Darkly (written with librettist S. O’Duinn Magee) was awarded a Domenic J. Pellicciotti Prize by SUNY Potsdam. Excerpts from the opera have been performed by the New York City Opera at their VOX showcase and at the John Duffy Composer Institute as part of the Virginia Arts Festival. Excerpts will be performed by the Fort Worth Opera at their Frontiers showcase and by the Crane Opera Ensemble and Orchestra.

Christopher has been in residence at Yaddo, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. He was a recipient of a Theodore Presser Foundation Career Grant, and was the youngest competitor ever to win the Jacksonville Symphony’s “Fresh Ink” competition. His music has been played on many local radio stations and was featured on American Public Media’s “Performance Today.” He holds degrees from Rollins College and the Curtis Institute of Music.

For more information on Christopher Weiss and his music, visit http://christopherweiss.net.

Jason Thorpe Buchanan

Jason Thorpe Buchanan (b. 1986) is an American composer of contemporary concert music. His work draws from a broad variety of aesthetic genres and influences, and has been described by leading composers in the United States and Europe as "sharply-edged", "shimmering," "attractive," "symphonic," and "ambitious." He is the founder of Melos Music, a composer's consortium for which he served as director from 2007-2012, as well as their annual New Music Concert series. Jason spent 2010-2011 living in Hamburg, Germany, where he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater as a visiting scholar for studies with Peter Michael Hamel and Manfred Stahnke, as well as courses with Georg Hajdu, and Sascha Lino Lemke while conducting research and interviews in regard to compositional process and aesthetics.

In 2012, his First Study for Alto Saxophone: doublethink, commissioned by Michael Rene Torres, was premiered at the North American Saxophone Alliance biennial conference in Tempe, AZ, receiving the Belle S. Gitelman award from the Eastman School of Music. The same year a collaboration with MacArthur "Genius" Award winning visual artist Anna Schuleit, First Study for Piano & Electronics: absence, was premiered by Daniel Pesca for the Benson Creative Forum at Eastman. Asymptotic Flux: First Study in Entropy for amplified bass clarinet, violin, viola & cello was co-commissioned by the [Switch~ Ensemble]/Ossia in Rochester and ensemble39 in Philadelphia. In 2011 his Berlin Songs, for two singers and mixed chamber ensemble, were premiered for a capacity audience at the Akademie der Künste during the Pan-European Fulbright conference in Berlin, Germany under the baton of Thomas Heuser, who commissioned the work alongside the German/American Fulbright Kommission. An expanded orchestration was later recorded and premiered in the U.S. at the 2nd Annual Melos New Music Concert in San Francisco, conducted by the composer. This recording later became a finalist in both the "American Prize" orchestral composition competition (2012) and the ASCAP Morton Gould composition competition (2012).

In 2010 three chapters of his orchestral work -The Gods of Pegãna, were read by the Brevard Music Center Orchestra under the baton of Ken Lam. The work was later awarded the distinction of finalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould composition competition (2011), and Honorable Mention in both the ACF Minnesota Composer's Institute competition (2011) and the ACO Underwood/San Diego readings competition (2012). Three excerpts from this work in chamber orchestra reduction were later given their premiere public performance with the Sound ExChange Orchestra in collaboration with the University of Rochester Program of Dance and Movement, conducted by the composer. In 2009, A Zarzuela & Other Lost Works was premiered by the Tad Wind Symphony in Tokyo for an audience of over 800, and recorded with a CD released on the Windstream label in Japan.

Jason began his studies at age fourteen at the College of San Mateo, CA, later attending San José State University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as a Master's student, where he taught courses in composition and music theory (2008-2010), receiving the highest honors from both institutions as outstanding graduating senior/graduate student. He has studied composition with Allan Schindler, Virko Baley, Peter Michael Hamel, Jorge Grossmann, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Pablo Furman, Kevin Puts, Robert Aldridge, and Manfred Stahnke, as well as additional studies with Takayoshi Suzuki and Brad Lubman in conducting, and at Darmstadt with Georges Aperghis, Brian Ferneyhough, and Raphaël Cendo.

He has received a variety of prestigious academic and artistic awards from ASCAP, ACF, MPE, the NEON and Brevard Music Festivals, UNLV, SJSU, the Eastman School of Music, the American Prize, and the Miami Beach International Animated Film Festival. Recordings of his music are commercially available on the Melos Music label in the United States and the Windstream label in Japan.

A few of his upcoming compositional engagements include commissions from Jeff Nelsen and Michael Walker for a Concerto for two Horns, a work for 14 musicians and live electronics for the [Switch~ Ensemble], and a quartet for Iktus Percussion in NYC. Jason currently studies composition with Robert Morris and holds a Graduate Teaching Assistantship at the Computer Music Center as a Ph.D. student at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.

For more information on Jason Thorpe Buchanan and his music, visit www.jasonthorpebuchanan.com.

Ryan Chase

Ryan Chase (b.1987) has had his music has been performed in venues ranging from dive bars to Carnegie Hall by such ensembles as Alaria, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, CIRCE, Contemporaneous, the IU New Music Ensemble, the Chelsea Symphony, the Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, and new music soprano Ariadne Greif.

His music has received national recognition from many of the country's most prestigious musical institutions, including two consecutive BMI Student Composer Awards in 2011 (William Schuman Prize for Most Outstanding Entry – Gold Rush) and 2012 (The Light Fantastic); the Audience Choice Award from the 2012 American Composers Orchestra Underwood Readings; 1st Prize in the 2011 National Association of Composers USA Young Composers’ Competition; the Jean Schneider Goberman Award; and the Bohuslav Martinú Award.

