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Composer

Joy Guidry

Joy Guidry

Radical self-love, compassion, laughter and the drive to promote and amplify Black art-makers and noise-makers are at the core of Clifton Joseph Guidry III’s work. The New York City-based bassoonist, composer, and activist excels in many spheres, with performances hailed by the San Diego Tribune as “lyrical and haunting… hair-raising and unsettling…” Clifton is not only a versatile and acclaimed bassoonist, but they are also an improviser and composer of experimental and daring new works that proclaim Clifton’s love of storytelling. In all aspects of his work, Clifton is supporting, hiring and promoting Black artists within their practice. In honoring their ancestors and those who came before them Clifton’s compositions channel their inner child.

Kalia Vandever

Kalia Vandever

Kalia Vandever is a trombonist, composer, and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. She released her debut album, "In Bloom" in May, 2019 which features all of her original compositions written for quartet and duo with guitar. She has toured and performed internationally with her quartet, as well as a side-woman. Kalia is also an active composer and arranger. She has been commissioned to write works for groups and individuals including Tesla Quartet, The Westerlies, Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim, and Hats & Heels Duo.

Olivia Shortt

Olivia Shortt

(They/Them: Anishinaabe, Nipissing First Nation) Olivia Shortt is a Tkarón:to and US-based multi/trans-disciplinary performing artist. They are a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, noisemaker, improviser, composer, sound designer, curator, administrator, and producer. Highlights include their Lincoln Center (NYC) debut in 2018 with the International Contemporary Ensemble, their film debut performing in Atom Egoyan’s 2019 film ‘Guest of Honour’, as well as recording an album two kilometres underground with Stereoscope in the SnoLAB (Neutrino Lab in Sudbury, Canada). Recent commissions include Long Beach Opera (Songbook 2020), the JACK Quartet (JACK Studio), a new opera for Loose Tea Music Theatre (Toronto), and Arraymusic Ensemble (Toronto, 2022). Shortt was a finalist for the 2021 Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award as well as awarded and named one of the 2020 Buddies in Bad Times Theatre's Emerging Queer Artists. Shortt is featured in the 2020 Winter edition of Musicworks Magazine.

Yuma Uesaka

Yuma Uesaka

Yuma Uesaka (b. 1991) is a saxophonist, clarinetist, and improviser-composer mostly known for his work in jazz and creative music. Since his arrival to New York City in 2014, Yuma quickly built a reputation for his tenacious yet adaptable improvisational sensibilities. As an advocate for music that celebrates modernity, hybridity, and rigor, Yuma works across diverse musical communities including jazz, creative music, and new classical music…

Jeremy Viner

Jeremy Viner

Jeremy Viner is a Brooklyn-based performer, composer, and educator involved in a wide range of musical idioms. As a saxophonist and clarinetist, Jeremy has performed nationally and internationally with ensembles led by John Hollenbeck, Steve Lehman, Tyshawn Sorey, and Rafiq Bhatia among many others. Jeremy is also a member of the genre-bending tenor saxophone quartet Battle Trance and the chamber minimalist ensemble Bing & Ruth.

Charlotte Greve

Charlotte Greve

Charlotte Greve is a Brooklyn-based alto saxophonist, composer, and singer originally from Germany. She has released eight albums as a leader, two of which received the ECHO Jazz Prize (German equivalent of a GRAMMY). In April 2022 she was awarded the German Jazz Prize as Artist of the Year…

David Leon

David Leon

Performing on alto saxophone, alto flute, and soprano saxophone, David Leon leads the ensemble. In his compositions and woodwind playing alike, he explores the use of alternate timbres and the ways in which those sounds can combine to generate new hybrids…

Stephen Boegehold

Stephen Boegehold

Stephen Boegehold is a drummer and composer based in New York City. As a collaborator, Stephen has worked with many of his generation’s forward-thinking jazz and improvising artists including Roulette Intermedium Artists in Residence Sonya Belaya and Nick Dunston, whose 2020 release Atlantic Extraction: Live at Threes appeared on Downbeat’s best albums of 2020 list…

Tal Yahalom

Tal Yahalom

Tal Yahalom is an Israeli guitarist, composer and bandleader based in Brooklyn, New York.
In his music he seeks to create engaging storytelling, attentive interplay and distinct sonic environments, weaving together influences and elements of hard-bop, alternative-rock, impressionistic classical music and improvised music…

Florian Herzog

Florian Herzog

Florian Herzog, (1989) bassist and composer, is a pioneer of the German and international jazz and avant-garde scenes. After living and working in the Netherlands, Cologne and finally New York, he now writes for projects that are avant-garde jazz, pop or electronic, but also always all of the above. His bass playing has been described by the press as "emancipated, spirited and sensitive.”…

Henry Fraser

Henry Fraser

Born in Boston, MA in 1991, Henry Fraser grew up immersed in music - singing, playing piano and cello, studying theory and ear training. He began playing the double bass at 14, sparking an interest in improvisation via the music of Charles Mingus. Fraser moved to NYC in 2014, after graduating from New England Conservatory of Music, and has been actively working in the areas of jazz, free-improv, noise, and spectral music…

Miranda Agnew

Miranda Agnew

Miranda Agnew is a trumpet player, composer, and improviser entering her final year of the dual degree program between Harvard and the New England Conservatory of Music. She has performed and recorded original compositions with musicians from her hometown Tucson, Arizona, Boston, and Amsterdam, and recently took part in a ten day improvisation centered gathering held at the Institute for the Musical Arts. Miranda has been mentored by musicians such as Kris Davis, Vijay Iyer, Claire Chase, and Jason Palmer, and attended the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. In addition to performing, she taught at the University of Arizona’s summer jazz workshop and designed an educational project for highschoolers that centers women in the history of Jazz and Creative Music. She is deeply invested in building welcoming, supportive, and bold spaces for music-making, and hopes to spend a lifetime building connections to other people through art.

