Biophony is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Cultural Affairs, The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, and a constellation of generous donors and foundations, with additional support from Make Music New York and NYC DOT.
September 18, 2021 • 1-4pm
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
990 Washington Avenue • Brooklyn
Come join us as we 90+ musicians present the works of 75 composers newly commissioned to create flexible, open-score pieces for outdoor performances.
Use a LISTENING MAP to discover over 20 groupings of musicians planted throughout Brooklyn Botanic Garden's stunning 52-acre site. Each performance and listener-experience of Biophony will be unique, as determined by the unlimited flexibility of instrumentations, the topography of the site, and the freedom given to participants to choose their own musical adventure.
This event, presented for the first time as part of Make Music Autumn, is the grand finale of Metropolis Ensemble’s summer-long project where the orchestra-collective's musicians and composers created their own new music pop-up events across NYC.
General Admission
$18 adult / $12 student with ID / $12 senior 65+ with ID / $0 child under 12
Metropolis Subscribers
Check your email for details of a free ticket offer for this event.
Biophony Partners
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Founded in 1910, Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is an urban botanic garden that connects people to the world of plants, fostering delight and curiosity while inspiring an appreciation and sense of stewardship of the environment. Situated on 52 acres in the heart of Brooklyn and open year-round, the Garden is home to over 12,000 kinds of plants and more than 30 specialty gardens.
For hours, directions, and admission information, see bbg.org. Visitor entrances are at 990 Washington Avenue, 150 Eastern Parkway, and 455 Flatbush Avenue. Find out what’s in bloom, read the Garden’s blog, and learn what’s happening. Follow @brooklynbotanic on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and join the conversation using #BrooklynBotanicGarden.
Make Music New York
Make Music New York celebrates the talents and passions of local NYC musicians; connects New Yorkers to their communities and with each other; brings bold new artistic creations to life; and energizes the shared social spaces that make NYC a cultural capital.
Our mission is ambitious, inclusive, adventurous and fun, and we accomplish it by producing two annual flagship celebrations: the eponymous Make Music New York, held each summer solstice on June 21st; and Make Music Winter, held each winter solstice on December 21st. To support local musicians as NYC emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, Make Music Autumn will make its debut September 18-19, 2021, with a small series of curated, free, outdoor programs.
Meet the 2021 Composers
David Leon is a Cuban-American saxophonist, woodwinds player, and composer/improviser living in Brooklyn, New York. His diverse musical output is guided by an exploration of nuance. More »
Yuma Uesaka is a saxophonist, clarinetist, and improviser-composer mostly known for his work in jazz and creative music, with a reputation for his improvisational sensibilities and his powerful sound. More »
Adam O'Farrill is a trumpet player and composer from Brooklyn. As a composer and bandleader. “Marshaling a sharp band of his peers, Mr. O’Farrill establishes both a firm identity and a willful urge to stretch and adapt.” (New York Times) More »
Baldwin Giang (b. 1992) is a Chicago-based composer, pianist, multimedia artist, and educator whose music aims to empower communities of audiences and performers by creating concert experiences that are opportunities for collective wonder and judgment. More »
Darlene Castro Ortiz (b.1993) is a Mexican-American composer and classical guitarist based in Chicago. Her interest in music began at a young age with the violin, first in a youth mariachi band, then in a classical orchestra setting. More »
Hunter Brown is a multimedia artist, music technologist, audio engineer, and percussionist based in Hanover, New Hampshire. Hunter's creative work encompasses various compositional mediums including interactive electro-acoustic improvisation, multimedia installation, laptop performance, music for dance, and acousmatic music. He is the current assistant audio engineer at the Marlboro Music Festival, and was previously an audio engineer at Oberlin Audio Services. As a percussionist, Hunter focuses on collaborating with composers in creating works for percussion and electronics. Hunter’s work has been presented at the following conferences: The Society of Electroacoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) National Conference, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) Manifeste, and the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF). In 2017, he was awarded the annual Allen Strange Award at the SEAMUS National Convention. Hunter holds a Bachelor’s of Music in Percussion Performance with a Minor in Technology in Music and the Related Arts from the Oberlin Conservatory where he studied percussion with Michael Rosen and electronic music with Aurie Hsu, Joo Won Park, Peter Swendsen, and Tom Lopez. He is currently studying towards a Masters degree in Digital Musics at Dartmouth College.
Constellation Chor is a vocal performance collective founded and directed by Marisa Michelson. Its intention at inception, and still to this day, was to create a space for humans to sing virtuosically together while also prioritizing deep embodied experience and movement. Since 2016, Constellation Chor has been in residence at Judson Memorial Church in NYC, meeting weekly. More »
Osaka-born and New York-based pianist Erika Dohi is a multi-faceted artist with an eclectic musical background. From highly polished traditional classical to bold improvisation, she is a dynamic performer whose timeless style and unidiomatic technique sets her apart in contemporary NYC avant-garde circles. Dohi’s vast repertory is impressive, but what makes her truly such a barrier-defying artist is what lies ahead. More »
Violinist and improviser Lauren Cauley has quickly risen in New York’s avant-garde as an artist known for genre-breaking performances that expand the sonic possibilities of her instrument. Now a “mainstay of the local new-music scene” (New York Times), she’s built a reputation as an interpreter of “fierce precision” and “excellence uncompromised” (Cleveland Classical). More »
Matt Evans is a Brooklyn based artist, composer, and percussionist producing recordings, cross-disciplinary productions, and sculptural sound installations through an eco-fictional lens. Since moving to Brooklyn in 2012, Evans has maintained numerous musical projects: producing solo performances, writing commissioned compositions, working with choreographers, playing in bands, and performing with new music ensembles. More »
Lauren Siess, viola (Portland, OR) began her musical life studying both violin and jazz/classical guitar. She recently presented an interdisciplinary concert at Arete Venue and Gallery, presenting world premiere performances of works for solo viola, electronics, and dance. Lauren has been a member of the Perlman Music Program, with residencies in Shelter Island, NY, Sarasota, FL, and Tel Aviv, Israel. In addition, she has attended programs at the Banff Centre and Keshet Eilon Summer Mastercourse in Israel. Lauren is in her fourth year of undergraduate studies at the Juilliard School as a student of Carol Rodland. She is a recipient of a Kovner Fellowship and member of the Gluck Community Service Fellowship. An alumna of the Colburn Music Academy, Lauren performed as soloist with the Colburn Academy Virtuosi Orchestra and Colburn Chamber Orchestra and served as principal viola of both orchestras. Her former teachers include Paul Neubauer, Helen Callus, and Brian Quincey. Previous Yellow Barn musician (2018)
Amelia Brey’s music has been described as possessing “haunting beauty” and “a deep, disquieting power” (National Sawdust Log). Her orchestral work, Two, was premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra under the direction of Jeffrey Milarsky as a winner of the Juilliard Composers’ Orchestra Competition, and received an Honorable Mention from the Nashville Symphony’s Composer Lab; her wind quintet, AR(i/e)AS, was the recipient of a BMI Student Composer Award. More »
Kalia Vandever is a trombonist, composer, and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. She released her debut album, "In Bloom" in May, 2019 which features all of her original compositions written for quartet and duo with guitar. Kalia received her Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies at the Juilliard School in 2017. She has toured and performed internationally with her quartet, as well as a side-woman, performing with artists including Joel Ross, Maria Grand, Kat Lee, Darcy James Argue's Secret Society and others. More »
Nick Dunston is a Berlin-based acoustic and electroacoustic composer, improviser, and bassist. An “indispensable player on the New York avant-garde" (New York Times), his performances have also spanned a variety of venues and festivals across North America and Europe. He's performed, toured, and recorded professionally with bands led by artists such as Marc Ribot, Ches Smith, Imani Uzuri, Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Webber, Amirtha Kidambi, and Vijay Iyer. More »
Isabel Crespo Pardo is an NYC-based latinx vocalist, composer, and improviser embracing creative music, experimental and chamber traditions to create poetic work. Drawing from the idea of music as the organization of people and ideas, they are interested in reimagining the construction of artistic spaces, and are committed to fostering collaborations devoid of oppressive dynamics. Crespo is inspired by Chabuca Granda, Ornette Coleman, Pauline Oliveros, and Kurtág, and her work is constantly evolving to reflect the intra/interpersonal spaces she inhabits.
Immanuel Wilkins is a saxophonist, composer, educator, and bandleader from the greater Philadelphia area. While growing up, Wilkins honed his skills in the church and studied in programs dedicated to teaching jazz music like the Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts. After moving to New York in 2015, he proceeded to earn his bachelor’s degree in Music at Juilliard (studying with the saxophonists Bruce Williams and the late, great Joe Temperley) while simultaneously establishing himself as an indemand sideperson, touring in Japan, Europe, South America, The United Arab Emirates, and the United States and working and/or recording with artists like Jason Moran, the Count Basie Orchestra, Delfeayo Marsalis, Joel Ross, Aaron Parks, Gerald Clayton, Gretchen Parlato, Lalah Hathaway, Solange Knowles, Bob Dylan, and Wynton Marsalis to name just a few. It was also during this same period that he formed his quartet featuring his long-time bandmates: Micah Thomas(piano),Daryl Johns(bass)and Kweku Sumbry(drums). More »
American composer Mike Ladouceur is among the most exciting and significant talents emerging today‚ with many high-profile film and TV projects to his name. Renowned on both sides of the Atlantic, his musical style blends orchestral and ambient electronic textures, and has been described by distinguished conductor and orchestrator Jeff Atmajian as “like listening to a beautiful impressionist painting”. More »
Lesley Mok is a drummer, composer, and improviser based in Brooklyn, NY. From a young age, Lesley has been immersed in a variety of creative environments, often painting, singing, and dancing as a way to express herself and learn about the world around her. At age four, Lesley began formal instruction on classical piano, before discovering a love for the drums in middle school. She quickly felt a kinship with the expressive qualities of the instrument, and was immediately drawn to jazz and improvisation after hearing the the music of Ella Fitzgerald and Nancy Wilson. More »
Composer and performer Cristina Spinei (pronounced spin-AY) has written for numerous orchestras and chamber ensembles, but she is most known for her work with ballet, having been commissioned by Nashville Ballet, the New York Choreographic Institute, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and many more. Growing up with dreams of becoming a ballerina, Spinei has channeled her love for dance into a devotion to musical movement, resulting in a style infused with “lyricism and rhythmic vitality.” (Nashville Scene) More »
Rajna Swaminathan is an acclaimed mrudangam (a barrel-shaped South Indian drum) artist, composer, and scholar. Rajna has been described as “a vital new voice” (Pop Matters), creating “music of gravity and rigor… yet its overall effect is accessible and uplifting” (Wall Street Journal). In her music and research, she explores the undercurrents of rhythmic experience and emergent textures in collective improvisation. More »
Internationally recognized composer Kirsten Volness creates sublimely intimate and emotive soundscapes that inspire immersive listening. Through the refined use of electronics and modern composition techniques overlaid with jazz and pop influences, Volness’s music is both groovy and graceful, “irresistible” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “nothing short of gorgeous.” (New York Arts). Each of her compositions reveals “an exquisite sound world” (New Classic LA) with disparate, suggestive musical elements and idioms woven together to create sonic atmospheres that hold listeners in beauty and fascination. Inspired by nature, myth, spirituality, and environmental and sociopolitical issues, Volness’s music is smart, relevant, timeless, and transcendent. More »
My creative work focuses on unique performance settings and mixtures of composition for live performers, media arts, and site-specific installations. I feel that exploring relationships between sounds, images, live performers, space, and movement is an effective way to both investigate and convey greater connections that surround us. More »
Adam Cuthbert (b. 1988) is a Detroit-based composer, mix engineer, and sound designer whose sometimes spare, sometimes brutal music has been described as an “eerie dreamscape” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) and “the lead-footed revving of double decker buses” (Acid Ted). More »
Aeryn Santillan (she/her) is a composer, guitarist, and bassist whose work is heavily influenced by the DIY punk scene and actively aims to blur the lines between band/ensemble and song/composition. More »
The work of composer-guitarist-arranger Andrew Noseworthy (he/him/his) reflects upon the acceptance/rejection of “locality,” drawing from experiences while living in Labrador West, St John's (Newfoundland) and New York City. His music aims to address the contextual space and dissemination for underrepresented musical voices. More »
Phong Tran is a Brooklyn-based composer, electronic musician, and visual artist. His works are heavily inspired by the sound of early synthesizers and the noises and grinds of experimental electronics. Much of his work is developed through late night wikipedia dives while obsessing over things like simulation theory, abstract story structure, Dungeons & Dragons, and vaporwave eccojams. More »
Isabela Tanashian (b. 1998) is a composer, sound artist, and vocalist based in New York City. She is currently completing her Bachelor’s degree in Composition at The Juilliard School where she studies with Dr. Melinda Wagner. Composing with technology is of particular interest to her, and she has frequently performed her own works in small venues around the city using various electronic software and synthesizers. In the past, her compositions have been read and performed by the Decoda Ensemble, Trio Mythos, and members of the New York Youth Symphony.
Joseph Jordan (b. 1999) is a composer, pianist, and oboist from New York. In May of 2021, he earned a B. A. from Columbia University where he participated in the Columbia-Juilliard Exchange and studied oboe with Elaine Douvas. At Columbia, he studied composition with Georg Friedrich Haas and attended seminars taught by Haas, George Lewis, Eric Wubbels, and Zosha di Castri through which his music was performed by loadbang, counter)induction, members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, and members of the Wet Ink Large Ensemble.
Originally from Cracow, Poland, Norbert Palej has been recognized for his “first-rate and genuinely original work” (American Composers Orchestra), and a musical language that generates “visceral excitement” (The Boston Globe). “Palej eclipses Lutoslawski”, writes Montreal’s La Presse, while The Gazette calls his work “riveting” and Musical Toronto: “fascinating”. His recent CD was nominated for a JUNO Award, and his work premiered at New York’s Carnegie Hall. More »
Tamil Nadu-raised and New York-born critically acclaimed vocalist Ganavya lives, learns, and loves fluidly from the nexus of many frameworks and understandings. Hers is a deeply profound and rooted voice. A multidisciplinary creator, she is a soundsmith and wordsmith. Trained as an improviser, scholar, dancer, and multi-instrumentalist, she maintains an inner library of “spi/ritual” blueprints offered to her by an intergenerational constellation of collaborators, continuously anchoring her practice in pasts, presents and, futures. More »
William Brittelle is a North Carolina-born, Brooklyn-based composer of genre-fluid electroacoustic music. His work has been praised on All Things Considered and in many other major outlets, including The New York Times (Sunday Arts & Leisure), The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, MUSO, the Oxford Culture Review, and Minnesota Public Radio. The New Yorker for its part has labeled Brittelle “…a mercurial artist whose oeuvre embraces post-punk flamboyance, chamber music elegance, and much more.” Perhaps most powerfully, Classical TV stated: “William Brittelle is creating a body of work that has no precedent, and marks him as a one of the most promising heirs of the vital American maverick tradition.” Amid the Minotaurs, a piece commissioned and premiered by Roomful of Teeth, was featured on the group's Grammy-winning debut album. More »
Rohan Chander (b. 1998, he/him) is a composer, pianist, tabla player, and producer based in New York City. His work often explores the interstitial space created through a convergence of the hyper personal and post digital, calling into question an understanding of social systems, identity politics, and intrapersonal relations. Highly dialectical, Rohan’s work addresses narrative through imposed circumstance and ideologically defined counterpoint, frequently resulting in audio-visual super structures i.e. video, choreography, lighting, etc. Through these mechanisms his work hopes to address the diaspora of listening experience and musical function. More »
Theo Baer (a.k.a iT Boy) is a Brooklyn-based composer and performer. His work is the result of a diverse musical upbringing and journey towards emotional healing as a Black and trans artist. These compositions illustrate an intimate and vulnerable narrative channeled through the manipulation of tape loops, synthesizers, keyboards, and other analog electronic voices. More »
Anya Yermakova is a composer, sound artist, and a historian/philosopher of logic. The aim of her sonic and textual creations is to enliven the non-binary constructs beneath//above the forceful binarism in the world today. Back in the day she was a classical pianist; recently she graduated from the departments of History of Science and of Critical Media Practice at Harvard. Presently she is the artist/scholar-in-residence with the Ocean Memory Project. More »
A Dine composer of chamber music, experimental sound, Native American flute, and metal music. Not only is Michael Begay an accomplished guitarist and bassist, but he also plays piano, and various instruments both Native American and orchestral. Michael is both a performer and educator; he has been a composition instructor in residency for the Grand Canyon Music Festival’s Native American Composers Apprentice Project (NACAP) for over eight years, and just finished his second residency with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra’s Composition Academy. Both programs help educate Native American high school students, in the art of music composition, followed by a world premiere of created works. Michael Begay’s musical style ranges between both aggressive, and sounds pleasing to the ear, he is both a seeker of tone and technique, and is always exploring musical limits. More »
Originally hailing from San Diego, California, Evan Caplinger is a New York City-based composer, performer, and piano technician. An avid pianist from an early age, he began composing organically while studying the piano, before moving on to more rigorous compositional training in high school, where he studied under Dr. Ben Sabey. He continued his studies as an undergrad at Columbia University, where he studied with Profs. George Lewis, Georg Haas and Zosha di Castri. His works have been performed by TAK Ensemble, Wet Ink, counter)induction, and the Brevard Symphony Orchestra, among others. He is also a regular participant in the Columbia Gagaku Ensemble. He currently works as a piano technician apprentice with Arolla Piano Co.
Eden Attar is a Master's student in musicology at Washington University in St. Louis, where she studies the musical educational project of Sesame Street and its intersections with anarchist education, distance learning, and virtual worlds. Attar leads the trio Meadowlarke with Ben Oye and Ari Freedman. More »
Ben simone is a Music Artist.
He is responsible for many folk songs you probably know, but uncredited. Born and raised Nowhere. those early memories of landscape, are an integral part of his work. oh and the yearning...
With his Flexible voice, and dysfunctional toys, he will deliver the gospel of plastic.
And just like Barbie, he had over a hundred careers. (Those can sometimes interlock. for example: when he is a pop star, he is also a spy.)
He is not afraid to switch roles when needed and very good in fixing things that break.
Kalli Siamidou, originally from Thessaloniki, Greece, was born and raised in a musical environment. Music and dance were both very present in her life and that inspired her to pursue a career as a dance teacher and choreographer early in life. After obtaining her Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education and Sports Science, she moved to New York, where she studied various dance forms, acting and singing at Peridance Capezio Dance Center. More »
Heath has been juggling many things their entire life. It took Heath awhile to figure out that they were mostly orbiting the “artist” moniker, because they fancied their self a mathematician, but even those two spaces aren’t so far apart. First, Heath wanted to be a roller coaster designer. Then, a composer of video game music. Then, a pit musician. Then, a musical theater writer. While all of their siblings generally chose a single instrument to study, Heath played cello, piano, oboe, saxophone, and guitar. More »
Rachael Smith (b. 1996) is an American composer from Brockport, NY. She has written a number of pieces ranging from works for solo instruments and chamber ensembles to musicals and operas. In addition to being a composer, Rachael is also a playwright and lyricist, having written the book and libretto for four musicals and two operas since 2013. She has worked with groups such as A/tonal, SHUFFLE, the SUNY Fredonia Department of Theatre and Dance, the University of Louisville Symphony Orchestra, and the Performing Arts Company at SUNY Fredonia, and her libretti have been performed at SUNY Fredonia, Bowling Green State University, and the NOW Festival at the Conservatory of Music at Baldwin Wallace.
Rachael received her BM in Music Composition at the State University of New York at Fredonia where she studied with Andrew Martin Smith and Rob Deemer, and received her MM in Music Composition at the University of Louisville where she studied with Steve Rouse and Krzysztof Wolek. Currently Rachael is pursuing her DMA at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University with Du Yun. More »
Allison Simpkins is a freelance composer, pianist, and teacher dedicated to her mission of sharing her music with the world. In her twelve years of experience, she has traveled the US and Europe premiering her chamber music, solo works, and art songs. Her work can be described as earnest, bold, and, at times, political. She incorporates her identity into her music and hopes to use her platform to spread positive change in the world of classical music. Noteworthy works include her song cycle “Believe Me, Folks: Ten Songs for a Mad President” and her piece “Three Short Pieces for String Quartet,” which won her the International Music Festival of the Adriatic’s Duino Prize for composition. She has accepted commissions for solo performances, for film, and for dance. Her meticulous hand- engraved scores have been published in the literary magazine Kairos. She has collaborated with and has had readings done by the Spektral Quartet, the Julius Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and musicians from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra as part of their online “Lunch Bachs” series.
Allison received her Bachelor’s degree in Composition at Southern Methodist University, where she studied under Dr. Xi Wang. During her undergraduate studies, Allison was also accepted to an exchange program at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam as well as the International Music Festival of the Adriatic, where she spent a total of 6 months and wrote and premiered 5 new works. She is continuing her education at the Peabody Institute of Music with two Master’s degrees in Music Theory Pedagogy and Composition in the studio of Dr. Oscar Bettison. More »
Douglas Hertz (b. 1993) is a composer, producer, percussionist, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Hertz uses sound as a medium to investigate experiences ranging from the personal to universal and from the physical to the spiritual. Through his work, he seeks to connect with audiences in a way that helps them better understand themselves, one another, and the world they inhabit.
His work has appeared on programs presented by the GAIDA Festival (Lithuania), Midwest Composers Symposium, Nief Norf Summer Festival, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, Periapsis Music and Dance, and the Deer Valley Music Festival and has been performed by ensembles such as Dal Niente, Wet Ink Ensemble , Da Capo Chamber Players , American Symphony Orchestra , University of Michigan Philharmonia Orchestra, Vanguard Reed Quintet , Up/Down Percussion Quartet , BrassTaps Duo , Portland Percussion Group , and Front Porch Ensemble , among others.
Hertz is an avid collaborator and constantly seeks ways of broadening the context of his work beyond the concert hall. Recent collaborations include 2-1, a piece for dance and solo piano created with choreographer Janice Rosario , Saeculum, a cantata/dance piece created in collaboration with choreographer Al Evangelista , and Household, an art/sound installation by Hertz and performance group, Call Your Mom. Hertz completed his undergraduate degree at Bard College and earned a masters degree in music composition from the University of Michigan. His past teachers have included Kristin Kuster, Evan Chambers, Bright Sheng, George Tsontakis, Joan Tower, Kyle Gann, and Janet Weir.
As a committed educator, Hertz teaches music theory and composition at the Thurnauer School of Music in Tenafly, NJ, is a Teaching Artist Associate in the New York Philharmonic Very Young Composers Program, and is a faculty member at the Walden School Young Musicians Program in Dublin, NH.
Aliya Ultan (b. 1996) is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, composer, improviser, and filmmaker. Emerging from homelessness, Aliya’s creative means for survival have taken many forms. Classically trained as a cellist, composer, and improviser, Aliya has worked with the New York Philharmonic, Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey, and Douglas Ewart among others. Alongside Aliya’s endeavors as a composer-performer, she has worked as Program Director for Make Music Cleveland providing hundreds of instruments to displaced families across Ohio as well as free concerts in venues that are otherwise financially inaccessible. As a dancer, Aliya has taught in public schools across the states and abroad with an emphasis on interdisciplinary outcomes. Aliya is currently based in nyc regularly organizing site specific shows featuring improvisers, songwriters, bands, movers, and visual artists.
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."
His collective bands such as Just Another Foundry, Turn, and Trillmann have won multiple awards and released eight albums together. As a leader, Herzog's projects such as Moon Tree and his soon-to-be-released solo album are peppered with international collaborations. He has worked with established greats like Theo Bleckmann, Jim Black and Nils Wogram but also with newcomers like Anna Webber, Elias Stemeseder and Nick Dunston.
He is also active as a sideman in Germany and the U.S. and has curated the "Monday Meetings" series at Loft Cologne for over four years.
Elissar Hanna is a Canadian composer, singer, and dancer. Her works are inspired by a love of the natural world and by her studies in Sufism. Influenced by her background in opera, she blends dramatic narrative with rich harmonic shifts and textures. Current projects include: Dreams in Hand in collaboration with Canadian guitarist and luthier Emily Shaw; Mary, which tells the story of Saint Mary as narrated in Sufi writings; and Biophony.
Peter S. Shin 신세종 (b. 1991) 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-U.S. American identity. The New York Times described him as “a composer to watch” and his music “entirely fresh and personal” following his premiere at Carnegie Hall.
The work of Amadeus Julian Regucera (b.1984) engages with the embodied and acoustical energy of sound and the erotics of its production through concert music, installation, performance art, and video. He has had the opportunity to present works around the world: notably, at the ManiFeste (Paris, FR), the Festival Musica (Strasbourg, FR), Voix Nouvelles (Asnières-sur-Oise, FR), the Resonant Bodies Festival and the SONiC Festival (New York City), the Havana Festival of Contemporary Music as part of the American Composers Forum artist delegation to Cuba, the Mizzou International Composers Festival, and the Hong Kong Modern Academy, among others. His music has been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble Linea, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Intercontemporain, EXAUDI vocal ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Splinter Reeds, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Eco Ensemble, Duo Cortona, Third Sound, and the University of California, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. In addition to concert music, his practice intersects with visual and performance art, most notably in RIGOR, a collaboration between visual artist Nicolás Rupcich and commissioned by violinist Jessica Ling (June 2021); Absence in relief (April 2021) an audio-visual installation commissioned by InterMusicSF and Indexical for the Radius Art Gallery, Santa Cruz, California; IMY/ILY (2018-19) – a monodrama for solo percussionist, commissioned by Andy Meyerson (The Living Earth Show); The trauma you keep safe is the pain your pass along (2018) for flutist, performer, and video; and the installation/performance Communication (2013), at the Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten in Graz, Austria. Amadeus holds degrees in Music from the University of California, San Diego (B.A. 2006) and the University of California, Berkeley (PhD, 2016) where he lectures in the Department of Music.
Nnux is a composer, producer and keyboard player from Mexico City. Her music is based on the digital processing of found sounds, voices, instruments, electronic beats and synthesizers. Influenced by pop, experimental and electronic music, Nnux creates music that aims to be emotional and vulnerable while being experimental and imaginative.
Mexican musician and voice performer. Intermedia artist and voice teacher trained
in the Roy Hart tradition. Master of Sound Arts (Queen’s University Belfast) and current PhD candidate in the Arts program at the INBA.
Sarmen uses the voice and its relationship with new technologies to create compositions and decomposition of the personality on stage. She’s constantly chasing a quest of the infinite vocal possibilities that the human body utters as instrument as well as the reflection of these sounds in physical and imaginary spaces. Almond makes use of resources of free improvisation, extended vocal techniques, programming and body work.-
She has performed as composer and vocalist in Mexico, Aberdeen, London, Belfast, France, Seville, Edinburgh, Prague, Manchester, Falmouth, Sheffield, The Hague, Utrecht, York, Barcelona, Singapore, Canada, among others.
Mexican composer, sound designer and double bassist Arturo Capur writes music for double bass and electronics as well as chamber music. his music has been played at the Biblioteca Vasconcelos, New Music Forum (Mexico City), DePaul University (Chicago) and has participated in workshops with ensembles and performers such as Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, Wapiti Ensemble, and Irvine Arditti. he has scored several short films and the feature film "La Danza de las Fieras" and is currently arranger, co-producer and sound designer at music and post-production studio "Grizzly Independiente" in Mexico City. since 2019, experimental electronics and expanding the possibilities of the double bass have become his main interests. his first album, the soundtrack from documentary 'raíces' will be released on late 2021 and he is currently working on various pieces which include a piano trio, a double bass octet and an album for double bass and electronics. he holds a composition degree from the University of West London and is currently pursuing a masters degree. among his professors are José Julio Díaz Infante, María Antonieta Lozano, Esteban and Enrico Chapela.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Raquel Acevedo Klein is an active vocalist, conductor, instrumentalist and visual artist. Raquel has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Celebrate Brooklyn!, National Sawdust and elsewhere.
She has recorded and performed with the likes of Glen Hansard, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The National, Grizzly Bear, Caroline Shaw, Angélica Negrón, Cory Smythe, NY Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble and Mariinsky Orchestra among others.
She has premiered works by Paola Prestini, Philip Glass, John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, Missy Mazzoli, and Shara Nova, to name a few. She conducts for the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus.
Elijah J. Thomas (he/him/his, M.M. Music Education, B.M. Jazz Arranging/Composition) is a Black Philadelphia-born and Harlem-based multi-instrumentalist, educator and composer/experimentalist. Elijah has studied woodwind performance/improvisation with musicians Dick Oatts, Tim Warfield, Jr., Walter Bell, and Dr. Cynthia Folio, as well as composition/orchestration with Kevin Rodgers, Dr. Cynthia Folio, Dr. Maurice Wright and Dr. Norman David. As an educator Elijah has held numerous teaching positions across Philadelphia and New York City with Temple University Music Prep; Settlement Music School; Tune Up Philly (of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra); Education Through Music, Inc; and BASIS Independent Schools. He is an avid composer and experimentalist and creates and outputs what he calls “enuff music”: music intent on Black healing, spiritual awareness, and community. As a recording artist, Elijah has two solo releases enuff music, vol. i (published with Off Latch Press) and Our Search available for free listening on Bandcamp, a solo EP entitled Three Contemplations for Jason Moran (Bandcamp), as well as two full-length projects Diversity and The Unity of Sound released with his former group The NeW Quintet (available at all online retailers).
Bandcamp: https://elijahjthomas.bandcamp.com/
beijing-birthed, toronto-dwelling vocalist-composer mingjia (MING-jee-ya) writes music that’s equal parts fantastical & relatable, & performs it with courage & honesty. aside from making mischief with her chamber ensemble tortoise orchestra, she has performed with & composed for GRAMMY-award-winning artists roomful of teeth and andrew yee, as well as matt mitchell, james fernando, uoou, the science of what ?, david occhipinti, juliet palmer, christine duncan, GREX, pleasure craft, pomes, emily steinwall, anna, & more. she has performed at various venues and festivals across canada, china & the US, & has produced 5 releases as a band leader. her EP feel seen, is described by the wholenote as “beautiful, mature and exceptionally coherent”. i care if you listen describes mingjia as “(having) strong command of timbral combinations” and “one to watch”. she enjoys drawing, dancing & watching the nickelodeon smash hit series avatar: the last airbender. since the pandemic began mingjia has been taking lots of socially distanced walks & learning to play the guitar.
Photo Credit: meg moon
Born in Vancouver, Nebyu began playing guitar and drums in church, eventually moving to the trombone in the seventh grade and pursuing through to post-secondary, where he moved to Toronto to study music at Humber College. From being exposed to Motown, rock, and traditional Ethiopian music as a young boy, to discovering jazz, R&B, and classical as a student and music-lover, Nebyu has digested a diverse artistic palette from which to draw when creating. In June of 2016, Nebyu released his first professional work entitled "Nebyu Yohannes EP," a work dedicated to three original contemporary jazz compositions. Following the release, new pieces began to emerge, showcasing Nebyu's diverse artistry, such as the release of the original classical piece "Heaven on Earth" in 2017, and two songs under his solo artist moniker "neb." titled "Danger" (2019) and "All These Years" (2021). In April 2021, Nebyu released his self-produced, debut EP "Silhouette Of Yesteryear", a project that rings of nostalgia baring his most vulnerable moments over the course of 2020.
Photo credit: Bradley Golding
mara nesrallah is a vocalist, pianist, composer, producer and educator, living in Tkaronto (aka Toronto). her pursuits towards a “music career” feel at times dichotomous, but ultimately writing and performing is her greatest tool to ground herself (and hopefully others) in the sensory world, making the intangible, tangible. most of the time, mara can be found working alongside decoration day and anna, but shares musical space with numerous creative projects, including mara & the marigold, The Queer Songbook Orchestra, GREX, We Are All, The Band Named Crow, The Harmony Collaboration, ms. lomax, and Christine Duncan's The Element Choir, to name a few. mara spends the majority of her time with her "could-be-the-animal-sidekick-in-a-Miyazaki-movie" cats Nina and Dizzy, who play essential roles in her and her partner’s family band anna, like meowing constantly while they try to record vocals in their apartment, or more graciously, sitting by her on the couch while she cries trying to write about vulnerable things. she’s an accomplished home cook, an 8th floor balcony garden keeper, and hopes that this is the year she’ll finish the album she’s been working on for the past three.
Jeffrey Paul, principal oboist with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, grew up primarily in Southern California. He was an aspiring concert pianist by the age of ten and was awarded opportunities to perform piano concerti with the Conejo Youth Symphony and the Pepperdine University orchestra during his middle and high school years, under the tutelage of Edward Francis. His involvement as an actor/singer in community theater productions through his youth expanded his interests and since then he has become well- versed in composition, jazz/rock, improvisation, and ethnic folk musics. Jeff attended the Eastman School of Music (BM with performer’s certificate, 1999) and the University of Southern California (MM, 2003) for oboe performance. His primary teachers included Richard Killmer, David Weiss, and Allan Vogel. He has performed as an oboe soloist with the New West Symphony, Heidelberg Castle Festival Orchestra, Conejo Concerto Orchestra and the South Dakota Symphony.
Theodore Wiprud composes music for orchestras, ensembles, and voice. He was Music Alive Composer-in-Residence with the South Dakota Symphony in 2018-19, following 13 years as Vice President for Education at the New York Philharmonic.
Among recent orchestral works, his Wind of Many Voices (2018) responds to the landscapes, people, and history of South Dakota. His Sinfonietta (2016), inspired by the Persian poet Hafez, was commissioned and premiered by the South Dakota and West Virginia Symphonies. His Violin Concerto (Katrina) (2014), reflecting on the hurricane’s impact on the musical cultures of the Mississippi Delta, was recorded by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and dedicatee Ittai Shapira on Champs Hill Records.
A Brooklyn-born, Black and Caribbean womxn who has found her heart in Harlem, having also lived in Philadelphia and Buenos Aires. Pacific is an empathic cultural sector leader who is deeply committed to driving positive change by supporting the people and places working to make our communities more inclusive, equitable, and enjoyable. She currently serves as a Program Officer, Cultural Investments for Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation (UMEZ), a member of the second cohort of Sphinx LEAD, and an adjunct professor in Drexel University’s Master of Arts Administration and Museum Leadership program, her alma mater.
Being an artist-creator is the foundation of her origin story - Pacific is a trained soprano (B.M. Music History & Classical Voice, Temple University) with varied international performance experience as a soloist and member of several prolific ensembles including the Grammy-award winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus and the Philly Pops Festival Chorus. She’s performed on stages including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, and has recorded and performed with artists including Barbra Streisand, Harry Connick Jr., Elton John, Grizzly Bear, The New York Philharmonic, John Legend, among others. She has premiered works by composers including Nico Muhly and Philip Glass and has performed under the baton of conductors including Lorin Maazel and Marin Alsop. All this while collaborating with her lesser-known though no less brilliant friends and colleagues on a myriad of artistic projects. Her greatest pursuit is for opportunities to create, commune with others, and live a more creative life.
Mary Prescott is a Thai-American interdisciplinary artist, composer and pianist who explores the foundations and facets of identity and social conditions through experiential performance. She aims to foster understanding and create pathways for change by voicing emotional and human truths through artistic investigation and dissemination.
Prescott’s output includes several large-scale interdisciplinary works, opera, improvised music, sound journaling, film music, solo and chamber concert works.
Prescott is an awardee of the National Performance Network Creation and Development Fund supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts; a National Performance Network Documentation and Storytelling Grant; a New Music USA Project Grant; an American Composers Forum Create Commission supported by the Jerome Foundation; The American Opera Project Composers and the Voice Fellowship; an Opera America New Works Forum Grant; and several state and regional awards. She has been commissioned by Roulette Intermedium, Living Arts of Tulsa, White Snake Projects, Public Functionary, Piano Teachers Congress of NY, Shepherdess Duo, and Duo Harmonia. She has held artist residencies with Roulette Intermedium, Lanesboro Arts, Hudson Hall, Areté Venue and Gallery, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, The League of Independent Theater, and Arts Letters and Numbers.
The creative output of Anthony R. Green (composer, performer, social justice; he/him/his, b. 1984) includes musical and visual creations, interpretations of original, contemporary, and repertoire works, collaborations, educational outreach, and more. Behind all his artistic endeavors are the ideals of equality and freedom. His compositions and projects have been presented in 25+ countries by various internationally acclaimed soloists and ensembles. He has performed as a pianist, experimental vocalist, movement artist, improvisor, and performance artist in over 10 countries across 4 continents. Green’s most important social justice work has been with Castle of our Skins: celebrating Black Artistry through Music. Green was born on Nacotchtank land (Arlington, VA) and raised on Narragansett and Pauquunaukit land (Providence, RI). He is currently a citizen of the world who will never stop seeking knowledge.
Stylistic polyglot deVon Russell Gray’s compositions evoke soulful meditations, the envelopment of anxiety in a nurturing sonic cocoon. The new music performer and mood scholar channels celestial fascination manifested in aural familiarity. dVRG intuits through clairaudience a direct connection to our collective musical legacy, as guided by Bach, Ravel, Mingus, Threadgill, and Mumford.
An inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellow (2019-2021)
Recently he was composer-in-residence with Schubert Club of Minnesota (2019-2021)
Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy for Musicians Fellow (2018)
McKnight Composer Fellow (2017)
Millie Fleming (b. 2004) is a 17-year-old pianist and aspiring composer from coastal Maine. She’s still new to writing music, but she thinks creating soundscapes is one of the most amazing things a musician can do. This project is her first time writing for open instrumentation.
Graham Lazorchak (b. 2002) is a composer and improviser based in Arlington, VA. His primary mentors have included Elizabeth Ogonek and Daniel Felsenfeld. Graham is currently pursuing a BM in composition from Oberlin Conservatory.
Yuri Lee (b. 2004) is a composer and violinist from New York. She currently studies composition with Dr. Manuel Sosa at the Juilliard Pre-College program and aspires to be a film composer to bring joy to others.
Sabrina Lu (b. 2005) is a composer and pianist from the New Jersey/New York area. She is a Next Generation Artist of the New York City Omega Ensemble and regularly attends the Walden School’s Young Musicians Program.
Aadit Shrivastava (b. 2008) is from Short Hills, NJ. He is a pianist, violist, and composer.
Noah Dokko Stein (b. 2003) is an avid composer and violinist who lives in Guilford, CT. He likes listening to video game music, classical music, and Jacob Collier. This fall he will begin studying at Yale University as an undergraduate, where he plans to study composition.
Lau Noah (1994) is a Catalan self- taught composer, multi- instrumentalist and artist based in New York City.
Noah has been praised by distinguished musicians for the astounding counterpoint work in her music.
Noah performed a Tiny Desk Concert in February 2019 making her the first Catalan to ever perform in the prestigious series.
Noah has worked in TV projects as a musician for Warner Bros (Little Voice, Apple TV) and has scored numerous award-winning films.
Her unique approach to music composition has made her a sought after act for workshops and master-classes for several music conservatories and universities all over the world.
Noah was chosen to represent RETROFRET GUITARS and D ́ANGELICO GUITARS in NYC to introduce their new instrument lines.
Noah has worked with renowned producer Blake Mills (Fiona Apple, John Legend, Alabama Shakes) and performed with Jacob Collier in NYC at the legendary BLUE NOTE JAZZ CLUB in June 2021.
Lau Noah was named “ musical discovery of the year” in 2019 by Eurovision ́s winner Salvador Sobral.
Noah has toured in many venues and festivals internationally (Clonakilty International Guitar Festival Ireland – KLAENG Jazz Festival Germany – Mediterranean Jazz Festival NY – Djazzy Jazz Club MOROCCO. – Brooklyn Bowl, BROOKLYN, NY – Blue Note, NYC) and is to self release her first work in July 2021.
Billboard Magazine:
“Lau Noah is enchanting music lovers one song at a time”
Andrew Harlan (b. 1995) is a composer, bassist, improviser, and sound designer, based in Berkeley, California. His music exists at the intersections of long-form ambient music, experimental club music, dystopian sound design, chamber music, and electroacoustic improvisation.
Current and previous collaborations include – Berrow Duo, Hallie Smith, Laura Bibbs, Sound Icon, loadbang, Metropolis Ensemble, [Switch~ Ensemble], Radical 2, Eco Ensemble, line upon line percussion, and The Wet Ink Ensemble. He has been awarded first prize in the loadbang Commissioning Competition, the Boston Conservatory Sinfonietta Composition Competition, and was selected as a finalist for the BMI student composer awards.
He has previously studied composition with Marti Epstein, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, and Franck Bedrossian. Currently, he is pursuing an M.A./Ph.D. at UC Berkeley where he studies with Edmund Campion, Carmine Cella, Cindy Cox, Myra Melford, and Ken Ueno. He has also studied performance and improvisation with Stephan Crump, Myra Melford, and Linda May Han Oh.
Composer/Singer MARISA MICHELSON is a multi-award winning writer of interdisciplinary music-theatre, choral work, and musicals, and is the founder of Constellation Chor | An Immersion in Voice, Movement and Spirit - a vocal performance ensemble whose “sonic expressions, from ethereal sounds to primal screams, animalistic wails and simply breath” have been likened to “vocal innovators like Kate Bush, Bjork, Florence Welch and even Yoko Ono.” (StageBiz). In residence at the historic Judson Memorial Church and Spectrum (BK), the Chor engages at the intersection of voice, movement, healing, and music-theatre. Researching the interaction of mind/body/spirit practices with virtuosic singing, the Chor also explores performer as truth-seeker/shaman, and the performance as an invitation to enter into an intimate relationship with the moment and each other. Marisa Michelson and Constellation Chor performed as the “moving voices” in a commission by Ashley Fure for the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in 2019. In March, they performed at The Kitchen, premiering a new Sarah Hennies commission for Claire Chase, and they were recently called “visceral” and “committed” by the New Yorker, and “astringently captivating” by the New York Times.
Alessandro is a composer, musical sound designer and music editor based in London, working in Film, Tv and Advertising.
He worked on a number of projects ranging from short films to advertisements, animations and documentaries that have been broadcasted by the BBC, ITV, Netflix, Sky, the Italian national television, and shown in countless festivals around the world.
He graduated from the Royal College of Music in 2015 with a master’s degree in Composition for Screen.
Harvey Burgett’s music has been heard widely in Boston and New York, and occasionally throughout the United States and in Europe. He specializes in organ and liturgical music, but has a significant body of secular instrumental and vocal music. Biophony marks his Metropolis Ensemble debut.
Pianist and composer Robert Fleitz performs, commissions, and writes music to curate evocative, surprising, and often multi-disciplinary experiences for audiences. Active in performing contemporary and classical repertoire, he has been praised for “mesmerizing” and “commanding” playing (The New York Times), and for musicality with “a delightful ease and lightness” (I Care If You Listen) and “groovy tendencies”, and is the winner of the 2021 Pro Musicis International Award. As composer, Robert’s oeurve has been recently performed or commissioned by a varied array of artists, including the Metropolis Ensemble (NYC), Jumblies Theatre Company (Toronto), Orkest de Ereprijs (Netherlands), the Druskomanija Festival (Lithuania), Festival Osmose (Belgium), and Hilary Easton Dance Company (NYC). His work often deals with the spiritual ambiguity of technology, performed vulnerability, and the remnants and ruins of sound. He is the founder of the Swan City Piano Festival in Lakeland, Florida, his hometown. He completed BM and MM degrees at The Juilliard School and is based in Rīga, Latvia and in New York City, where he lives with his husband, the composer Krists Auznieks.
Argentinean-born and Harlem-based composer Laura Andel has been described as someone who “seeks to expand our sense of time, form and perception through sound” by Evening Music (WNYC Radio). Andel’s paths have taken her to compose music from small to large orchestras, and for instruments such as Javanese Gongs, Argentinean Bandoneon, Brazilian Berimbau, Russian Theremin, Ecuadorian Dulzainas, and Mochican Seashell-shaped Ceramic Trumpet. Most recently, she enjoys working with both acoustic and electroacoustic sound, and making drawings of music compositions and sonic representations.
Laura Andel has received awards for her music from the Rockefeller Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, American Music Center, New York State Music Fund, Edward T. Cone Foundation, BMI Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Urban Artist Initiative/NYC, the Senate for Culture of the City of Berlin, and the Argentina Music Council. She has also released several albums including Somnambulist, In::Tension:., Doble Mano, and Khartes.
Laura Andel holds a Master in Musical Creation, New Technologies, and Traditional Arts from Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (Argentina), a Bachelor of Music in Film Scoring & Jazz Composition from Berklee College of Music (USA), and a Bachelor of Music in Tango & Jazz Performance from Escuela de Musica Popular de Avellaneda (Argentina). She is currently a professor at CUNY, and a New York Philharmonic Teaching Artist for their Very Young Composers program.
“A vibraphonist to watch out for…” mentioned the New York City Jazz Record. Mexican born vibraphonist, marimbist, improviser and composer Patricia Brennan “has recently started to make her presence known on the New York avant-garde, working with such prominent bandleaders as Matt Mitchell and Michael Formanek.” observed The New York Times. Patricia is a member of Grammy nominated John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble and Michael Formanek Ensemble Kolossus. She is also a member of Phalanx Ambassadors - a project led by pianist Matt Mitchell, the Webber/Morris Big Band, and Tomas Fujiwara’s 7 Poets Trio along with cellist and composer Tomeka Reid. She has also collaborated with pianist Vijay Iyer as a member of Blind Spot with writer Teju Cole, along with bassist Linda Oh. Other projects led by Iyer that Brennan has performed include his large ensemble project Open City and several small ensemble performances along with renowned musicians like bassist Reggie Workman and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. Among Patricia’s own projects include the newly recorded solo project MAQUISHTI and MOCH - a collaborative duo with percussionist, drummer and turntablist Noel Brennan (DJ Arktureye) plus special guests. Patricia has appeared on several recordings, including an ECM recording with Michael Formanek Ensemble Kolossus called “The Distance” and Matt Mitchell's "A Pouting Grimace” and “Phalanx Ambassadors” under Pi Recordings. Also, Patricia recorded a new record with the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble called "All Can Work" under New Amsterdam Records which was nominated for a Grammy in 2019. Patricia released her debut single “Sonnet” under Valley of Search, and released her solo debut album “Maquishti” in January 2021 also under the label Valley of Search. Patricia Brennan is a Valley of Search artist, BlueHaus Mallets artist and currently teaches at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and at the Jazz Studies program at NYU Steinhardt.
Henry Mermer (b. 1999) is a drummer, improviser, and composer of instrumental and electronic music currently based in Ridgewood, Queens.
As a collaborator and improviser, he has performed at venues including The Jazz Gallery, The Blue Note, happylucky no. 1 (The Stone Series), Spectrum NYC, Public Records, and The Bar Next Door.
Henry holds a B.A. in Philosophy and a B.F.A. in Jazz and Contemporary Music from The New School, where he studied with Andrew Cyrille, Jane Ira Bloom, Reggie Workman, Matt Wilson, Mary Halvorson, and Eric Wubbels.
Jakub Ciupinski ('yacoob chioopinsky') is Polish composer living in New York City. Although his music is often associated with electronics and interactive performances, he has written numerous pieces for traditional acoustic forces, varying in scope from solo miniatures to an hour long Oratorio for symphony orchestra and double choir. At the age of 18, he signed a contract with Sony Music Poland and since then has been recording electronica-infused world music under the stage name Jakub Żak. His concert music has been commissioned and performed by various institutions and ensembles including Birmingham Royal Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Silicon Valley Ballet, Metropolis Ensemble, The New York City Ballet's Choreographic Institute, Spokane Symphony, Stamford Symphony, Sinfonietta Cracovia, The New Juilliard Ensemble, Sybarite5, as well as the world-famous violinists Anne Akiko-Meyers, Philippe Quint and Kristin Lee. His works have been performed around the world, including prestigious venues such as Tonhalle in Zurich and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York. Ciupinski is a co-founder of Blind Ear Music, New York based group of composers and instrumentalists performing improvised, real-time compositions, using wirelessly connected laptops as musical score displays. He has also designed his own instrument for performing electronic music using hand gestures. He has collaborated with a variety of artists, musicians, choreographers and film directors, including Oscar winning director Andrzej Wajda, and scored the music for United Nations documentary “Opening Doors”. He is also a fellow of the Sundance Institute Episodic Story Lab 2016. Ciupinski studied with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Christopher Rouse at The Juilliard School, Zbigniew Bujarski and Krzysztof Penderecki at the Cracow Academy of Music, and with Edwin Roxbrough and Joe Cutler at the Birmingham Conservatoire. Since 2013 he has been teaching at Purchase College, State University of New York where he served as head of Studio Composition program as well as artistic director of Purchase Orchestra Electric, an innovative multimedia project combining live orchestra with electronics, lights and and video projection mapping.
Alec Goldfarb is a Brooklyn based composer, guitarist, and Hindustani classical musician. He performs in diverse settings across the East Coast, and as a teacher coaches fundamentals that translate to novel musical situations.
Meet the Performers
Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of African-American music.
Jones has been awarded the Van Lier Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Commission, Jerome Artist-in-Residence at Roulette, French-American Jazz Exchange Award, and, in 2019, the Fromm Music Foundation commission at Harvard University. Jones has released a string of diverse recordings featuring music and images evocative of Black Futurism. Jones’ music is a confrontation against apathy and ego, hoping to inspire authenticity that compels us to be better humans.
Alaina Ferris is a composer, poet, and music educator who specializes in composing for choir, theater, and opera. Her work is inspired by a love of Renaissance chorales, video game soundtracks, and her daily practice of teaching piano, voice, and harp lessons. Alaina was selected as a 2019 National Sawdust Summerlab Musician, and was a co-winner of the 2019/2020 Brooklyn Youth Chorus Composer Competition. She is a 2019-2021 Composer Fellow at The American Opera Project. She earned her B.A. in Music and Creative Writing from the University of Denver and her M.F.A. in Poetry from New York University.
Chanan Ben Simon is a vocalist, composer and a multimedia artist, born in Jerusalem, currently Brooklyn based. Chanan’s work combines voice, sound, visuals, installation art and new media. Chanan creates short films, releases recorded music (as 'Ben Simone'), writes music for different ensembles, performs music by contemporary composers, creates audio/visual installations, creates music for film and much more. He holds a B.mus in composition from the music academy in Jerusalem and an MFA in performance and interactive media from Brooklyn College.
A Washington native, cellist Audrey Chen is a passionate solo and chamber musician dedicated to sharing the music-making process of discovery and collaboration with the rest of the world. She has performed across the globe, including at Carnegie Hall, the Mariinsky Theatre, Royal Albert Hall, and the Kennedy Center, and has performed as a guest artist with the Boston Chamber Music Society, A Far Cry, the Silk Road Ensemble, the Parker Quartet, and the Borromeo Quartet. Audrey’s festival appearances include at Music@Menlo, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Perlman Music Program, Tanglewood Music Center, Taos School of Music, and Sarasota Music Festival. After receiving a Bachelor’s from Harvard University and Master’s in Music from the New England Conservatory, she is now pursuing a Doctorate in Musical arts from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her main teachers include Laurence Lesser, Lluis Claret, and Marcy Rosen.
Recipient of the Prize for Most Promising Contestant at the 2005 Rostropovich International Cello Competition in Paris, Alan Toda-Ambaras is active as both a soloist and a chamber musician. He has performed with Midori; Yo-Yo Ma, Sandeep Das, and other members of the Silk Road Ensemble; the Borromeo Quartet; the Parker Quartet; and has appeared twice as a soloist with the North Carolina Symphony. Recent appearances include performances in Tokyo’s Ohji Hall, Osaka’s Phoenix Hall, National Academy of Music in Vietnam, Massachusetts State Hall, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Taos Music Festival, Harvard University’s Paine Hall, and the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. He has been featured on French television and in several European documentaries due to his participation in the Rostropovich Competition; he has also been heard on NPR’s From The Top program, New York’s WKCR Classical station, and Boston’s Neighborhood News Network. Alan has a B.A. in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Laurence Lesser. He is a co-founder of the Eureka Ensemble, a new social action-oriented Boston music organization.
Mobile since her birth in Singapore, composer and saxophonist Caroline Davis’s music covers a wide range of styles, owed to her shifting environment as a child. As a leader, she has released six albums: Live Work & Play (2012), Doors: Chicago Storylines (2015), Heart Tonic (2018), Alula (2019), Anthems (2019), and Portals (2021)…
Amirtha Kidambi is the composer and bandleader of her quartet Elder Ones, with Matt Nelson, Max Jaffe and Nick Dunston and the leader of her vocal quartet Lines of Light, featuring Anaïs Maviel, Emilie Lesbros and Jean-Carla Rodea. Kidambi is also a regular collaborator of Lea Bertucci, in a voice and analog electronics duo, is a member of guitarist Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl, featured in various projects with composer and alto saxophonist Darius Jones, a longtime contributor of Charlie Looker’s early music inspired dark folk band Seaven Teares and a soloist in Pat Spadine's analog percussion and light ensemble Ashcan Orchestra…
Clara Warnaar is a NYC based drummer and percussionist who plays with the band Infinity Shred and as a guest with the International Contemporary Ensemble. Her solo work is mainly ambient and experimental.
Connor Parks is from Orlando, FL, where he began studying drums & percussion with Beth and Danny Gottlieb. He received a BFA in Jazz studies from the New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music in New York. Upon arriving in New York City, Connor has performed with Rodney Jones, Vic Juris, Linda Briceño, Dave Glasser, JD Allen, Ingrid Jensen, Aaron Parks, Mcklopedia, and Kandace Springs, among many others. He has appeared at venues ranging from the Blue Note to Madison Square Garden, and often performs at Music Festivals both internationally and in the United States.
Daniel Durst is a bassist, improviser, educator, and composer based in Brooklyn, NY. Known for his warm touch, deep sense of groove, and meditative approach to improvisation, Daniel brings his musical personality across a variety of genres from jazz to noise to indie rock.
Ariadne Greif, praised for her “luminous, expressive voice,” “searing top notes,” and “dusky depths,” (NY Times), started out as a ‘boy’ soprano at the LA Opera, making an adult debut singing Lutoslawski’s Chantefleurs et Chantefables with the American Symphony Orchestra. She starred in roles ranging from Therese/Tirésias in Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias at the Aldeburgh Festival, Adina in The Elixir of Love with the Orlando Philharmonic, to Sappho in Atthis by Georg Friedrich Haas, which the NY Times called “one of the most searingly painful and revealing operatic performances in recent times.”
Chase Elodia is a drummer and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. He will be releasing an album on Biophilia Records in May 2022.
Admired for his “marvelous ringing tone” (Joseph Dalton, Albany Times Union) Bixby Kennedy is one of the most versatile clarinetists of his generation. He has performed concerti with the Minnesota Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Bloomington Sinfonietta, and Indiana University Symphony. As a chamber musician, Bixby has performed throughout the US and Europe in venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, The Kennedy Center, Marlboro Music Festival, and is the clarinetist for the “explosive” New York City based chamber ensemble Frisson. As an orchestral musician, Bixby currently holds titles as the Associate Principal Clarinetist of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Associate Principal in the Albany Symphony, and the Principal Clarinetist of Symphony in C. He has appeared as a guest artist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. On period instruments, Bixby performs classical repertoire on original and replica instruments throughout the US with Grand Harmonie Orchestra. He is a former member of Ensemble Connect and works as a teaching artist throughout the US. As a university professor, he has held positions at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Vanderbilt University, and Tennessee State University. He loves traveling, trying new foods, laughing, hiking, and playing tennis.
Brooklyn-based percussionist, composer and improviser Deric Dickens divides his time between the improvised and creative music scene and the indie rock scene in NYC. Dickens has toured, recorded and performed for many years with Robinella (Columbia Records) Daniel Carter, Aaron Quinn, Jaimie Branch, John Ralston, Russ Lossing, Caroline Davis, Eli Wallace, Eriika Dicker, Ben Cohen, Ted Brown, and Brad Linde, and has worked on soundtracks for James Schamusʼ Indignation, D.W. Youngʼs Too Cold to Swim, as well as many other indie films and T.V. projects.
Abby Swidler is a composer, violinist, violist, and vocalist whose work appears in many contexts including new music, improvisational music, and song.
Abby is a passionate collaborator, frequently performing with ruby, a song collaboration with kim mayo; Xanthoria Quartet, a string quartet which performs new and old works ; Italian film-score band Tredici Bacci; and The Jessica Pavone String Ensemble, among other projects across genre lines.
Originally from Missoula, MT, they live in Brooklyn, NY.
Brooklyn based bassist / composer Ben Rolston is an accomplished and compelling performer in an eclectic range of musical styles. Ben has performed with important musical voices like Marcus Belgrave, Laurence Hobgood (Kurt Elling), Tim Ries (Rolling Stones), Dwight Adams (Stevie Wonder), Vincent Chandler, Marcus Elliot, Michael Malis, and Nick Dunston, and at world-class venues like The Newport Jazz Festival, Birdland, The Jazz Gallery, Roulette Intermedium, and The Green Mill. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ben attended The University of Michigan to study with master musicians such as Robert Hurst and Geri Allen. Immediately after graduating in 2012, Ben released his debut album Fables, described as “full of grandeur and dissonance” and “find of the week” by Dave Sumner (eMusic Contributor). Since moving to NYC in 2017 Rolston has presented three new bands, each in a different stylistic realm, and helped put on a monthly concert series with POLYFOLD (an arts non-profit Ben helped to found) featuring some of the best improvisers NY has to offer.
Dierk Peters is a Brooklyn based Vibraphonist. Originally from Germany he moved to the US in 2016, and is a now sought-after improviser and composer on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a distinctive voice on his instrument with a unique sound that emphasizes the warmth and depth of the vibraphone, and with his incomparable harmonic agility he surpasses its percussive nature.
Chris Ryan Williams is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based between NYC and LA often found collaborating with contemporary improvisers and experimentalists. His work explores the dyad of ancestral trauma and power existing in all Black Americans. Williams uses a mix of trumpet, electronics, and text to create lush sonic tapestries in his performances with a wide range of artists including Pink Siifu, Luke Stewart, and Patrick Shiroishi.
Bassist and composer, Anna Abondolo was raised in Los Angeles and currently resides in Boston. She is in her fourth year at the New England Conservatory as a jazz performance major. Anna has studied under the instruction of Donald Palma, Frank Carlberg, and John Clayton. She will be currently studying under the instruction of Anthony Coleman, Jason Moran, and John Mallia. Anna has performed with artists including Sean Jones, Dianne Reeves, and Tom Kubis in addition to her own groups and projects.
DoYeon Kim is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning virtuoso of the gayageum (a traditional Korean string instrument). In addition to traditional Korean music, DoYeon specializes in free jazz, jazz, and improvisation. She regularly performs solo and group concerts worldwide in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America…
Allison Philips is a Brooklyn-based trumpet player, composer, and educator. From the traditional trio setting to genre-bending explorations via electronics, Allison is always searching for new ground. Philips holds a BFA in Jazz Performance from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City and an MM in Jazz Performance from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam in The Netherlands. Between teaching and performing throughout Europe and North America, Allison spends her time commuting on her bicycle in Brooklyn and eating at B&H Dairy in the East Village.
eddy kwon (b. 1989 – aka edi kwon) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, New York). Her practice connects composition, performance, improvisation, dance, and ceremony to explore transformation & transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer ancestral lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal.
Carrie Furniss is a critically acclaimed vocalist, educator, improviser, bandleader, and composer based in New York City. With a background in jazz, she has explored almost every genre of music through a creative, improvisatory lens, performing in jazz, rock, pop, country, and experimental groups, often contributing her own compositions. Recently, Carrie has been dedicated to the practice of home recording, production, and synthesis, culminating in the release of her first solo record on Topos Press.
Vocalist and composer Amanda Ekery collaborates with everyone, literally. Historians, artists, engineers, bakers, you name it. Amanda works with all to create projects that invite others to explore and share their stories. Learn more at aekerymusic.com
Brooklyn-bred artist Adam O’Farrill has been heralded as “among the the leading trumpeters in jazz- and perhaps the music’s next major improviser.” (The New York Times). Born into a musical legacy that includes composer Chico O’Farrill and pianist Arturo O’Farrill, Adam has cemented his status as one of creative music’s most in-demand voices, collaborating with the likes of Mary Halvorson, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mulatu Astatke, Samora Pinderhughes, Anna Webber, Vijay Iyer, Mahogany L. Browne, Kambui Olujimi, and Onyx Collective…
Aaron Quinn (Stamford, CT 1986) is a composer/performing living in Brooklyn, New York. As a performer, Aaron has given concerts internationally and has collaborated with a wide range of ensembles, including Realicide, Fields and Planes, Liver Quiver, and Team Players and artist such as Wadada Leo Smith, Ted Brown, and Miho Hazama. Notable performance and premiere locations for Aaron's compositions include the Kennedy Center, The Smithsonian Institution and The Manhattan School of Music.
Hailed as "the capital city's contemporary cool king" (Giovanni Russonello, Capitalbop), Brad Linde is a saxophonist, educator, bandleader, and impresario in the Washington DC metro area. He is the director of Jazz and Creative Music at Georgetown Day School and founder of the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra.
Dominican-American saxophonist and composer, Alfredo Colon is a proud New York City native. His distinct sound lives at the crossroads of a wide range of experiences and inspirations, from his upbringing in Upper Manhattan, to his Dominican heritage, to his love of musicians with melodic approaches to improvisation, including Sonny Sharrock, Ornette Coleman, and Pharoah Sanders…
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…
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…
Evan Runyon is a multi-instrumentalist and composer with a repertoire spanning six centuries, active in traditional and modern media across manifold genres. He is a member of L'histoire ensemble Exceptet and double bass quartet Large Furniture; has performed and/or recorded with Klangforum Wien, Talea Ensemble, The Knights, International Contemporary Ensemble, Metropolis Ensemble, Ludovico Ensemble and Ensemble Signal; Raphael Saadiq, Wye Oak, Emily Wells, Thundercat and Slipknot…
Hungarian-American violinist Hajnal Pivnick has developed a career as a performer and curator promoting community-driven music by modern and living composers. Her work has been recognized through foundational support from New Music USA, the Barlow Endowment, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She is part of the duo Shepherdess and co-artistic director of Tenth Intervention, a collective of musicians that explores the intersection of performance and experiential art, and its potential to reflect social issues.
Jen Anaya (they/them) is a theater/music/art/ritual space maker, doula and energy healer from the desert of Yavapaiv Apache, Cocopah and O'odham land. They have created for and performed in rock bands, web series, art installations, plays, operas, dance theater, films, solo shows, healing rituals and musicals all over LenapeHoking, Turtle Island and beyond. The intersection of art, expansion and healing is where Jen's passion and curiosity are most alive.
Kalli Siamidou is a greek pontian dancer, choreographer and performer based in New York City. She is interested in exploring many different dance forms from studio born styles like ballet and modern to more folklore like salsa and greek folk dances. She has been a core member of Constellation Chor since 2016.
Gabrielle Chou is a New York-based pianist and violinist seeking to defy genres and break barriers in music education and performance tradition. On both instruments she performs solo, chamber music, and in large ensembles, teaches and lectures in the studio and classroom, coaches chamber music, collaborates with composers and dancers, and is active in community engagement. Her education includes the Colburn Music Academy, The Juilliard School, and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she is getting her doctorate. Gabrielle serves as faculty at Baruch College, staff pianist and teaching fellow at Juilliard, and plays with the Center for Musical Excellence, Metropolis Ensemble, and Nu Deco Ensemble. She loves art museums, aquariums, playing video games, and reading science fiction.
Violinist Jessica Oddie has recently returned to New York City after working as the Assistant Concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. As a chamber musician and soloist, she has performed recitals at Teatro La Fenice (Venice), Le Poisson Rouge, Lincoln Center, Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, the Sydney Opera House, and the Melbourne Recital Centre.
Karl Ronneberg is a composer, percussionist, and multimedia artist based in New York City and Seattle. Winner of the University of Michigan’s Brehm Prize for Composition and the Mannes College of Music’s Dean’s Award, Karl is the co-artistic director of Fifth Wall Performing Arts and has worked with artists and companies including Radiolab, Meredith Monk, Musicambia, Sō Percussion, and the Lincoln Center Theater’s Directors’ Lab. His work has been played by bell towers, rock bands, orchestras, arcade machines, and people dressed in squirrel costume, among others.
Based in Brooklyn, Jim Hopkins primarily works as an organist and, once things get more back to normal, choral conductor and educator, and is currently the Director of Music at All Saints’ Episcopal Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. His musical interests are wide ranging, though he has a special love for Renaissance choral music, 20th-century French music, and noisy “popular” music, and also enjoys playing harpsichord, piano, Indian harmonium, and synthesizers. He passed much of the time in the pandemic doing what many did in that situation: by baking sourdough bread and playing Animal Crossing. Both by necessity and by choice in the pandemic, he discovered a new interest in collaborating with solo singers and began to explore his interest in electronic music. He also enjoys sailing, cycling, cooking, and nerding out about coffee, music, and Christian liturgical minutiae.
Emily Haughton has been a freelance dancer in New York City for about 2 1/2 years. She has had the pleasure of working with Gwen Gussman’s Holdtight company, the Warp Trio, Heidi Latsky, and being in a few short films in NYC. Before she came to New York City, she spent two years in San Francisco completing the Alonzo King Lines Training program. There she had the privilege of working with and performing works by Maurya Kerr, Gregory Dolbashian, Christian Burns, Kai Davis, Arturo Fernandez, Sidra Bell, Greg Dawson, Alex Ketley, and Alonzo King. Emily is thrilled to be a part of this biophony and is excited for the opportunities ahead.
Joanna Mattrey is a violist working in free improvisation, new music, and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches, and electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Drawing on her certifications in Alexander Technique, Yoga, and Martial Arts, Joanna creates an embodied performance practice centered on ceremony and ritual. Recent solo works include, ‘Dirge’ (Dear Life Recs 2021), 'Veiled’ (Relative Pitch Records, 2020),, and collaborative albums: ‘Death in the Gilded Age,' (Tripticks Tapes 2021), and 'i used to sing so lyrical' (Astral Spirits, 2019). As part of her solo commissioning project, Mattrey has premiered compositions by leading improvisors Nick Dunston, Lucie Vitkova, Weasel Walter, Leila Bordreuil, and Mattrey's own piece for performer and sculpture installation 'Weaver'. Mattrey is a current ISSUE Project Room 20/21 artist-in-residence. www.joannamattrey.com
Gleb Kanasevich is a clarinetist, composer, and noise/drone musician. He works in a variety of formats as a soloist and collaborates with many artists, from composers, to improvisers, to noise musicians, to death metal bands. Since 2013, he has been a core member of Ensemble Cantata Profana – a group based in New York City and in August 2018, he has taken on the duties of the ensemble's Associate Artistic Director after moving to New York City. He also runs Unknown Tapes, a small DIY recording artist community dedicated to showcasing different forms of spontaneous music making and improvisation techniques, regardless of genre.
Living in New York City, Emily Brandenburg is an educator, chamber musician and freelancer in the New England area. She has performed with ensembles such as The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Portland Symphony, Metropolis Ensemble and the Frisson Chamber Ensemble…
American German cellist Julian Müller, performs as soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player in the United States and Europe. Hailed as “...haunting and mesmerizing...” by USA Today, Julian appeared as soloist with the Louisville Orchestra, giving world premiere performances of the ballet How They Fade, composed by him and art-pop band, YASSOU, on a commission from the Louisville Ballet Company. Julian has been presented on NPR Live, with Sergei Babayan. Other chamber music collaborations include performances with Simone Dinnerstein, Matt Haimovitz, Peter Salaff, and members of the Cleveland Orchestra. Julian has made festival appearances at the Aspen Music Festival, Heifetz International Music Institute, Caroga Lake Music Festival, among others. Julian appears frequently with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, performing in many of New York City’s various venues. Additionally, he performs with the Montclair Orchestra, has served as principal cellist of the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Mannes Orchestra, was a member of the New York String Orchestra Seminar, and is principal cello of the Berkshire Symphony. Julian holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Master of Music and Professional Studies Diplomas from the Mannes School of Music, and will receive a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Rutgers University. Principal mentors include Timothy Eddy, Georg Faust, Ronald Feldman, Sharon Robinson and Jonathan Spitz.
Flutist Isabel Lepanto Gleicher has been called “excellent” by The New York Times. Isabel is an artist member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wild Up, new music sinfonietta Ensemble Echappe, the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival, and the band ShoutHouse…
Pianist/Improviser Joey (Ian-Joe) Chang has performed improvisation in venues including The Stone at the New School, Roulette, and Millennium Stage at Kennedy Center. He has presented fully improvised concerts at the Sparkhill concert series and the Clayton Piano Festival in NC and has composed structured improvisation for art installations as well as dance choreography. He is co-founder, with violinist Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim, of "The Moving Orchestra", a multidisciplinary improvisation organization. Joey obtained his B.M. and M.M. from the Juilliard School.
As one of the most in-demand NYC freelancers, bass trombonist Jen Hinkle can be seen playing with the Grammy Award-winning Afro Bop Alliance Big Band, the Grammy Award-nominated Dan Pugach Nonet and has subbed with the legendary Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. She also regularly performs as substitute musician in many Broadway pit orchestras. As the bass trombonist and Artistic Director of Calliope Brass Quintet, Jen is constantly generating new creative ideas to engage people in the arts, on display with the group's signature piece "What's Your Story?". Jen formerly held the position of bass trombonist with the Spokane Symphony. She left to pursue her dream of starting new and exciting projects of her own, but continues to perform classically and has played with many orchestras – including the Seattle Symphony, the Oregon Symphony, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the New Haven Symphony.
Erin Paul is a New York based French hornist, known for a versatile performance career, as a co-founder of the nonprofit ensemble Calliope Brass, and host of the podcast Doublers. Her diverse performance career includes Broadway, Carnegie Hall, the Las Vegas Strip, and appearances with major artists including Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban. Additionally, she is the horn player and director of operations for Calliope Brass. Calliope’s recent educational workshop, “What’s Your Story?”, was developed in collaboration with creatives from Hamilton and Sesame Street; following successful live tours in 2018 and 2019, the quintet adapted the workshop for remote classrooms, dubbed “What’s Your Story? Online!”.
Henry Mermer (b. 1999) is a drummer, improviser, and composer of instrumental and electronic music currently based in Ridgewood, Queens. As a collaborator and improviser, he has performed at venues including The Stone, The Jazz Gallery, The Blue Note, happylucky no. 1, Spectrum NYC, Public Records, and The Bar Next Door…
Described as "virtuosic" (NY Times) and "barrier-defying artist" (Mix Magazine), Osaka-born and New York-based pianist Erika Dohi is a multi-faceted artist with an eclectic musical background. From highly polished traditional classical to bold improvisation, she is a dynamic performer whose timeless style and unidiomatic technique sets her apart in contemporary NYC avant-garde circles…
A sought after soloist and collaborator, violist Jocelin Pan enjoys a diverse career as a performer and teaching artist. She has played and recorded for film, television, pop, jazz, and contemporary classical projects. She currently holds the viola chair for Mrs. Doubtfire on Broadway and has performed in numerous theatrical productions. From Carnegie Hall to Madison Square Garden, she champions the music of living composers from all genres. Jocelin is currently on the viola faculty at the Music Advancement Program at The Juilliard School and the piano faculty at The Nightingale-Bamford School.
Hsuan Chen is an emerging violinist based in Chicago, performing both as a chamber musician and an orchestral member. An avid advocate of early music and contemporary sounds, Chen has performed with the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble regularly. Chen has also performed at the Carnegie Hall as the assistant principal with the Oberlin Orchestra. Graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory, Chen is now pursuing her Master's degree with Prof. I-Hao Lee at DePaul University School of Music, while serving as a regular member at the Civic Orchestra in Chicago.
Praised by the New York Times for his “graceful touch,” “rhythmic precision,” and “hypnotic charm,” pianist Han Chen has established himself in both the classical music and contemporary music worlds with his versatile programming and effortless technique…
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Joe is a performer, educator, audio engineer, repair tech, and general musical mercenary. A multi-faceted percussionist, Joe has performed with Talujon, Innovox, the Curiosity Cabinet, S.E.M. Ensemble, and others. He also plays in Gamelan Dharma Swara and Gamelan Yowana Sari, as well as playing in various jazz combos, Balkans groups, and accompanies Arabic dancers.
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 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.
Flutist, singer, and occasional visual artist Justine Lee Hooper (she/they) covers the music of Soul greats, Black spirituals, and meditative improvisations over live looped beats. She has performed for the United Nations and has been featured in The New York Times.
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.
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.”…
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…
Described by I Care If You Listen as “enthusiastic champions for new music and collaboration” and performing “with a welcoming and dynamic spirit,” andPlay is committed to expanding the existing violin/viola duo repertoire by commissioning new works and actively collaborating with living artists. The “genre-busting” (Midwest Records) New York City-based duo of Maya Bennardo, violin, and Hannah Levinson, viola, first played to an eager crowd on Fire Island in the summer of 2012 and has since commissioned over forty works. andPlay’s performances have been described as “sheer virtuosity” (Cinemusical), “otherworldly” (New York Music Daily) and “an awful lot of fun for people who gravitate towards stark, edgy harmonies and textures” (Lucid Culture).
Marisa Michelson is a singer, improviser, composer, and the founder/director of the collective Constellation Chor | An Immersion in Voice, Movement and Spirit. Constellation Chor has been in residence at the historic Judson Memorial Church, Spectrum, Pioneer Works and National Sawdust. The Chor’s collaborators include Claire Chase, Sarah Hennies, Ash Fure, the New York Philharmonic, the Kitchen, Heartbeat Opera, Harvard Art Lab, Maria Popova, Paola Prestini. Marisa lives, works and teaches singing in New York City and Hudson, NY.
Maya Carney is a Brooklyn born and based, vocalist and trombonist. Throughout the years she’s worked with many artists including DJ Serge Negri, Arturo O’Farrill, the Constellation Chor and many others. Maya primarily roots her practice in her spirituality, letting her music act as a form of release and personal expression before a performative act. One of her goals inside of her practice is to recognize, access and release through her source. This is something Maya is always trying to develop and learn from both individually and through collaborations. She views her voice as an entire instrument, exploring and manipulating sound utilizing her entire range to find new ways of expressing.
Nikko is an NYC-based writer and performer, a recipient of a 2016 Jonathan Larson grant, and an O’Neill Music Theater Conference Finalist. Projects include Nikola Tesla Drops The Beat (w/ Benjamin Halstead, Adirondack Theater Festival); Start Again (Musical Theater Factory); ElseWhere (Town Stages) and In Pursuit of Magic (Kennedy Center Millenium Stage). Writer’s residencies at Village Theater Festival, Pace New Musicals, the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project, Catwalk, Songspace, and Goodspeed Writers Colony.
Martine Thomas is a violist and poet based in New York City. She began her Doctorate of Musical Arts at CUNY Graduate Center in Fall 2021 and she has a Masters in Viola Performance as well as a Bachelor of Arts in English from the Harvard-New England Conservatory dual degree program…
Violist Maren Rothfritz is a passionate artist and educator who is equally at home on the concert stage and in the teaching studio. As violist in the Argus Quartet since 2019, Maren enjoys seeking colorful musical expressions across a wide range of repertoire old and new. From 2016-2018 she was a Fellow with Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, performing and teaching throughout New York City. Previously, she completed her Master’s degree with Kim Kashkashian at New England Conservatory, where her concentration was Music-in-Education. Her festival credits include Yellow Barn, Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, the Lucerne Festival Academy, and Keshet Eilon. Born in Paderborn, Germany, Maren began violin studies at age of four. At sixteen, she entered into the Hochschule für Musik Detmold and joined the viola class of Diemut Poppen a year later. She subsequently attended the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid (2011-13) and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (2013-14), where she studied with Nobuko Imai. She moved to the United States in 2014 and is now working towards a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she was awarded the prestigious CUNY Graduate Center Fellowship and is mentored by Ettore Causa. Currently, she teaches at Brooklyn College as a Teaching Fellow, and is on faculty at the annual festival “Point Counterpoint” in Vermont.
Violinist/violist, composer, and visual artist Leah Asher is an avid performer of contemporary music and creator of new artistic works. Leah is a member of The Rhythm Method string quartet, the violin-piano duo Aether Eos, and co-creator of the series ‘Meaningless Work’ with Nicolee Kuester. She has been featured as a concerto soloist with NOSO Sinfoniettaen and Oberlin’s Contemporary Music Ensemble. Leah formerly served as solo violist of NOSO Sinfoniettaen and co-principal viola of the Arctic Philharmonic. She regularly performs with other New York-based ensembles such as International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea ensemble, and Shattered Glass.
Horn player Nicolee Kuester is based in NYC and divides her time between experimental music and the Older Stuff, recently performing with the International Contemporary Ensemble, The Knights, Talea, and Wet Ink Ensemble in NYC; Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris; Alarm Will Sound in St Louis; and Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra in Los Angeles. She is co-founder with Leah Asher of MEANINGLESS WORK, a performance series that happily meanders between sounds, performance art, text, and movement theater.
Nicolee holds undergraduate degrees in horn performance and creative writing from Oberlin College & Conservatory and graduate degrees in contemporary music performance from UC San Diego. In addition to mucking about with experimental sounds and chamber music, she continues to do teaching artist work with high school students in Ridgewood, Queens as an alumna of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect fellowship. She also freaks out teens most summers as the brass faculty at North Carolina’s Governor’s School West, where among other things students encounter microtonal improv and learn how to stare into each other’s eyes without getting really squirmy.
Violinist Maya Bennardo is an active performer living in Brooklyn, NY. Maya is passionate about opening the dialogue between composers and performers, and is devoted to performing music of the present. She is a founding member of the violin/viola duo andPlay, described by I Care If You Listen as “enthusiastic champions for new music and collaboration.” She is a core member of Mivos Quartet, Nouveau Classical Project and Hotel Elefant, and has performed with ensemble mise-en, Contemporaneous, Mimesis Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, and [Switch~ Ensemble]. Maya also performs new and traditional repertoire for violin and piano with pianist, Karl Larson, in their duo, Bennardo/Larson.
Born and raised in Madrid, Spain, pianist and composer Marta Sánchez is actively working in the contemporary creative music scene in New York City and around the globe. Charting a significant path through her innovative and original music, she has reached an international audience, gaining significant global recognition. As a bandleader, she is currently working with her New York based Quintet, with her band Room Tales, featuring singer Sara Serpa, and with the Quartet Open Can, featuring Ralph Alessi, Michael Formanek and Mark Ferber. She is involved in many other music projects as a collaborator, performer, and/or studio musician in the United States and abroad.
Mary Prescott is a Thai-American interdisciplinary artist, composer and pianist who explores the foundations and facets of identity and social conditions through experiential performance. Featured in “21 for ‘21: Composers and Performers Who Sound Like Tomorrow,” The Washington Post describes her work as “masterfully envisioned… a bright light cast forward.”
Described as having a voice that "has a spiritual quality that [is] wholly arresting" (Steve Smith, Night After Night/The New Yorker) and and having "a sound that is well-suited for the strange world of new music" (Chicago Classical Review), Kayleigh Butcher (mezzo soprano) has gained critical and audience acclaim as a soloist and contemporary chamber musician.
Noah Gershwin is a guitarist and composer currently residing in New York City. As an active performer, Noah explores pushing the boundaries of free improvisation within the confines of the jazz idiom. Since moving to NYC, Noah has performed in venues such as The Stone and Bar Bayuex and has collaborated with artists such as Okkyung Lee, Billy Hart and Ben Street. Noah has had the privilege to perform both nationally and internationally at festivals such as the Iowa City Jazz Festival and The Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. With his collaborative jazz quartet, Junior Ranger, Noah had the opportunity to participate in the Avaloch Farm Music Institute as well as tour in the Netherlands as a result of being awarded the CIGSIE Grant for Study in Dutch Improvisation.
Nora Stanley is a New York-based saxophonist and composer whose interests and work live at the intersection of composed and improvised music. With strong roots in the jazz, afro-cuban and improvised music traditions, Nora’s music emphasizes interaction and collaboration. Her sound is melody-driven and reaches to expand the possibilities of the harmonic realm…
Flutist Leo Sussman grew up playing chamber music in living rooms and gigging with a salsa band in his hometown of San Francisco. A recent alum of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect and founding member of the wind quintet ConnectFive, Leo delights in designing and performing interactive, interdisciplinary musical experiences for communities ranging from elementary schools to concert halls across New York City and beyond. He is currently pursuing a doctorate at Manhattan School of Music.
Leia Slosberg is a New York based flutist committed to the performance of new music. She is a co-founder of the flute and cello chamber ensemble Berrow Duo, with Thea Mesirow, and a member of the Tredici Bacci. Leia pursued her undergraduate studies at The Boston Conservatory and holds a master’s degree from Manhattan School of Music’s Contemporary Performance Program.
Matt Evans is a composer and percussionist who produces acoustic and electronic music, cross-disciplinary performances, and sculptural sound installations through an experimental, ambient adjacent, eco-fictional lens. His work utilizes aqueous, drum-driven, hypnotic soundscapes and cathartic, embodied improvisatory performances to question the unknowable and absurd nature of our experience.
Mikael Darmanie has performed throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, Russia and the Caribbean. Recent festival appearances have included: The Weil Institute at Carnegie, Trinity Wall Street, Prototype, Bang on a Can Marathon, Close Encounters With Music, Berkshire High Peaks Festival, Cape Cod Symphony Nth Degree, Pianofest in the Hamptons, the Mozarteum, Mainly Mozart, and L’Acadèmie de Musique de Sion.
Lester St. Louis is a New York City-born and based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and curator. Lester has worked in, performed and created in artistic environments in The United States, Canada, South America, Europe and China with groups and artists such as Dré Hočevar Trio, Jaimie Branch Fly or Die, Ensemble Adapter, TAK Ensemble and many more. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists such as the JACK Quartet, Mahan Esfahani and Stefan Jackiw, RAGE THORMBONES, Lauren Cauley and others. In the near future Lester will be continuing to develop groups such as MADD (with Dré Hočevar and Leafar) as well as TRANSFER (with Jordan Balaber, Daniel Brew and Rocío Bolaños) along with many new ventures.
a violinist moonlighting as a cider maker, maeve schallert is a sound artist, improviser, and electronic musician exploring the nuances of interaction, communication and the self and other through sound. based in kingston, ny, they are exploring the extremities of both the violin and fruit wines.
Noah Becker is an alto saxophonist, clarinetist and composer based in New York. His recent activity includes releasing The Hollow Count with his band Underthought, his first record as a leader, and performing an album release show at The Jazz Gallery; releasing Retumbra, the eponymous debut from a band he co-leads; recording his third record, soon to be released as part of Henry Threadgill’s Baker’s Dozen initiative, for which Noah will also serve as a producer…
Based in New York City, South Korean violinist/improviser/teacher Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim has been presented by acclaimed organizations such as Chamber Music America, House of Yes, International Contemporary Ensemble, (Le) Poisson Rouge, Metropolis Ensemble, The Juilliard School, Prague Conservatory, and Music..
Miriam Elhajli is a folk singer, composer-improviser, and musicologist whose work is influenced by the rich musical traditions of her Venezuelan, Moroccan and North American heritage. Elhajli currently lives in New York City where she performs and works as a researcher at The Association for Cultural Equity founded by Alan Lomax…
Dr. Kate Umble Smucker is a member of the nationally touring Calliope Brass Quintet and teaches music at The Grace Church School. Working with Calliope Brass as the education and curriculum coordinator, Kate contributed to the educational show, “What’s Your Story?” She is the founder and band leader of the 16 piece King Street Big Band based in Lancaster, PA. Kate holds a Doctorate in Trumpet Performance from the University of Missouri in Kansas City, a Masters of Music from the University of North Texas, and Bachelors of Music Education (K-12 instrumental) and Trumpet Performance from the University of Northern Colorado.
Trumpet player Olivia Pidi is currently a member of New York City quintet Calliope Brass, subtle cheetah brass, and 2nd trumpet of The Montclair Orchestra. In addition to performing, Olivia teaches a full studio of trumpet students. As a chamber musician and soloist, Olivia has received the Alsop Family Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Award and placed in the 2019 International Women’s Brass Conference audition competitions. Olivia holds degrees from Manhattan School of Music (MM) and Oberlin Conservatory (BM), where she received the Carmine Caruso Scholarship, the Cecil Collins Award for brass performance, and the James “Jimmy” Stamp Award for trumpet performance.
Violinist and improviser Lauren Cauley has quickly risen in New York’s avant-garde as an artist known for genre-breaking performances that expand the sonic possibilities of her instrument. Now a “mainstay of the local new-music scene” (New York Times), she’s built a reputation as an interpreter of “fierce precision” and “excellence uncompromised” (Cleveland Classical)…
Saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Michael Thomas has been active in New York City since arriving in 2011. Michael has released three solo albums, and he has co-led the Grammy-nominated Terraza Big Band since its inception in 2015. According to the New York Times, Michael writes "energetic, tuneful music for both combos and large ensembles", and his compositions have been performed throughout North and South America, Europe, and Japan. As a sideman, Michael has performed on Grammy-winning albums by Brad Mehldau and Dafnis Prieto, and he has had the privilege of sharing the stage with Miguel Zenón, Nicholas Payton, Etienne Charles, and Jason Palmer. Currently, Michael is an Artist Teacher of Jazz Saxophone in the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the University of Hartford's Hartt School of Music.
Nate Jasensky is a guitarist, composer, producer, arranger, and music educator born and raised in sunny Tucson, Arizona, and currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Nathan first started his music education at the age of three, when he was enrolled in regular music classes with musicians in the local symphony orchestra. Learning how to read music before written english, Nate quickly became proficient in the guitar and the saxophone…
Kenny Warren grew up in Denver CO, where he was inspired at a young age by local trumpet greats Ron Miles, Al Hood and Greg Gisbert. In 2002 he moved to New York to study jazz at SUNY Purchase where he met collaborators like Bobby Avey and JP Schlegelmilch. After graduating in 2006, he moved to Brooklyn and quickly became an active member of the improvised music scene. He has performed with a who’s who of improvisors from his generation as well as with luminaries like Tony Malaby, Chris Speed, Angelica Sanchez and Brad Shepik.
Wilden Dannenberg is a multifaceted musician committed to engaging listeners in a range of musical styles and experiences. With a firm foundation in the repertoire of early to contemporary works, Wilden is regularly engaged as a hornist, conductor, arranger and organist. Recent highlights include the premiere of Silver, Blue, a Carnegie Hall commissioned quintet for Horn and Strings by TJ Cole, multiple collaborations as a conductor and performer with composer Tania León, and a performance of Schumann’s Konzertstücke for Four Horns and Orchestra. A South Georgia native, Wilden holds degrees from Florida State University and Stony Brook University, and is an alumnus of Ensemble Connect, a fellowship program of Carnegie Hall and the Juilliard School.
Born in Paris, France and raised partially in the California Bay Area, Sophie Delphis received her Bachelor’s with honors from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and her Master’s in voice performance at the University of Michigan, where she was an Andrea Person Voice Scholarship recipient. She enjoys collaborating with composers, improvisers and theatre artists on new works and currently resides in New York City.
Alec Goldfarb is a Brooklyn based guitarist, composer, and Hindustani classical musician. Active in the NYC improvised and new music communities, Alec directed the chamber ensemble “Laughing Coffin” and served as Jonah Bokaer Choreography’s inaugural Composer in Residence for 2018...
Carrie Frey is a violist, teacher, improviser, and composer based in New York City. Frey is the violist of the Rhythm Method (“a group of individuals with distinct compositional voices and a collective vision for the future of the string quartet” - I Care If You Listen) and a founding member of string trio Chartreuse and string quartet Desdemona…
Adrianne Munden-Dixon is a violinist, improviser, and composer living in New York and Montreal. Her work often explores timbre, texture and energy in acoustic and electronic environments. She grew up playing notated and improvised music in Savannah, Georgia and still lives in and between those mediums as a solo and chamber musician…
Sarah Beth Pfeifer is an NYC based singer/actor/director/artist. Member of the Chor since 2017, past performances include Experiments in Form and The Desire/Divinity Project. She recently made her Broadway debut in The Lightning Thief as Clarisse and others. Other notable performance credits include The Lightning Thief (Lucille Lortel), Goldstein (The Actors Temple), and Legally Blonde (National Tour). An eternal student, SB is a proud member of Marisa’s Libero Canto based vocal studio, and the Freeman Studio for actors. She feels so very lucky to be a part of the heart centered, deeply felt, intensely collaborative group of humans that is the Constellation Chor!
Shawn Shafner (he/they) is an artist, educator and facilitator. As founder of The People's Own Organic Power (POOP) Project, Shawn catalyzes conversations about sustainable sanitation for every pooper - and the planet we poop on. Look for his book Know Your Shit on shelves Feb 2022, and find more at www.thePOOPproject.org/ When he’s not pooping, Shawn teaches meditation and mindful creativity, leads movement classes through the lineage of choreographer Tamar Rogoff, sings with Marisa Michelson’s Constellation Chor Ensemble, and facilitates arts-integrated workshops for learners of all ages.
Tracy Cowart is the co-managing director of the medieval-experimental ensemble Alkemie, with whom she ponders the perspectives and sounds of centuries past, especially as they resonate with (and challenge) our modern-day perceptions. Heralded as “enchanting” and “indicating [the] future health of the field of early music,” Alkemie is based in NYC and tours nationally. Tracy is currently programming a concert of 15th-century song from the feminine or non-gendered perspective that challenges our inherited narrative of courtly love. She also performs as an early and new music soloist and chamber singer with groups including Rose of the Compass, Musica Sacra, and the Cathedral Choir of St. John the Divine, and nurtures a love of foraging and amateur mycology.
Pablo Menares is a Chilean bass player based in Brooklyn, NY. He is one of the most highly regarded bass players in Chile. Since moving to New York City in 2009, he has worked widely in both Jazz and Latin music. He has performed in many of New York’s notable jazz venues, including Blue Note, Jazz Standard, Jazz Gallery, Smoke, Smalls Jazz Club, Fat Cat, 55 Bar, Lincoln Center, Steinway Hall and Carnegie Hall. He has toured extensively in Europe, Asia, North, Central and South America. Among the luminaries with whom he has performed are Sam Yahel, Arturo O’Farrill, Randy Brecker, David Kikoski, Bob Moses, Greg Osby, Melissa Aldana, Claudia Acuña and Francisco Mela.
Guitarist and composer Vinicius Gomes released his first album in 2017 "Resilência", music dedicated to fusing the Brazilian universe with modern jazz. He has performed with important composers and interpreters, such as Zizi Possi (with whom he acts as guitarist and arranger in the show "À Flor da Pele"), Rosa Passos, Jane Duboc, Arthur Verocai and Oswaldinho do Acordeon, as well as instrumental music names such as Toninho Ferragutti (with whom he recorded the album "A Gata Café", winner of the 2017 Brazilian Music Award), Thiago Espirito Santo, Robertinho Silva and Mestrinho. He has also worked with orchestras such as OSESP and Jazz Sinfônica de SP.
Timo Vollbrecht is an internationally performing saxophonist-bandleader, composer, reeds player, educator, and scholar. Described as "luminously fine" by the New York City Jazz Record, his music is “blessed with rhythmic fluidity and intricate twists.” Based in between his home in Lower Saxony, New York and Berlin, he is particularly active in the international jazz and contemporary music scenes. A musical omnivore, he organically combines jazz with elements of new music, post-rock, electronics, and instrumental songwriting. He has appeared on 22 albums and at landmark stages such as the Village Vanguard, Winter Jazz Fest NYC, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. He holds a Ph.D. in Jazz Studies from NYU, where he currently teaches as an Adjunct Professor. As a Fulbright scholar, he also holds a master's degree in jazz saxophone from NYU where he studied with Mark Turner, Stefon Harris, and Joe Lovano. At the Berlin University of the Arts he studied with Peter Weniger, John Hollenbeck, and Kurt Rosenwinkel to receive a Bachelor in Music Education. His research interests range at the intersections of music production, pedagogy, band interaction, improvisation, artistic citizenship, and the digital avant-garde.
Paul Pinto is glad to be making sounds and imagery for people. He's a multi-disciplinary creator and performer, and band member of thingNY, Varispeed and LoveLoveLove. He’s performed Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King, originated the role of Balaga in Dave Malloy's Great Comet of 1812, and wrote the autotuned opera Thomas Paine in Violence, and the dance arias 15 Photos.
Hailing from Taiwan, bassoonist Yen-Chen Wu recently received her doctorate degree from StonyBrook University. Passionate about chamber music, Wu is a Yellow Barn musician since 2019, and a founding member of the NYC based woodwind quintet, ConnectFive.
Paraguayan/American oboist Tamara Winston is a highly sought after chamber and orchestral musician. Tamara performs regularly in the greater New York City area and abroad. She has performed with the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and the Montclair Orchestra. Ms. Winston is a founding member of the New York City based woodwind quintet, ConnectFive, and she is on faculty at Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.
Thea Mesirow is an NYC-based cellist, composer, and writer, a member of The Nouveau Classical Project, a founding member of CMA grant recipients Quartet121, and one-half of Berrow Duo. Hailed as “hypnotic” and “engaging” by Cleveland Classical, Berrow Duo has been presented by Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project, the 2018 NYU Music Conference, the SENSE Concert Series, and the Mise-En Place Curator Series. As a soloist and chamber musician she has worked with composers such as Reiko Füting, Michael Pisaro, and Sofia Gubaidulina and regularly performs at venues throughout New York City including Roulette, Lincoln Center Atrium, and National Sawdust. Her 2019/2020 season included the Actualizing Communities project, which involved commissioning new works by Wandelweiser community composers, such as Antoine Beuger and Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, and performing these new works within the composer’s communities in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Haan, Germany. Thea completed her Masters at the Manhattan School of Music in May of 2017 where she studied with Fred Sherry.
Tristan Kasten-Krause is a bassist and composer living in Brooklyn, NY, creating immersive, extensive and transcendent sound worlds. His music has been described as “heavenly” (the Guardian), “beguilingly frictionless” (Steve Smith) and full of “beautiful, unearthly soundscapes” (WNYC’s New Sounds).
PinkNoise is a New York-based chamber ensemble dedicated to musical improvisation and compositions in acoustic and electronic mediums as a reaction and response to the conditions of our community and our society. Our mission is to reveal how improvisation in musical performances lies at the intersection of historical and contemporary works, and how it is a synthesis of multifarious cultures and styles from the past and the present that connect us to our conscience in society. We also believe in performing new works by composers in acoustic and electronic mediums and collaborating with visual artists and writers to present music as a collaborative and interdisciplinary art form.
Brooklyn-based composer Sana Nagano has a highly distinctive approach to violin playing, grounding chaotic improvisations with restrained precision. Formally trained in both jazz and classical traditions, she rips up the rulebook with projects such as the avant-bluegrass trio Astroturf Noise and 2021's Smashing Humans, which bears the name of her explosive prog-jazz quintet.
“A vibraphonist to watch out for…” mentioned the New York City Jazz Record. Mexican born vibraphonist, marimbist, improviser and composer Patricia Brennan “has recently started to make her presence known on the New York avant-garde, working with such prominent bandleaders as Matt Mitchell and Michael Formanek.” observed The New York Times. Patricia is a member of Grammy nominated John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble and Michael Formanek Ensemble Kolossus. Patricia released her debut single “Sonnet” under Valley of Search, and released her solo debut album “Maquishti” in January 2021 also under the label Valley of Search. Patricia Brennan is a Valley of Search artist, BlueHaus Mallets artist and currently teaches at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and at the Jazz Studies program at NYU Steinhardt.
Zekkereya (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist originally from the Los Angeles Area. They are a member of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and has also worked with West Coast Luminaries such as Busdriver, JMD, Trevor Lawrence, William Roper, Zeroh, MAIA, and Michael Session. They have also shown animated films internationally, most of them exploring visual music. They also make graphic scores both animated and still.
Shara Lunon is a multidisciplinary vocalist based in New York City. Her artistic career leads with a Black American focus, using the full range of the voice in sound, wordplay, and visual art. Shara combines both improvised and scored vocals with intention of lyric (text and melody) over beat-heavy rhythms and ethereal ambiance. She has toured with several bands and as a soloist in South America and Europe. Shara received her undergraduate degree in Ethnomusicology from the University of Florida and a Vocal Certificate from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Shara is currently working towards her Masters in Music in Performance and Composition at the New School.
Weston Olencki is a musician, composer, and sound artist. Weston is currently making work centered around questions of instrumental music and its contexts/constructs, various mediated practices of listening and improvisation, and the technological, material, and cultural histories of rural space/time…
Sara Mayo is a native of the Pacific Northwest who now splits her time between the West and the East Coast, and therefore now mostly lives in the sky. On the left side of the country, she is the principal trombonist of the Yakima Symphony, and has also previously performed with groups such as the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Symphony Tacoma, and the Spokane Symphony. On the right side of the country, she works as a freelancer in New York City. She is the tenor trombonist of Calliope Brass and regularly performs with other groups such as the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, the Chelsea Symphony, and anyone else who'll hire her. She has appeared as a featured soloist with the Yakima Symphony and the Tacoma Community College Concert Band.
Based in New York City, trumpeter Rebecca Steinberg has a career marked by her warm, inviting sound and stylistic versatility. She performs regularly with staged productions, including Off-Broadway runs of “The Sorceress” and the renowned Yiddish-language production of “Fiddler on the Roof” (and can be heard on Fiddler’s 2018 cast album by Warner Music Group). Other notable performances include: City Center Encores! Production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Roadshow,” Symphony Space’s “Wall to Wall” Leonard Bernstein tribute, Adele at Radio City Music Hall, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She most enjoys her work with Calliope Brass, her ensemble that collaborates with creatives ranging from composers to Sesame Street puppeteers. Rebecca won the 2018 Liz Swados Inspiration Grant, an annual award honoring influential female music educators in New York City, on behalf of the ensemble.
Titilayo Ayangade, cellist, has spent more than two decades behind the instrument, enjoying performances in orchestras and chamber ensembles as well commissioning new music. Holding degrees in performance from University of Cincinnati-CCM and University of Texas at Austin, she has also worked closely with members of the Artemis Quartet at Queen Elisabeth Chapel in Belgium. Titilayo currently resides close to Washington, D.C. and is pursuing a D.M.A. at the University of Maryland as part of the fellowship ensemble in residence, Thalea String Quartet.
(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 (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…
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 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…
Cleek Schrey is fiddler, improviser, and composer from Virginia, now based in NYC. Frequent collaborators include David Behrman, the viol da gamba player Liam Byrne, traditional fiddle icon Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, and the avant-pop collective Exo-Tech. He is currently a Sound Artist-in-Residence on Governor’s Island and pursuing doctoral studies in Music Composition at Princeton University.
Erica Dicker is a New York-based violinist and improvisor making music reflecting her interest in experiencing eidetic memories as aural phenomena, a sensibility she brings to the Brandon Seabrook Trio, Carl Testa’s SWAY, Anna Webber’s Idiom, her electro-acoustic trio Vaster than Empires and Blood Luxury with Dennis Sullivan.
Sergio Tabanico is a tenor saxophonist based in New York City. Originally from Tucson, Arizona, he made way to New York in 2015 to study at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. Discovering his passion for saxophone at the age of 10, Sergio’s playing style has been deeply rooted in traditional jazz music and modern era jazz.
Born in Atlanta, Kevin Oliver, Jr, is just a kid with a horn and something to say. He is a saxophonist and stand-up comedian currently pursuing an undergraduate degree at The Juilliard School. Kevin started performing at the age of 11. He started off busking in downtown Atlanta at sporting events, parks and street corners eager to share his gift with the world. He was inspired to keep playing by the happiness that he saw on the faces of people who stopped to listen and meet him.
Immanuel Wilkins is a saxophonist, composer, educator, and bandleader from the greater Philadelphia area. While growing up, Wilkins honed his skills in the church and studied in programs dedicated to teaching jazz music like the Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts…
Aaron Wolff is a New York City-based cellist and performer active in solo, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary capacities. Recent performances include a solo program of music by Philip Glass and Arthur Russell at the New York City Reliquary, Debussy’s Cello Sonata on CNN’s Quest Means Business, collaboration with the Argus Quartet and American Modern Opera Company, and a fourth summer at Yellow Barn music festival in Putney, Vermont.
Lauren Siess is an NYC-based composer, violist, and improviser. Mass, chaos, and irrationality are integral to her work. By combining and manipulating found objects, she enjoys discovering the nuance and life inside of physical materials. 2021 projects included works for National Sawdust Ensemble, SICPP Festival, and and Line Upon Line Percussion…
Praised by the New York Times for her “sweet-toned playing,” violinist Alice Ivy-Pemberton studied with Nurit Pacht at the Kaufman Music Center in New York for ten years before continuing her studies at The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho. Alice received her Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School in May of 2019 as a recipient of both a Kovner Fellowship and a Benzaquen Career Advancement Grant, in recognition of “tremendous talent, promise, creativity, and potential to make a significant impact in the performing arts."
Lucie Vítková is a composer, improviser and performer (accordion, hichiriki, synthesizer, harmonica, voice and tap dance) from the Czech Republic, living in New York. Their compositions focus on sonification (compositions based on abstract models derived from physical objects) while in their improvisation practice Lucie works with characteristics of discrete spaces through the interaction between sound and movement. In Lucie’s recent work, they are interested in the social-political aspects of music in relation to everyday life and in reusing trash to build sonic costumes.
Jules Biber is a cellist, educator and musical curator based in Brooklyn, NY. An accomplished chamber musician and soloist, Jules’ versatility in early, standard and modern repertoire, as well as non-classical styles, makes her sought-after for a variety of high-profile concerts and recording projects, and her deep commitment to inclusive community has made her one of the city’s progressive curators of classical music spaces.
Jonah Rosenberg is a Sunset Park, Brooklyn based musician and composer who is interested in facilitating human communication via decorated cakes.
Violist Kallie Sugatski performs regularly with Pittsburgh Symphony, New York City Ballet, International Contemporary Ensemble, New Jersey Symphony, and on Broadway. In response to the pandemic, Kallie is organizing/curating outdoor distanced concerts centered around queer and composers of color for her newest project Vigorous Tenderness. A catalyst for radical change in the arts, Vigorous Tenderness presents relevant, powerful concert experiences that respond to immediate social, political, and environmental circumstances. These experimental performances resemble an art museum experience, with chamber music ensembles spread across the landscape while the audience forges a self-curated path through the installation. She will spend her 2021-2022 season as a section violist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Carlos Aguilar is a flutist and interdisciplinary artist who believes in creating work that pushes the tradition of performance by creating surreal spectacles with the aid of electronic sound processing and visual technology. His classical playing has been described as having “expressed the release of the soul” and his "burnished sound poured forth in unbroken arcs of molten seduction” (Boston Musical Intelligencer).
Pablo O’Connell (he/him) is an NYC-based oboist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. Pablo’s varied musical life includes composing and interpreting contemporary concert music, improvising, performing music of the European Baroque on period instruments, writing and recording indie folk songs, studying traditional Andean music, and more…
Philip Sheegog forges new possibilities for what the cello can be — with an artistic versatility and fearless commitment that have made him sought out on all ends of the musical spectrum. A champion for musical innovation, Mr. Sheegog has crafted a unique technical vocabulary influenced by a myriad of musical styles, premiered over eighty new works by living composers, and collaborated with such disparate groups as the legendary 1970’s Steve Miller Band, members of the GRAMMY-award winning Turtle Island String Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the hip-hop/classical collective ShoutHouse.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Raquel Acevedo Klein is an active vocalist, conductor, instrumentalist and visual artist. Raquel has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Celebrate Brooklyn!, National Sawdust and elsewhere.
Sarah Ghandour is currently a doctoral student at Stony Brooke University, where she also completed her master's degree with Cellist Colin Carr in May 2020. She completed undergraduate education at Bard Conservatory, earning a Bachelor of Music under the tutelage of Cellist Peter Wiley and a Bachelor in Mathematics. Sarah was then the honored recipient of the 2017-2018 Harriet Hale Woolley-Fulbright Scholarship and one year artist residency in Paris, France.
Vocalist/Poet/Composer Jennifer Beattie, hailed by Opera News for her “exuberant voice and personality”, performs vocal music from early to experimental. She collaborates as a poet/lyricist with classical, jazz and experimental composers, and composes her own works combining the mediums of poetry, music, and theater. She has been a featured soloist with The National Opera Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Park Avenue Armory, as well as a regular Artist-in-Residence at Yale University.
Zach Pulse is an oboist, educator, writer, and nature enthusiast in the NYC area. As a performer, Zach likes to explore the intersection between the oboe and human voice, and has collaborated with singers to commission several new chamber works. He holds music degrees from the Chicago College of Performing Arts, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin. In his work-from-home routine, Zach enjoys tending to his indoor garden and taking long walks with his partner, Max, and pandemic puppy, Otter.
Chelsea Lane graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Music, completed her M.A. in Harp Performance at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, and received her D.M.A. in Music Performance at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is a regular substitute on the Broadway production Paradise Square and was a co-chair of the 2019 Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes…
Nhi Huynh made her orchestral debut with the Ho Chi Minh City Symphony Orchestra (Vietnam) at the age of thirteen. She is a new music advocate with a strong passion to promote contemporary music and bring it to a wider audience, having performed and premiered works by over 30 living composers. As a winner of 2020 Stony Brook University Concerto Competition, Nhi will perform Sheila Silver’s Piano Concerto (1996) with Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra in March 2022.
Baldwin Giang (b. 1992, Philadelphia) is a composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist whose work aims to empower communities of audiences and performers by creating concert experiences that are opportunities for collective wonder and judgment. Described as "taut and cohesive...challenging and rewarding" (Cacophony), Baldwin’s music has been performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Symphony Center, and Chateau de Fontainebleau.
Alexander Davis is a New York City based freelance bassoonist whose artistic practice centers healing, connecting, and building community within classical music. He has played with orchestras and series such as Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Erie Philharmonic, CityMusic Cleveland, Harlem Chamber Players, Symphony in C, Symphoria, and Sherman Chamber Ensemble to name a few. He has performed in summer festivals such as Tanglewood, Ensemble Evolution, Banff Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Maine Chamber Music Seminar, and the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival. In addition to performing, Alexander is founder of Sugar Hill Salon Chamber Music in Harlem, bassoon faculty at Montclair State University, administrative manager for the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, and a teaching artist at the Park Avenue Armory.
Iranian and Pakistani American flutist Amir Farsi was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has performed under prolific conductors such as Marin Alsop, David Robertson, Peter Oundjian, Jean-Marie Zeitouni, Leon Fleisher, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn. Amir is currently a fellow in Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, and is on the artist roster of Music@Menlo for Summer 2022…
Winner of the Hellam Young Artists' Competition, the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition and the Center for Musical Excellence's inaugural Lee Memorial Scholarship, Graeme Steele Johnson has established a multifaceted career as a clarinetist, writer and arranger. Johnson's diverse artistic endeavors range from his TEDx talk comparing Mozart and Seinfeld, to his music- and poetry-weaving show IMPRESSION--based on his octet arrangement of Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun--to his performances of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in its original form on a rare elongated clarinet that he commissioned.
A recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as a top prize winner of the 2012 Walter W Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists’ 2010 National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and educator. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-themill instrumentalists from true artists.”
A native of St. Louis, Grammy Award winning violinist Henry William Wang has been described by the Washington Post as an artist "that makes the audience cheer lustily". He has won several engagements as soloist with orchestras including the University of Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Alton Symphony Orchestra, the University City Symphony, the Belleville Philarmonic, and the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra. Venues of solo performances have included The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Powell Symphony Hall. Henry resides in New York City, performing with such ensem. Currently residing in New York, Henry performs with various ensembles including Metropolis Ensemble, the New York Classical Players, Trinity Wall Street NOVUS ensemble, Quodlibet Ensemble, the Manhattan Chamber Players,Ensemble Melange and is a substitute member of the New York Philharmonic.
Support our Artists
Metropolis Ensemble is on a mission to empower outstanding performers and composers through the creation of new work, during and beyond the pandemic. Make a sustaining gift today.
Metropolis Creators
Each of our digital projects, developed in the midst of the pandemic, provide opportunities for our artists to do what they do best: make and share new music with music lovers everywhere.
For Musicians
Create your own novel groupings (4-10 players)
Select any number of newly commissioned Biophony works to intermix and play.
In your pod, consider the surroundings of your location, proximity to other ensembles and what they are performing, and the listener participants who are present.
For Composers
Create your own small collaborative groups and together, compose new music for nonspecific instruments.
Creative prompts, loops, graphic scores, games, cells — invent your own novel system to achieve your open score.
Individual pieces commissioned for Biophony, are for outdoor, acoustic-only performances.
Spaced throughout a large geographic area, park, or field, pieces for Biophony are experienced individually and as a whole.
For Audiences
For the listener: your decisions will shape your experience.
Each performance and listener-experience of Biophony will be unique, as determined by the unlimited flexibility of instrumentations and groupings, the topography of the site, and the freedom given to participants to choose their own musical adventure.
Biophony encourages exploration between music, site, listeners self-determination, and musicians interacting with all these moving elements.
Creative Contributors
Special thanks to the Metropolis Ensemble collaborative partners who helped make the Biophony possible:
Jakub Ciupinski • Ryan Francis • Kate Gilmore • Paula Matthusen • Phong Tran