This season will feature the official premiere of The Light Fantastic by the IU Symphony Orchestra in September conducted by Constantine Kitsopoulos.

Ryan is currently pursuing a DM at Indiana University where he also teaches undergraduate courses in post-tonal ear training and theory. He holds degrees from Indiana University (MM 2010) and the Mannes College of Music (BM 2008). He currently studies with David Dzubay and has also studied primarily with Claude Baker, Keith Fitch, Don Freund, Gabriela Ortíz, and David Tcimpidis. He studied computer music at IU with Jeffrey Hass, John Gibson, and Alicyn Warren. Ryan is a member of ASCAP.

For more information on Ryan Chase and his music, visit www.ryanmchase.com.

Andrew Davis

Andrew Davis (b. 1986) is a composer and electric guitarist from Columbia, MD. He has written works for both electronic media and acoustic ensembles including band, chorus, and various chamber ensembles. Andrew draws inspiration from all sources, but especially from popular music in which his first interests in music began.

Andrew's early musical experiences were in the elementary and middle school band where he played trombone and euphonium. In high school, Andrew fell in love with the guitar, joining multiple groups and playing a wide range of styles including jazz, funk, and rock. It was in these idioms where Andrew's first interests in composition began. In 2005, Andrew enrolled at Yale University where he began formal composition studies under the direction of Michael Klingbeil and Kathryn Alexander. Andrew graduated cum laude with distinction in the major.

Andrew's music has been performed by numerous ensembles/performers including the Argento Ensemble, the Yale Concert Band, the Yale Percussion Ensemble, the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, the Axiom Saxophone Quartet, the Yale Chamber singers, and counter)induction. Andrew's music has received recognition from Vox Novus, SEAMUS/ASCAP, and ISCM World Music Days among others.

Between college and graduate school, Andrew worked as a production assistant at NFL Films where he was nominated for an Emmy for his work on NFL Weekly Countdown. Currently, Andrew is pursuing a Master's degree at the University of Texas at Austin, studying under Donald Grantham, Dan Welcher, and Russell Pinkston.

For more information on Andrew Davis and his music, visit www.andrewdaviscomposer.com.

Eric Guiniavn

Eric Guinivan’s music has been performed by numerous orchestras and chamber ensembles across the United States, Europe, and Asia. His works have received several awards and honors, including three BMI Student Composer Awards, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, and grants from the Theodore Presser Foundation, and Meet the Composer. Eric has received commissions from the New York Youth Symphony, the Delaware Youth Symphony, the Firebird Ensemble, the Michigan Music Teachers Association, the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, the Society of Composers, Inc. and pianist Vicki Ray, among others.

Eric began studying percussion at age 10 and is an active performer currently based in Los Angeles. A founding member of the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, Eric has also performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles across the country. Eric made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2011 performing as soloist with the New York Youth Symphony in the premiere of his work Meditation and Awakening for percussion and orchestra. The New York Times subsequently described the work as "engaging," praising its "shimmering colors" and "frenetic energy." Eric has also performed as soloist with the Downey Symphony and the University of Southern California Thornton Symphony.

Born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, Eric received Bachelor of Music Degrees in Composition and Percussion Performance from Indiana University and holds a Masters and Doctorate from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. Eric currently teaches orchestration, music theory, and aural skills at University of Southern California and music history and theory at Renaissance Arts Academy.

For more information on Eric Guinivan and his music, visit www.ericguinivan.com.

Elizabeth A. Kelly

Elizabeth A. Kelly's works have been commissioned and performed by diverse ensembles including the Ann Arbor Symphony, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra, New York Youth Symphony, Netherlands Youth Orchestra, Albany Symphony Dogs of Desire, Liverpool Philharmonic Ensemble 10/10, ASKO Schoenberg, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and California EAR Unit. Her compositions have been performed at venues throughout the U.S. and Europe including Carnegie Hall and the Aspen, Bang on a Can Banglewood, Bowdoin, Brevard, Cabrillo, CCM Music03, Huddersfield, and Ostrava Days Festivals. Her work has been recognized with two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards and honorable mentions in the ASCAP Frederick Fennell and Rudolf Nissim competitions. She won 2nd prize at the 2009 Apeldoorn Young Composers Meeting Final Competition and 1st prize at the 2011 Young Masters XXI competition in the Netherlands.

Kelly (b. 1982) earned a Ph.D. in composition from the Eastman School of Music with the support of a Jacob Javits fellowship from the United States Department of Education and a Robert and Mary Sproull fellowship from the University of Rochester. She was awarded a Frank Beebe Fellowship for studies at The Hague Royal Conservatory. She holds an M.M. in composition from the University of Michigan School of Music, where she was awarded the Ellen Marin Memorial and full merit scholarships. She completed her B.A. in music summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa at Yale. Her work has been supported by a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, published by Donemus and released by Centaur Records.

For more information on Elizabeth Kelly and her music, visit www.elizabethakelly.com.

Wei-Chieh Lin

Wei-Chieh Lin, composer (New York,NY) was born in Taichung, Taiwan. His music has been performed at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the National Concert Halls in Taiwan. Wei-Chieh has participated in the Aspen Music Festival, the Wellesley Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center, Académie musicale de Villecroze, Domaine Forget New Music Session, and is an active participant at the Manifeste/Acanthes@Ircam Composition Workshop, Foundation Royaumont, and the Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2013. The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, the New Juilliard Ensemble, and the New Asia Chamber Music Society are among some of the ensembles that have performed or commissioned his music. Wei-Chieh has received awards including International Composer Pyramid Competition, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, two National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan Composition Competitions, three National Taiwan Symphony Commission Awards, and the Palmer Dixon Award from the Juilliard School. Wei-Chieh completed his BM, MM, and DMA in composition at Juilliard under the guidance of Milton Babbitt.

For more information on Wei-Chieh Lin and his music, visit https://soundcloud.com/wei-chieh­lin.

Greg Simon

Greg Simon, composer and jazz trumpeter, holds a B.A. from the University of Puget Sound and an M.M. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Michigan. Before coming to Michigan, Greg served on the faculty at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Greg studied composition with Carter Pann, Daniel Kellogg, Richard Toensing and Robert Hutchinson. He also studied with Kevin Puts and Robert Aldridge at the Brevard Music Institute, where he was awarded a fellowship. His works have been performed or commissioned by the Corvallis Youth Symphony; the Playground Ensemble of Denver; the Fifth House Ensemble of Chicago; and groups in California, Washington, Oregon, West Virginia, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, among many others. He has presented work at conferences for the American Band College, the College Band Directors’ National Association, the World Saxophone Congress, and the North American Saxophone Alliance, as well as being featured in radio and digital broadcasts from Pendulum New Music and WFMT. He has won the Edward Levy and George Lynn Prizes for excellence in composition from the University of Colorado, and received recognition for his works from the Pacific Chorale, CBDNA, the Fifth House Ensemble, and ASCAP. Foolish Fire for wind ensemble, written for Loveland High School, has received over 20 performances in 10 different states since its Colorado premiere. Greg’s work is featured on recordings by the California State University, Fullerton Wind Ensemble and the Fifth House Ensemble of Chicago.

As a jazz musician, Greg has studied with Bill Lucas, Brad Goode, and Darmon Meader of the New York Voices. He’s performed with the Jodi-Renee Band, the Park Hill Brass, and others at venues like Dazzle, El Chapultepec, the ATLAS Black Box, and other celebrated jazz venues in Denver and Boulder. He is active as a proponent of new music for improvising musicians; among his credits as featured soloist are appearances in world premieres from composers Michael Theodore, Hunter Ewen, Liz Comninellis, and Kari Kraakevik. Greg is a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the mens' music fraternity. He has served on the planning committee and as the media manager for the Pendulum New Music Series, and done work at the Aspen Music Festival and School. He is currently a member and publicity writer for the MELOS Music Composers’ Consortium, a group of nationally-renowned young American composers. When he's not composing, Greg enjoys hockey, microbrews and short stories.

For more information on Greg Simon and his music, visit www.gregsimonmusic.com.

David Witter

David Witter (b. 1978) is a composer, improvisor, and educator active in Columbia, MO. He holds B.M. and M.M. degrees in composition from the University of Missouri where he studied with W. Thomas McKenney and Stefan Freund. Currently he is pursuing a Missouri teaching certification for K-12, after which he will teach elementary and middle school music. As winner of the 2013 Sinquefield Composition Prize, Witter will write an original work for Mizzou's University Philharmonic, which will receive its world premiere on Monday, March 11, 2013 at the Chancellor's Concert in Columbia. His music has been performed at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis and the St. Louis Botanical Garden, and he has led performances of the MU Creative Improvisation Ensemble at conferences in Ann Arbor, MI and Paterson, NJ. He is a member of the Gamma Gamma chapter of Pi Kappa Lambda.

For more information on David Witter and his music, visit www.davidwitter.org.

Stephanie Berg

Stephanie Berg is a December 2008 graduate of the University of Missouri, having earned a Bachelor of Music degree in clarinet performance.  She continues her studies at the University of Missouri, pursuing a Master’s degree in clarinet performance and composition.  She performs in the University Philharmonic, University of Missouri’s New Music Ensemble, is principal of the 9th Street Philharmonic, and an auxiliary member of the Columbia Civic Orchestra, playing Bb, A, Eb, and Bass clarinets whenever required.

In addition to performing, Stephanie is very active in music composition.  This is her fourth year serving as the project manager of the Creating Original Music Program, and she is the 2009 recipient of the Sinquefield Composition Competition, resulting in the commissioned work, Motive and Reflection for full orchestra.  She has also received commissions from the 9th Street Philharmonic and Columbia Civic Orchestra, has had several works performed by the New Music Ensemble, including premieres at the St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum and Missouri Botanical Garden, and was the 2011 winner of state level MTNA in the composition category.

Brian Ciach

Brian Ciach (pronounced “sigh-ack“, born 1977) is an internationally performed composer and new music pianist. A native of Philadelphia, he has premiered his music across the United States, Berlin, Germany, and Pavia, Italy. The orchestral premiere of his doctoral dissertation, Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities, received the following review by Peter Jacobi of the Bloomington Herald Times: "Just listening brought moments of sheer excitement from how imaginatively the composer used his skills in orchestration to suggest chaos and furor, mystery and alarm, sympathy and wonder". Brian’s Second Piano Sonata has received both national and international recognition, winning the 2008 National Federation of Music Clubs Emil and Ruth Beyer Composition Award and the 2011 American Liszt Society’s Bicentennial Composition Competition. Also a composer of electronic music, his work Waterclocks was selected for a performance at the 2009 SEAMUS (Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States) National Conference. Brian is a graduate of the doctoral program in music composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he was also an Associate Instructor in music theory. He studied composition with P.Q. Phan, Claude Baker, Don Freund, John Gibson (electro-acoustic), Jeffrey Hass (electro-acoustic), and Sven-David Sandström at IU, with Samuel Adler at the Freie Universität Berlin, with Maurice Wright, Matthew Greenbaum, and Richard Brodhead at Temple University, and privately with Richard Wernick. He studied piano with Charles Abramovic, Lambert Orkis, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn at Temple University, and at the Darlington Arts Center with Benjamin Whitten and Harue Sato.

For more information on Brian Ciachn and his music, visit www.sigh-ackmusic.com.

David Crowell

New York City-based composer and instrumentalist David Crowell brings a “singular vision that transcends genre” (Exclaim) to diverse forms of composed and improvisational music, and has been praised for compositional work that is "notable for its crystalline sonic beauty" (Boston Globe). The Open Road, performed opening night by the JACK Quartet at the 2010 Tribeca New Music Festival, was hailed as “cinematographic” and “an inspired work” by the New York Times. David’s chamber works have also been performed at the MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, the Eastman School of Music, University of North Texas and University of Kentucky by groups such as the NOW Ensemble, Syracuse Symphony Quartet, Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble and the University of Kentucky Percussion Society. In October 2011, a new work for saxophone and electronics was premiered at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with Carlito Carvalhosa’s exhibition, Sum of Days.

His piece, Waiting in the Rain for Snow, reviewed by Michael Quinn of the Classical Review as "a meditation on the crystallization of rain or ice into snow...a hymnal to a hidden process, the sense of transformation etched and sculpted by intricate, repeated figures in guitar and piano overlaid and compounded by shifting, drifting patterns in woodwinds" has been released by the NOW Ensemble on New Amsterdam Records. David’s music has received radio play on national and international stations, including New York City’s classical station WQXR and public radio station WNYC, with features on WNYC’s New Sounds with John Schaefer.

As a woodwinds performer, David tours internationally as a member of the Philip Glass Ensemble and has also performed with the N.Y. Philharmonic, the L.A. Philharmonic, Signal Ensemble, Asphalt Orchestra and L’Arsenale.

For more information on David Crowell and his music, visit www.davidcrowell.org.

Stylianos Dimou

Stylianos Dimou is a Greek composer born in Thessaloniki, in 1988. He started his music studies at the Municipal Conservatory of Thessaloniki, degrees in Music Harmony (May 2005) and Counterpoint (May 2008) and diploma in accordion (June 2010). He initiated his studies in music composition in 2006 at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of Music Studies. He graduated in 2011 owing a Master of Music degree in Composition, supervised by Professor Christos Samaras. The same year he was accepted at the MA program in composition (Master Music) at the Eastman School of Music – University of Rochester where he is studying with Professor Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez. Finally, he has been nominated as a scholar in the International Exchange Program “Fulbright”, for the academic year 2011 – 2012.

He has collaborated with ensembles such as the dissonArt ensemble (GR), Greek ensemble of contemporary music (GR) , Idee Fixe (GR), Orpheus Soloists (GR), ALEA III (USA) and others. His activity includes seminars, workshops and competitions. Most of his works have been presented and awarded  in workshops and competitions in Greece and Abroad.

For more information on Stylianos Dimou and his music, visit www.reverbnation.com/sdimou.

Ted Goldman

Ted Goldman began his undergraduate studies in physics, and his love of patterned abstraction has continued to guide him as a composer.  Mr. Goldman graduated summa cum laude with honors in music from Columbia University in 2005.  He received his MM in composition from the Juilliard School, and has continued there as a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow.  His teachers have included Fred Lerdahl, Samuel Adler, and Christopher Rouse, among others.

Mr. Goldman’s compositions have received national and international recognition.  In 2010, Scrudge received an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Cellular Automata won eighth blackbird’s MusicX Festival competition, and his song Paint won 3rd prize in Juilliard’s

N. J. Skye Cooper Song Competition.  In 2011, his string quartet Tynexia was a winner of the Beijing Modern Music Festival’s Young Composers Project and A Fitful Sleep received the Hanson Young Composers Award, sponsored by Chamber Music Rochester and the Eastman School of Music.  He has been commissioned by the Banff Centre in Canada, the Contrasts Quartet, and twice by the New Juilliard Ensemble.

In addition to composing, Mr. Goldman loves to play, teach, and analyze music.  For five years he was a radio host at WKCR-FM NY, where he discussed music both new and old.  As a pianist, he has performed at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, The Mannes International Keyboard Institute, and the Mannes Beethoven Institute. When he is not composing, Mr. Goldman can be found running (almost) barefoot in Central Park, or playing the ancient game of Go.

For more information on Ted Goldman and his music, visit www.tedgoldman.com.

Patrick Harlin

Born in Salt Lake City, raised in Seattle, Patrick Harlin has composed and played piano since age seven. He is classically trained and experienced in jazz and modern improvisation, and draws from those idioms as well as electronic music. His compositions are informed by the intersection of the natural world and contemporary life. As such, he has a keen interest in acoustic ecology and is integrating research from that field into his doctoral studies.

Immediately after receiving his Bachelors degree in composition at Western Washington University he was hired on to teach Aural Skills. He then went on to earn a Master of Music composition from the University of Michigan, where he is currently working towards the Doctor of Musical Arts. He studies with Michael Daugherty, and has studied with Bright Sheng, Roger Briggs, Bruce Hamilton, and Lesley Sommer, as well as Erik Santos in electroacoustic music. He has participated in master classes with Samuel Adler, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, & Frederic Rzewski. Recent awards include fellowships from the University of Michigan,and best original score at the Lightworks film festival. Patrick’s compositions have been performed by outstanding artists and ensembles throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

For more information on Patrick Harlin and his music, visit www.patrickharlin.com.

Charlie Piper

Charlie Piper (b. 1982) is a London based composer. He completed his master's degree with distinction at the Royal College of Music, studying with David Sawer and Michael Zev Gordon. He is currently doing doctoral research at the Royal Academy of Music under the supervision of Philip Cashian, with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

He has been performed at the Cheltenham, Huddersfield, Gaudeamus, Bang-On-A-Can and Aix­en-Provence Festivals, the Barbican Hall, the South Bank Centre, the Roundhouse, King's Place and Le Grand Théâtre de Provence. Performers have included the London Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, the London Sinfonietta, Sentieri Selvaggi, The Esbjerg Ensemble, the Orkest 'de ereprijs', CHROMA, the English National Ballet and individuals such as Rolf Hind, Brindley Sherratt, Xian Zhang, Laurence Cummings, François-Xavier Roth, Martyn Brabbins, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Pierre-André Valade.

Awards include the 2006 Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize and the 2007 prize at the 13th International Young Composers Meeting in Apeldoorn. Charlie was a 2008-2010 New Music Associate at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge.

Recent work has included premieres in New York and Milan; a short residency in Gotland, Sweden; performances of The Twittering Machine by L’orchestre des jeunes de la Méditerranée in collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Marseille and Monaco; and the premieres of Insomniac, commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, and Borderland commissioned by Britten Sinfonia taken on tour around England.

For more information on Charlie Piper and his music, visit www.charliepiper.co.uk.

Asha Srinivasan

As an Indian-American composer, Asha Srinivasan draws from her Western musical training and her Indian heritage to create her compositional language. Her music has been presented at various national and international festivals including SEAMUS, ICMC, June in Buffalo, Spark, SCI, and the National Flute Convention. Recently, she won the Ruam Samai award at the 2011 Thailand International Composition Festival. She has also won national commissioning competitions, including the BMI Foundation's Women's Music Commission and the Flute/Cello Commissioning Circle. She has been commissioned by several other ensembles and performers, including Sequoia Chamber Players, Ant’s Elbow Duo, and clarinetist E. Michael Richards. Other honors include: the ASCAPlus Award, the Walsum prize for Kalpitha (string quartet), and the Prix d'Eté 2nd prize for Alone, Dancing (flute and electronics),which was recently released on the album Ambiance: Collaboration IV under the Beauport Classical label. Her studies include: D.M.A. in Composition at University of Maryland, College Park; M.Mus. in Computer Music Composition and Music Theory Pedagogy at the Peabody Conservatory, and B.A. at Goucher College. Ms. Srinivasan is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.

Kari Besharse

Kari Besharse is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music, a guitarist, an educator, a sci­fi nut, and an outdoors enthusiast. Her works, which use sounds from acoustic instruments, found objects, the natural world, and synthesized sounds, are often generated from a group of sonic objects or material archetypes that undergo spectral processes of rupture, degradation, distortion, and expansion. She has taught music theory, music history, and electronic music courses at Illinois Wesleyan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Southeastern Louisiana University. Her education includes undergraduate studies at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (B.M. ‘98), and graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin (M.M. ‘02) and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (D.MA. ‘09). Her music has been presented around the world by venues and organizations such as The California Ear Unit, Society of Composers, Inc., Texas Computer Musicians Network, The LaTex Festival, The Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest, ICMC, SEAMUS, Bourges, Elektrophonie, Third Practice, 60X60, The Electroacoustic Juke Joint Festival, New Music Forum, Pulse Field, and the Art of Sounds Festival at Belgrade, Serbia. Kari was awarded a Bourges Residence Prize for Small Things, an electroacoustic work written in Csound and Protools, that uses the sounds of the frogs and insects of Austin, Texas as its source material. Recent projects include Luminous Flux for the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble which premiered at the Etchings Festival last July and Embers for alto saxophonist Richard Schwartz and pianist Philip Schuessler which recently premiered in Florida.

For more information on Kari Besharse and her music, visit www.karibesharse.net.

David Biedenbender

Composer David Biedenbender’s first musical collaborations were in rock and jazz bands as an electric bassist and in wind and jazz bands as a bass trombone and euphonium player. David has had the privilege of collaborating with many talented performers and ensembles, including the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, the Juventas New Music Ensemble, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the Washington Kantorei, the Boston New Music Initiative, Composer’s Inc. (San Francisco), the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Choir, and the Vivo Sinfonietta. His music has been heard in diverse venues such as Symphony Space (New York City), the German Embassy (Washington, DC), the Middle East (Boston, MA), the Antonín Dvo?ák Museum (Prague, CZ), the Old First Church (San Francisco, CA), the Settlement Music School (Philadelphia, PA), the Interlochen Center for the Arts (Interlochen, MI), Hill Auditorium (Ann Arbor, MI), and on WNYC’s (New York City Public Radio) Soundcheck with John Schaefer. Currently working on his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition at the University of Michigan, David received his Master of Music degree in composition at the University of Michigan and his Bachelor of Music degree in composition and theory fromCentral Michigan University.

For more information on David Biedenbender and his music, visit www.davidbiedenbender.com.

Patrick David Clark

Patrick David Clark (b. 1967) is currently working on a Masters degree in orchestral conducting at the University of Missouri where he is studying with Edward Dolbashian.  Patrick holds his Bachelors degree in composition from MU where he studied with Dr. Thomas McKenney.  Patrick earned his DMA in composition from the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University studying with Arthur Gottschalk and Richard Lavenda.  Patrick is a Tanglewood Fellow (1998) and studied with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague in Holland on a Netherlands-America Foundation Grant (1999-2001). Patrick has worked since as a composer, writer for Andante.com, and teacher in Holland, Los Angeles and Albuquerque, NM.

Michael-Thomas Foumai

The music of Michael-Thomas Foumai has been performed across the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Thailand. He holds a degree in composition from the University of Hawaii (UH) and is currently studying at the University of Michigan (UM). His teachers have included Bright Sheng, Michael Daugherty, Donald Reid Womack, Byron Yasui, Takeo Kudo, Thomas Osborne and Peter Askim. He has worked with David Felder, Robert Beaser and Steven Stucky at the EarShot New Music Readings, with Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, Jon Magnussen, Neil McKay and has participated in master classes with Tristan Murail, Jia Daqun, Xu Shuya and Robert Morris. His works have received awards and honors from Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the American String Teachers Association (ASTA), American Music Center, Meet the Composer, Aspen Music Festival and School, the Transatlantic Arts Consortium (TAC), the Presser Foundation, Austin Peay State University and many more.

His works have beenperformed by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Daegu Contemporary Music Orchestra, UH Symphony Orchestra, UM Philharmonia Orchestra, the Orchestra Unleashed, the Definiens Project, Ebb and Flow Arts, Royal Hawaiian Band, the Hawaii Youth Symphony and the Honolulu Symphony and Chorus among others. Recent International Composition Festival, Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Festival, Shanghai New Music Week, Fresno New Music Festival and at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theatre at Disney Hall in Los Angeles.

For more information on Michael-Thomas Foumai and his music, visit www.michaelfoumai.com.

Yotam Haber

Yotam Haber, 34, born in Holland and grew up in Israel, Nigeria, and Milwaukee.  He has been a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival and been in residence at the Aaron Copland House, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, Bogliasco, Yaddo and MacDowell Colonies. His music has been performed in prestigious halls throughout Germany, Italy, Ireland, Holland, and across the U.S. Haber resides in New York City and is a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow. Recent performances include the Flux Quartet performing Torus in New York City’s Bargemusic, the Knights Ensemble premiering NEW GHETTO MUSIC at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (commissioned by Meet the Composer), and A Wine-Dark Sea at the Brooklyn Lyceum (commissioned by the MATA Festival), and hailed by the New Yorker magazine critic, Alex Ross as “deeply haunting.” He was a 2007-2008 Rome Prize Fellow in Music at the American Academy in Rome where he researched the music of the Jewish community of Rome as well as collaborating in Berlin with Bulgarian-American artist Daniel Bozhkov on the 30th anniversary of the first German in space; in Holland with Dutch artist Maria Barnas on a Stendhal Syndrome project; and in Switzerland with Pritzker Prize­winning architect Peter Zumthor on two chamber music works. Haber will be a composer-in­residence at UCLA in May 2011. He serves as Artistic Director of MATA.

For more information on Yotam Haber and his music, visit www.yotamhaber.com.

Clint Needham

The music of Clint Needham has been described as “wildly entertaining” (New York Times), “easy to smile at” (Philadelphia Inquirer), and “well-crafted and arresting… riveting” (Herald Times).  Recently named recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Clint’s music has been recognized with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Project 440 Commission, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, the William Schuman Prize/BMI Student Composer Award, the Jacob Druckman Prize from the Aspen Music Festival, First Prize in the International Ticheli Composition Contest, the Heckscher Prize from Ithaca College, a Lee Ettelson Composer Award and the coveted Underwood New Music Commission from the American Composers Orchestra.

Clint’s orchestral music has been commissioned and performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Omaha Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Aspen Concert Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, Symphony in C, and the United States Air Force Band of the West, among others.  Various chamber groups including the American Brass Quintet, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Indiana University New Music Ensemble, President’s Own Marine Band Brass Quintet, Quintet Attacca, Stanford Wind Quintet, and the Wingra Woodwind Quintet have given performances of his chamber music across the country, as well as in Europe, Japan, and Australia. 

Upcoming commissions include works for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New York Classical Players, Bloomington Symphony Orchestra, Sioux City Symphony, Texarkana Symphony Orchestra, and a trumpet concerto for the Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory Wind Ensemble with Cleveland Orchestra trumpeter, Jack Sutte.  He is also writing a chamber works for American Brass Quintet bass trombonist, John Rojak, the Kolot Ensemble, and the Mirari Brass Quintet.

Clint is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Ohio Wesleyan University.  He earned his doctorate degree from Indiana University, where he was a four-year Jacobs School of Music doctoral fellow in composition.  His principal teachers include Claude Baker, Loris Chobanian, David Dzubay, Michael Gandolfi, Per Mårtensson, Sven-David Sandström, and Richard Wernick.  Clint has also studied with Robert Beaser, Syd Hodkinson, Christopher Rouse, and George Tsontakis at the Aspen Music Festival as a Susan and Ford Schumann composition Clint’s music is published by the Theodore Presser Company with additional works published by Manhattan Beach Music and Triplo Press.  Recordings of his works can be found on the Summit Records and Mark Masters labels, and by the United States Air Force Band of the West.