Isabel Crespo Pardo

Isabel Crespo Pardo

Isabel Crespo Pardo (they/them) is an NYC-based latinx vocalist, improviser, and composer creating art that constantly evolves to reflect the intra/interpersonal spaces they inhabit. Their practice is nourished by curiosity and (dis)comfort. Reveling in soft chaos, they embrace openness and specificity to create poetic work.

Lesley Mok

Lesley Mok

Informed by Afrological principles of drum ensemble playing, Lesley Mok performs on a percussion kit assembled especially for the ensemble. She combines bongos, cowbells, temple blocks, cymbals, and floor tom, and employs diverse performance techniques to produce a dynamic range of timbres and orchestrations. A true experimentalist, she has been mentored by Vijay Iyer, Henry Threadgill, Danilo Perez, Terri Lyne Carrington, and others.

Ryan Francis

Ryan Francis

 
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Portland-based composer Ryan Francis has cultivated a deeply personal aesthetic across a wide array of musical projects ranging from an extensive catalogue for piano solo to a series of works for diverse synthesizers. His music has been described as “shimmering,” “focused” and “warmly lyrical.” (New York Times) Recent and ongoing projects include Prophet Cycle for the Prophet-6 synthesizer with pianist Conor Hanick, The Living Fabric, a collaborative composition with violinist and composer Emily Wells, and Quartet for four monophonic synthesizers. Francis’s works for dance include two collaborations with choreographer Pontus Lidberg, SNOW(2015), and Stream (2013). Other notable performances and commissions have come from Metropolis Ensemble, the American Composers Orchestra, Fear No Music Ensemble, and Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and his collected works for piano are available from Tzadik Records, performed by pianist Vicky Chow. Francis holds a M.M. and D.M.A in composition from the Juilliard School and a B.M. in composition from the University of Michigan. He teaches at Portland State University and Pacific University.

 

 
 

Emily Wells

Emily Wells

 
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“Quietly transfixing” composer / producer Emily Wells is known for her varied use of classical and modern instrumentation, “a master of blending the worlds of classical and electronics” (NPR) and “dramatic, meticulous and gothic songs” (New York Times).  On stage Wells’ builds a “new instrument” out of acoustic and electronic drums, synth, violin, and her evocative performances leave audiences equal parts dancing and grieving.  Wells’ latest work, This World is Too _____ For You released in March has been hailed by NPR as “breathtaking” “mind-blowing” and “visionary”.  The ten song album, arranged for chamber ensemble by composer Michi Wiancko, was commissioned by Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series and Metropolis Ensemble who performs on the album along with drummer / composer Shayna Dunkelman (Du Yun, Xiu Xiu).

 

 
 

Darian Thomas

Darian Thomas

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About Darian

Composer, multi-instrumentalist, and interdisciplinary artist Darian Donovan Thomas was born in San Antonio, Texas and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. He is interested in combining genres and mediums into a singular vocabulary that can express ideas about intersectionality (of medium and identity). Necessarily, he is interested in redacting all barriers to entry that have existed at the gates of any genre - this vocabulary of multiplicity will be intersectional, and therefore all-inclusive.

 
 

 

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Matthew Evan Taylor

Matthew Evan Taylor

 
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Matthew was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was exposed early to the music of Cannonball Adderly, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. He began playing saxophone at the age of 9, and quickly began learning the music of his heroes by ear. In college, he was introduced to the music of Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, which opened his ears to the world of modern classical music. After a five year stint touring as a founding member of Sony Music recording artist Moses Mayfield, Matthew moved to Miami in 2009 to focus on composition.

Since his relocation, Matthew’s music has been premiered in Miami, New York City, San Francisco and Cortona, Italy and performed by the Imani Winds, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Matthew has also been involved in fruitful collaborations with dancer/choreographers Priscilla Marrero, Katherine Kramer, and Joanne Barrett, musicians Elliott Sharp and Tatsuya Nakatani, and artists Pablo Cano and Ferrán Martin. He also was a founding member of Fridamusiq, an ensemble of four composers interested in free improvisation. Matthew is also a co-founder of the Vanguard Miami Festival of New Music.  He now serves as Professor of Music at Middlebury College.

 

 
 

Kelly Moran

Kelly Moran

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About Kelly

Kelly Moran is a classically trained composer and musician based in New York. While she has composed music for many instruments, and performed in several avant-rock groups and experimental ensembles, she has received the most attention for her solo albums marrying prepared piano arrangements with ambient electronics. Following the critical success of 2017's Bloodroot, she released the improvisation-based Ultraviolet in 2018 on Warp Records.

 
 

 

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Paula Matthusen

Paula Matthusen

 

Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing”. Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered.