Flame Keepers – Flash Back

TRAVEL BACK IN SONIC TIME

Experience the work of any of our past Flame Keepers by clicking on snapshots.





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Jakub Ciupinski

Creator, FlameKeeper

Jakub Ciupinski is a 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 symphonic works. Jakub has collaborated with Metropolis Ensemble since 2009.

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Molly Joyce

Molly Joyce was recently deemed one of the “most versatile, prolific and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome” by The Washington Post. Her music has additionally been described as “serene power” (New York Times), written to “superb effect” (The Wire), and “unwavering” and “enveloping” (Vulture). Her work is concerned with disability as a creative source. She has an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, and the primary vehicle in her pursuit is her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay which suits her body and engages her disability on a compositional and performative level.

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Jenny Beck

Jenny Beck is a composer of chamber, orchestral, electronic, vocal, and found-sound music, as well as music for dance. She grew up in rural Pennsylvania where the sounds of the woods stirred her imagination at a young age, and has gone on to write music that invites listeners into alternative modes of awareness. Working in an intensely distilled musical language, her work reflects her interests in nature, meditation, ambience, and ambiguity.

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Elizabeth A. Baker

Eschewing the collection of traditional titles that describe single elements of her body of work, Elizabeth refers to herself as a “New Renaissance Artist” that embraces a constant stream of change and rebirth in practice, which expands into a variety of media, chiefly an exploration of how sonic and spatial worlds can be manipulated to personify a variety of philosophies and principles both tangible as well as intangible. Elizabeth has received international recognition from press, scholars, and the public for her conceptual compositions and commitment to inclusive programming. Fanfare Magazine proclaimed in Fall 2019 “Perhaps Baker will be the Pauline Oliveros of her generation, and perhaps she will be more than that.”

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Mike LaDouceur

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 as “like listening to a beautiful impressionist painting”. Mike’s distinctive sound is constructed from many intricate lines and textures that combine to create a rapturous force. He employs a diverse sonic palette which allows the listener to become entranced in a meditative state, often triggering deeply emotional responses.

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Omri Cohen

Based in Germany, Omri Cohen fell in love with the modular environment and modular synthesis through his work with VCV Rack, a free and open-source virtual modular synthesizer.

Combining virtual and hardware, Omri adds also acoustic instruments into the mix like a flute, kalimba, piano, field recordings, and more.

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Phong Tran

Phong Tran is a Brooklyn-based composer, electronic musician, and visual artist. 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. Phong actively performs in MEDIAQUEER, a synthesizer and violin duo formed in 2018 with Darian Thomas. His work has been released through people | places | records and slashsound.

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Ryan Francis

Portland-based composer Ryan Francis spent most of the 2000s composing piano music, and most of the 2010s composing with synthesizers. Francis has collaborated with Metropolis Ensemble for over a decade, most recently as a co-curator of the Free Assembly online festival. Other collaborations include 2 ballets with choreographer Pontus Lidberg, the video piece I AM NOT TAME with artist Nancy Davidson, and the score for the video game Namco High with artist/writer Andrew Hussie. His piano music performed by Vicky Chow is available from Tzadik Records.

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Paula Matthusen and Olivia Valentine

Paula Matthusen (live-electronics) & Olivia Valentine (live-textiles) have collaborated for the past five years under the project between systems and grounds. The project exists through shared space and time, in which sound and textile are woven together simultaneously. The materials presented here are short loops from excerpts of durational events, traversing field recording, multiple layers of feedback, idiosyncratic synths, and, of course, weaving. For more information, please visit https://betweensystemsandgrounds.com

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Darian Donovan Thomas

Darian Donovan Thomas is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary artist interested in the intersections of medium, genre, and audience. He uses violin, electronics, and extra-musical materials in his works to discuss matters of racism in the US, uphold ancient indigenous stories, and create abstract nature-scapes. Darian is currently touring with Moses Sumney and Balùn, and is a Bang on a Can Summer Festival Composition Fellow, Sō Percussion Summer Institute Fellow, and New Amsterdam Records Composer Lab Fellow.

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Alessandro Apolloni

Alessandro is an Italian composer, musical sound designer and music editor based in London, working in Film, Tv and Advertising. In the last few years 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 is also assisting composer Carly Paradis on BBC’s Line of Duty. He graduated from the Royal College of Music in 2015 with a master’s degree in Composition for
Screen.

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Impromptuo

Combining training in European classical music with influences from free jazz and electroacoustic music, Impromptuo is an improvisation-focused duo of violinist Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim and pianist Joey Chang. They are recipients of Chamber Music America’s Ensemble Forward Grant and currently are mentored by Tyshawn Sorey.

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Nnux

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.

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Adam Cuthbert

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).

Their work fuses acoustic instruments with control voltage to create immersive sonic environments, drawing inspiration from the infinite palette of synthesized electronic sound, and the flow-state experience of open-world video games, garnering notice from The New York Times, NPR, Backstage Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle, which finds it “hard to resist the vigor and inventiveness of his writing.”

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Kirsten Volness

Smart, transcendent, and immersive, Kirsten Volness’ emotive soundscapes integrate electronics and modern composition techniques with jazz and pop influences. “Irresistible” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “nothing short of gorgeous.” (New York Arts), each of her compositions reveals “an exquisite sound world” (New Classic LA) inspired by nature, myth, spirituality, and environmental and sociopolitical issues. With commissions from the World Future Council Foundation, ASCAP/SEAMUS, BMI Foundation, and The American Opera Project, Volness received MacColl Johnson and RISCA Fellowships. She holds composition degrees from the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota, and is Visiting Assistant Professor at Reed College. • kirstenvolness.com

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Cassie Wieland

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

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David Bird

David Bird is a composer and multimedia artist based in New York City. His work explores the dramatic potential of electroacoustic and multimedia environments, often highlighting the relationships between technology and the individual. He is a founding member of the New York-based chamber ensemble TAK, and an artistic-director with Qubit New Music, a non-profit group that curates and produces experimental music events in New York City.

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Adam Holmes

Adam Holmes is a Brooklyn-based musician and artist who makes music for humans and computers. He is an avid percussionist, drummer, and composer interested in creating and discovering sounds for himself and others.

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Adrianne Munden-Dixon

Adrianne Munden-Dixon is a violinist, improviser, and composer based in New York and Montreal. Her work explores timbre and texture and she often incorporates electronics and field recordings to expand the sonic and expressive capabilities of the violin.

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Arone Dyer

Arone Dyer is a musician, composer & founding member of duos Buke and Gase & Mistresses, the producer of Dronechoir (Patreon), a project which examines social dis/comfort through long-durational choral performance, and a non-stop collaborator with an extensive resume of appearances.

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Jeremy Ajani Jordan

Critically acclaimed, “a clear technical virtuoso”, “a rare talent”, and “a true Wunderkind,” Chicago born Jeremy Jordan burst onto the music scene at age 9 playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in a live televised performance. Jordan was born into a musical family where his mother and father were his first instructors. They ensured that his burgeoning talent was nurtured by providing a strong foundation in classical training and also encouraged his study of improvised music and composition. Jordan went on to appear on the acclaimed radio program From The Top and From The Top: Live from Carnegie Hall performing Liszt. Since then Jordan has made his solo Carnegie Hall debut performing Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, and Wagner.

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Erika Dohi

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.

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Jack Gjaja

Jack Gjaja (b. 2005) is a composer and pianist from New York City. They currently study piano and composition at Manhattan School of Music Precollege and previously studied at the Preparatory Division of Mannes School of Music. During the summer of 2020, they joined composers from around the world at the Virtual Young Women’s Composers Camp, where their piece Icy climb with a side of Mockingtrack was premiered by saxophonist Kristen McKeon. Jack draws inspiration from Ravel, Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, Scriabin, Kelly Moran’s Don’t Trust Mirrors, and playwrights such as Ionesco and Martin McDonagh. Their works include small ensemble acoustic works, pieces for voice, solo works, electronic soundscapes, and pieces for period instruments. They've studied composition and piano with the following wonderful people: Mary Kouyoumdjian, David Bird, Tamar Muskal, Elena Leonova, Adrienne Kim. In addition to composition, they've performed in Montreal, Rovinj, Cremona, Bennington, and New York.

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Susanna Hancock

Susanna Hancock is an Asian-American composer whose music explores color, process, and acoustic phenomena. Plurality, ambiguity, juxtaposition, transience, and impermanence are currents that move throughout Susanna’s work as a reflection on identity and “place” - or lack thereof.

Susanna’s compositions have been performed by the JACK Quartet, ZAFA Collective, Metropolis Ensemble, and members of the LA Philharmonic and St. Louis Symphony, among others. Susanna’s work has been recognized by such organizations as ASCAP and United States Artists, and has been featured in concerts and festivals across the world including the Bang on a Can Marathon and the Dimitria Festival in Thessaloniki, Greece.
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Ricardo Romaneiro

The New York Times describes Ricardo Romaneiro's work as “a blissful and compelling mix of minimalist-derived rhythmic ecstasy and nightclub beats”. A graduate of The Juilliard School, Ricardo’s music synthesizes his major musical influences & passions: classical music & electronic music. His music has been featured, performed and commissioned in eclectic range of ensembles, institutions, festivals, & film. His work has been featured in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Vice/Creators Project, Esquire Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, Untapped Cities, Vogue & Edible Manhattan.
Recent works include Nat Geo & Disney+ commission for “Secrets of The Whales” live performance at National Sawdust, and Kennedy Center’s live scoring of Thomas Edison’s silent film “A Christmas Carol” performed by Metropolis Ensemble.

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Grey Mcmurray

Guitarist and singer Grey Mcmurray has been called “simultaneously chilling and moving”(The Deli Magazine), “sublimely odd”(New York Magazine), and “the world’s least obtrusive guitarist”(The Guardian). He has performed/recorded with artists including Gil-Scott Heron, Meshell Ndegeocello, Tyondai Braxton, Alarm Will Sound, Du Yun, Skuli Sverrisson, Beth Orton, Colin Stetson, Sam Amidon, Ali Sethi, John Cale and Laraaji among others. He released his solo debut, Stay Up, on Shahzad Ismaily’s Figureight Records in September 2019. The new collaborative quartet of Grey, Melvin Gibbs, Greg Fox and Sasha Frere-Jones, Body Meπa, released their “transient oasis, heady but cautiously optimistic”(Robert Christgau) debut in December 2020. He hopes everyday to provoke joyful tears in strangers' eyes.

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Tristan Kasten-Krause

Tristan Kasten-Krause is a bassist and composer living in Brooklyn, NY, praised for providing his “low-end authority to vital New York institutions” (The New Yorker) such as Argento Chamber Ensemble, Wet Ink, Ensemble Signal and Contemporaneous. As a composer his music has been described as “heavenly” (the Guardian), “beguilingly frictionless” (Steve Smith) and full of “beautiful, unearthly soundscapes” (WNYC’s New Sounds). As a bassist he has performed and recorded music with artists such as Alvin Lucier, Steve Reich, Caroline Shaw, Kid Millions and David Lang. His most recent album, Potential Landscapes, showcases transcendental, sample-based collaborations with artists such as Eliza Bagg (Lisel), Jayson Gerycz (Cloud Nothings), Matt Evans, Brendon Randall-Myers and Carol Johnson.

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George Cory Todd

George Cory Todd is a multimedia artist and engineer based in the Bay Area. Combining programming, audio and video frameworks, and other experimental practices, he explores an array of approaches to digital production, from sound and visual design & engineering to installation work, performances, and composition. His experience has lended him to national and international tours with renown artists of various disciplines, collaboration in a multitude of settings, and extensive studio work. Projects have been featured in Pitchfork, NPR, Bandcamp Daily, The Quietus, NTS Radio, Dublab, and more.

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Cristina Spinei

"Composer and performer Cristina Spinei (pronounced spin-AY) has written for orchestra (Racine Symphony Orchestra, Lafayette Symphony Orchestra) and chamber ensemble (New York Piano Quartet, Intersection) but she is most known for her work with dance, having been commissioned by Nashville Ballet, the New York Choreographic Institute, Parsons Dance, 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)

Cristina has made her home in Nashville since 2014, and has since established herself as one of Music City’s most versatile, forward-thinking musicians: Nashville Arts dubbed her “gifted and engaging”, while The East Nashvillian praises her “adventuresome imagination.” Self-described as “minimalish,” Cristina anchors her musical ideas in melody, movement, and loops."

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Clara Warnaar

Clara Warnaar is a NYC based drummer, percussionist and composer. Clara performs regularly with the International Contemporary Ensemble and American Modern Ensemble, and has guest performed with So Percussion and Yarn/Wire. Recent premieres and recordings include: Ted Hearne (PLACE), Missy Mazzoli (Proving Up), Steve Reich (Reich/Richter) and Ellen Reid (Run/Playground). Clara’s own compositional style merges field recordings, classical music and electronics. She is the curator of the series “A New Age for New Age” which aims to re-imagine and critique New Age music. Clara plays drums in the post-rock band Infinity Shred, and the antiphonal chamber metal band Real Loud.

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Sonya Belaya

Sonya Belaya is a Russian-American pianist, singer, composer, and improviser, who divides her time between Michigan and New York. Committed to multiplicity, she is a diverse music-maker invested in vulnerable art and the development intimate, meaningful collaborations. Her work explores the integration of women’s trauma and the immigrant experience as musical narrative by centering power-sharing and storytelling as a symbol of vulnerability. Sonya’s awards include the 2021 American Composers Forum Create Award and the 2020-2021 Resident Artist at Roulette Intermedium, made possible by the Jerome Foundation.

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Hallie Smith

Hallie Smith is a musician based in the Bay area. Her practice is oriented towards building soft circuits/sensors, coding, installations, and emotional music. Hallie’s pieces have been featured in festivals such as the Yellow Barn Young Artists’ Program, Summer Institute of Contemporary Performance Practice, the SPLICE Institute, and the Valencia International Performance Academy.
Previous and upcoming collaborations for Hallie include: the Eco Ensemble at UC Berkeley, Splinter Reeds, the SMASH ensemble, saxophonist Drew Whiting, The Boston Conservatory Contemporary Performance Ensemble, and producer Felix M. Hallie currently produces and releases music on New York -based Geryon Label.

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Sam Nester

Sam Nester is a trumpet player and composer. Nester has performed for Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival & Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the Beijing Modern Music Festival, Paris Opera Ballet, Wordless Music Orchestra, Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance Group and the Festival of New Trumpet Music among others. For these ensembles and others, Nester has premiered works by Pulitzer Prize winning composer John Luther Adams, John Cale (Velvet Underground) and John Zorn.

He has been the artist-in-residence for Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, and Bruny Island (Australia). He has received commissions for the creation of site-specific sound installations from George Mason University, Colby College, and EcoArt Project.

He currently serves on Music History faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, as well as trumpet faculty for The Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program.

The recipient of numerous awards, Nester has been a Fulbright Scholar, a recipient of the Australian Music Foundation Award, a Brian Boak Outstanding Performer Award, an EcoArt Project Prize winner, and an American Australian Association’s Dame Joan Sutherland Fund grantee. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music Studies from the Queensland Conservatorium and Bachelor of Music from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (First Class Honors). He received a Master of Music and Doctorate of Musical Arts from the Manhattan School of Music, earning the Helen Cohn Award for his dissertation reexamining the life and work of Giacinto Scelsi in contemporary contexts.

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Juraj Kojš

My name is Juraj Kojš, and I am an artphibian artist from Slovakia and USA, exploring the fields of music, sound art, theater, poetry, mixed media, multimedia, bioacoustics and technologies as a maker and performer. Collaborating with artists and scientists, producing other people’s works, doing scholarly research and teaching also give me joy, as does living in Miami, FL. Miami New Times described my muscle-powered multimedia Neraissance as "striking and unforgettable," MiamiArtzine called Signals "enthralling and immersive," and Miami Herald praised Bang for the Train as "the most profound…unexpected and enjoyable.”

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Weston Olencki

Weston Olencki is a musician, composer, and sound artist. They are 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. Weston has performed and presented work at the Borealis Festival, ISSUE Project Room, REDCAT, bludenzer tage zeitgemäßer musik, Ghent Jazz Festival, Blanton Museum of Art, philharmonie luxembourg, Squeaky Wheel, Festival Musica, the American Academy in Rome, Frequency Festival, Indexical, and the OPTION series, and was awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis from the 2016 Darmstadt Ferienkurse. Various recording projects have been released by HatHut, Not Two, Sound American, Parlour Tapes+, Carrier Records, New Amsterdam, Clean Feed, Anticausal Systems, SUPERPANG, Dinzu Artefacts, Creative Sources, and their first solo brass release SOLO WORKS, which featured on Bandcamp Daily’s Best Experimental Music of 2020. Weston is an active member of RAGE THORMBONES, Ensemble Pamplemousse, the Wet Ink Large Ensemble, and performs regularly as a soloist and ensemble member on low brass instruments and various electronic media.

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Christina Vantzou

Christina Vantzou is a Kansas City native of Greek descent who resides in Brussels, Belgium.  Her practice has evolved over the past decade to encompass composing, recording, performance, installation, and filmmaking.  Her work deals with space, sound, time-expansion, atmosphere and harmonies through electronics and acoustic instruments. Her work has been describes as 'feeling music;' She often works in a group process, inhabiting the role of composer while the entangled nature of collaboration takes its course. Space left for chance and improvisation alongside rigorous periods of research and experimentation mark the work as both personal and about the space and time of its making.  Her releases include four albums on Kranky, 2020's Multi-Natural–a foray into abstract electronics, hybrid, hallucinative chamber music and field recording on the Belgian label Edições CN, two full-length albums with John Also Bennett as CV & JAB, and many collaborative works.  Recent collaborators include Minna Choi of Magik*Magik Orchestra, ACME, Echo Collective, Félicia Atkinson, Steve Hauschildt, Holland Andrews, Lieselot De Wilde, and Heinrich Mueller, among many others.

Photo Credit: John Also Bennett

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Isabel Lepanto Gleicher

Flutist and sound artist 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. She is also a founding member of Song Sessions Collective: a collective of four improvisers who create an ever-changing work based on the structure of whale songs through the use of flutes, clarinets, sine-tones, and an LED light installation. Isabel has had the opportunity to premiere works by Steve Reich, George Lewis, Missy Mazzoli, John Zorn, Augusta Read Thomas, and Dai Fujikura among others. Isabel has been called a “rising talent and stand out performer in the new music scene” by Miller Theatre. In 2018, she was featured in a solo recital on Miller Theatre’s Pop Up series. In 2020 Isabel has presented several solo performances that included original works: Experimental Sound Studio's The Quarantine Concerts, International Contemporary Ensemble series Tues@7, ChamberQUEERantine Virtual Festival, Recital Stream and George Mason University’s Mason Arts at Home. You can hear Isabel on Wild Up’s latest album Julius Eastman Vol. 1: Femenine, The Bells Bow Down: The Music of Ilari Kaila, Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Aequa, and San Fermin’s The Cormorant I. Isabel has earned an MM in Contemporary Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, an MM from the Yale School of Music, and a BM from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music. To learn more please visit isabellepantogleicher.com

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Florian Herzog

Florian Herzog, (1989) bassist and composer, is a pioneer of the German and international jazz and avant-garde scenes.

After living and working in the Netherlands, Cologne and finally New York, he now writes for projects that are avant-garde jazz, pop or electronic, but also always all of the above. His bass playing has been described by the press as "emancipated, spirited and sensitive."

His collective projects such as Just Another Foundry, Turn, and Trillmann have won multiple awards (e.g. Young German Jazz Award, Avignon Jazz Award) and released over a dozen albums between them. As a leader, Herzog's projects such as Moon Tree, his quartet 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 the new generation and musicians like Anna Webber, Elias Stemeseder and Nick Dunston.

He has previously worked with Metropolis by contributing a biome to the "Biophony" project, 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.