For more information on Clint Needham and his music, visit www.clintneedham.com.

Steven Snowden

Steven Snowden (ASCAP) creates music for a diverse array of settings including theater, dance, film, multimedia installations, and the concert stage. He has focused much of his recent work on interdisciplinary collaboration and is quite active as a performer in both acoustic and electronic mediums. Raised in rural Southwest Missouri, Snowden began composition studies in 2002, received his Masters degree in composition at the University of Colorado and is currently pursuing his DMA at the University of Texas at Austin. His works have been performed by many outstanding ensembles at numerous festivals and concert series across five continents.

Recent awards in composition include 1st Prize in the 2010 Left Coast Chamber Ensemble Composition Contest, the 2010 Austin Critics' Table Award for Best Original Composition, the George Lynn Memorial Composition Prize and a 2009 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. He is also currently in the final round of applicants for a 2011-2012 Fulbright Grant to develop interactive motion tracking systems in Portugal.

For more information on Steven Snowden and his music, visit www.stevensnowden.com.

Liza White

Liza White's music has been performed by leading ensembles such as the University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble, the Charlestown Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet, and ALEA III under the direction of Gunther Schuller.  Liza has won numerous awards and honors including the Craig and Janet Swan Prize, the Margaret Blackburn Biennial Composition Competition, and an Emil and Ruth Beyer Award from the National Federation of Music Clubs.  She has participated in the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, California Summer Music, the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice, and the Composers’ Conference at Wellesley College, and has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. This summer, she will attend New Music on the Point and the Mizzou New Music Festival and collaborate with 5th House Ensemble, Jennifer Beattie, and Alarm Will Sound. Liza received her Master of Music degree in Composition from the New England Conservatory of Music and her Bachelor of Music degree in Composition and Trombone Performance from Boston University. She has also studied at the Royal College of Music in London, England.  Liza co-founded and co-directed Embryonic NOISE!, a Boston area concert series featuring works by emerging composers, in 2008-2009. She is currently working toward a PhD in Composition at the University of California at Berkeley.

For more information on Liza White and her music, visit www.lizawhitemusic.com.

Francisco Cortés-Álvarez

Pianist/composer Francisco Cortés-Álvarez was born in Mexico City and received a degree in music composition with honorific mention and the Gabino Barreda Medal from the National School of Music (ENM), National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).  Currently Cortes-Alvarez is pursuing a master’s of music degree in composition at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.  He received two consecutive Susan & Ford Schumann grants to study with Steven Stucky (2005) and George Tsontakis (2006) at the Aspen Musical Festival and School.  Cortes-Alvarez also has participated in workshops with composer Mario Davidovsky and the Cassatt String Quartet.  From 2006 to 2007 he served as resident composer for the ONIX Ensemble in Mexico.

Christopher Dietz

The music of Milwaukee native Christopher Dietz has been recognized by honors and awards from Copland House, Canada’s Banff Centre and National Arts Centre, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions and Composer Institute, the League of Composers/ISCM Orchestral Competition, the Riverside Symphony Composer Reading Project (NYC), North/South Consonance (NYC), the Chicago Ensemble’s Discover America competition, the Utah Arts Festival’s Orchestral Commission Prize, New Music Festival at Bowling Green State University, the Music08 festival at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the NewMusic@ECU festival, the Society of Composers Inc., as well as numerous academic scholarships and fellowships.  In the fall of 2009 he was in residence at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France.

Commissions include works for the Mellon Foundation, the Toledo Symphony, the Utah Arts Festival Orchestra, TACTUS (NYC), the Actors Company Theater (NYC), the ACM Ensemble (Chicago), the Aeolus New Music Festival, the Toledo Clarinet Quartet, members of the Detroit Symphony, the Eero Trio, Atalanta (punk band), the Milwaukee Young Artists Festival, the Wisconsin State Honors Project, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the Madison Children's Choir, among others. 

Christopher holds a Ph.D. in Composition and Theory from the University of Michigan where he studied with William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, Michael Daugherty, Betsy Jolas, and Andrew Mead.  In addition, he holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Wisconsin.  He has taught composition at Hillsdale College in Michigan and is currently a visiting assistant professor at the Oberlin Conservatory.

For more information on Christopher Dietz and his music, visit www.christopherdietz.org.

Paul Dooley

Paul Dooley has “clearly learned how to deal with the orchestra” (composer Steve Reich) and his music “shimmered beautifully” (Omaha World-Herald). Mr. Dooley (b. 1983) is acomposer, pianist, and percussionist currently working on his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Michigan. He grew up in the California wine country just inland from the Pacific and began composing music at age 12.His compositions take inspiraton from dance, nature & travel. Paul’s Dani’s Dance (2007), inspired by his travel and dance fanatic mother, received a 2008 Morton Gould YoungComposer Award. Encaenia (2008), inspired by the Grecian Elusian mysteries, commissioned and premiered by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, was featured in a master class with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. His Pomo Canyon Air (2005); an homage to the SonomaCoast, has been performed by five different orchestras, and read by the Detroit Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin.

Other performances of Paul’s music include those by the Juventas New Music Ensemble, Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, and the University of Michigan Symphony Band Chamber Winds. Recent awards include fellowships from the Aspen Music Festval and University of Michigan, and commissions from the Michigan Music TeachersAssociaton, and members of the San Francisco Ballet.

For more information on Paul Dooley and his music, visit www.pauldooley.net.

Moon Young Ha

Composer Moon Young Ha combines classical instruments, video, and electronics to create ethereal contemporary concert music. His work has been presented at festivals and concerts in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Serbia, Lithuania, Canada and the United States including the International Computer Music Conference, Bang On A Can Marathon, Vilniaus Veidai Festival, Etchings Contemporary Music Festival, SoundImageSound, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Western Oregon University NewMusic Festival, NoiseFloor Festival, New Music Miami ISCM Festival, KoMA Festival, Electroacoustic Music Midwest, Society of Composers Inc. Conference, among others. He has collaborated with visual artist/composer Dennis Miller, and his music has been performed by the LOOS ensemble, orkest de ereprijs, East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, R&R Electronics, Eric Mandat, Florida International University SymphonyOrchestra and the University of Illinois New Music Ensemble. Moon Youg Ha is the director and frequent conductor of MEANS, a contemporary music ensemble that was formed for the purpose of performing new music by young composers. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree and is completing his Master of Music degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the fall of 2010, he will be starting his Ph.D in Music Composition/!eory at New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science.

For more information on Moon Young Ha and his music, visit www.moonyoung.net.

Amy Beth Kirsten

Amy Beth Kirsten (b. 8/21/1972 in East St. Louis, Illinois) began composing late in life, having had her first composition lesson at the age of 30. Prior to this she studied piano performance and vocal jazz as an undergraduate and secretly composed when she was supposed to be practicing. Since then she has gone on to participate in some of the most coveted opportunities for young composers. She was most recently named the Missouri Composer Laureate, a one-year appointment culminating in the premier of a new work. Last season, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop, read her new orchestra piece The Girl He Drew. She also received a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Italy to develop a new opera (2009), was a finalist for the Rome Prize in Musical Composition (2008), and has held fellowships at Norfolk New Music Workshop and Bang on a Can Summer Festival (2009). Ms. Kirsten earned a BA in Vocal Jazz Studies from Illinois’ Benedictine University, a Master’s Degree in Composition from Chicago College of Performing Arts and a Doctorate in Music Composition from Peabody Conservatory. She currently lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut where she has taught The History of Rock and Society at University of Connecticut. Before moving to the east coast, Ms. Kirsten was a regular fixture in the Chicago singer-songwriter scene performing at such venues as Fitzgerald’s Nightclub, Quenchers Saloon, The Subterranean, Katerina's, and Uncommon Ground.

For more information on Amy Beth Kirsten and her music, visit www.amybethkirsten.com.

Jeremy Podgursky

A proud native of Louisville, KY, Jeremy Podgursky is a composer of chamber, orchestral and electronic music.  He received his B.M. and M.M. in music composition and piano from the University of Louisville where he studied privately with Steve Rouse, Marc Satterwhite, and John Gibson. He taught music theory/aural skills and private composition lessons at the University of Louisville, and created and taught multiple after-school composition programs in Louisville area public high schools. Currently located in Bloomington, IN, Jeremy has a Jacobs School of Music Doctoral Fellowship (D.M.) at Indiana University where he is studying with Don Freund, John Gibson and Alicyn Warren.

Jeremy’s music has been featured in venues and festivals in the United States, the Netherlands and Japan. His music has been performed by professional groups such as Arsenal Trio, Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, Dana Winograd (cellist), Juventas! New Music Ensemble, and the North/South Consonance Chamber Orchestra.  Recent awards and honors include first-place winner of the 2007 National SCI/ASCAP commissioning award, honorable mention in the 2008 Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute, winner of the 2009 Northridge Prize (Cal State University Northridge) for orchestra, and participant in the 2009 American Composers Orchestra/EARSHOT readings with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (Delta David Gier, conductor).

Jeremy is the founder/singer/songwriter/guitarist of the psychedelic/indie rock band THE PENNIES.  Having shared the stages with the likes of My Morning Jacket, Mike Watt, The Grifters, Superchunk, Archers of Loaf, and the Apples in Stereo, THE PENNIES have entertained audiences all over the U.S. and Europe.

For more information on Jeremy Podgursky and his music, visit www.jeremypodgursky.com.

Zhou Juan

A native of Sichuan, raised in Kelamayi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China, Zhou Juan graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM) in Beijing where she received her BA and MA degrees in Composition studying with Guo Wenjing. In 2007, she was awarded as the first Edgar Snow Scholar from CCOM and started pursuing her doctoral degree at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, instructed by Zhou Long, Paul Rudy, Chen Yi, and James Mobberley. She is now a UMKC Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellowship recipient. As a promising composer, Ms. Zhou received awards including Chinese Music Golden Bell Award of the Association of Literature and Arts of China, GEDOK (Confederation of Associations of Women Artists and Patrons of the Arts) International Composition Competition, “Liu Tianhua” Award for Chinese Traditional Instrument, “Palatino” Awards, Staunton Music Festival Emerging Composer Award, and 2 times UMKC Chamber Composition Competition. She received commissions and fellowships from the Nieuw Ensemble, Kansas City Electronic Music & Arts Alliance, Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, Virginia Arts Festival, California Summer Music, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Arts, Chinese Education Ministry, Viacom-Sumner M. Redstone Scholarship, Bao Steel Education Award, Fu Chengxian Commemorate Scholarship Foundation, and Edgar Snow Foundation for her outstanding achievement on-and off-campus. Her music has been performed in Beijing, Hong Kong, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, and is well recognized for its infinite imagination, drama and delicacy.

For more information on Zhou Juan and her music, visit www.zhoujuanmusic.com.