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Claire Dickson

Claire Dickson is a creative vocalist, songwriter, and producer from Medford, Massachusetts currently based in Brooklyn. In addition to her solo work improvising with voice and electronics, she co-leads the duo Myrtle (with singer/songwriter Camila Ortiz), and collaborates Chase Kuesel, Grey Mcmurray, and Lesley Mok, among others. Her music has been featured on numerous Spotify playlists including Dummy’s Best New Artists. She is a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and has studied music at Harvard, the Banff Workshop for Jazz and Creative Music, the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, and Esperanza Spalding’s Sonic Healing Lab.

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Shayna Dunkelman

Shayna Dunkelman is a musician and percussionist based in Brooklyn, NY.

Dunkelman is known for her versatile and unique techniques, and use of electronics to access a sonic pallet not found in acoustic percussion.

In addition to solo performances, Dunkelman tours Balún, Emily Wells, Attacca Quartet, Ali Sethi, and her percussion duo Nomon with her sister Nava.

Born and raised in Tokyo to an Indonesian mother and an American father, Dunkelman became a multi-instrumentalist performing alongside her mother. Dunkelman is currently working on the piece Answer to (XX), a performance and documentary film exploring relationships and power dynamics between “band leaders” and “band members.” This is made possible by the support of Franklin Furnace and is the musician in residence of Pioneer Works for September, 2020.

Dunkelman was recently a soloist in the latest orchestral piece by Pulitzer Award-Winning and Grammy nominated composer Du Yun, titled Where We Lost Our Shadows (2019). Dunkelman became increasingly active in the alternative music scene as a member of the band Xiu Xiu, touring the world for 6 years. As part of Xiu Xiu, Dunkelman shared stages with Genesis P-Orridge (Psychic TV), Sun Ra Arkestra, Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails) to name a few. Dunkelman has recorded and performed with pioneers of avant-garde experimental musicians such as Yuka C. Honda, John Zorn, Yoko Ono, and Thurston Moore and performed at The Broad, Centre Pompidou, The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, HAU, Lincoln Center, The MET, Pioneer Works, STUK,, Tanzquartier, Terminal 5, QAGOMA among others.

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Alicia Enstrom

Alicia Enstrom is a classically trained violinist, composer, producer and reformed circus runaway (Cirque du Soleil) who plays high and loud, tinkers with tech, and loves to use music to stir the pot of your subconscious. She is a unique artist who’s work spans that of classical, orchestral, pop and ambient electronic.

Alicia has performed on stages throughout the world as a soloist, for blockbuster movie soundtracks and video games (Call of Duty, Madden NFL, Harriet), alongside Billboard 100 artists (Willie Nelson, Paul McCartney, Dolly Parton), on TV awards shows and with the most recognized symphonies in the world.

She has released numerous self recorded/produced projects of which she performs live with looping pedals. In 2018, Alicia won The Ear Classical Composition Competition in New York City with multiple performances at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music via her looping pedals and with orchestra. Similarly, she was just named the 2021 Winner in the Instrumental Category of the Unsigned Only Music Competition with the first movement of her Looping Concerto for Violin, Electronics and Orchestra.

Her compositions can be seen in short films, commercials, interactive video art and installation, and commissioned orchestral and dance performances.

Alicia was nominated for an Academy of Country Music – Specialty Instrument Player of the Year Award 2021 and is currently performing with the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
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Sam Torres

Sam Torres (he/him) is a musician and audio engineer based in Troy, NY. He is also a founding director of Organ Colossal, a nonprofit presenting music in the New York Capital Region. He grew up in the Bronx listening to and playing salsa, jazz, and Bach, and then received degrees in jazz performance and computer music composition. All of these musical interests continue to live and evolve through his own work, which is itself striving to be as honest and simple as possible. His debut full length album of music for saxophone and live electronics will be released sometime in the next several years. Learn more at samtorresmusic.com.

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Maria Takeuchi

ÉMU aka Maria Takeuchi creates sonic and visual poems, merging organismic soundscapes with generative art and illuminating objects inspired by nature.

Using piezo microphones attached to wood bark wound or bamboo with guitar strings and porcelain bowls carefully tuned with water measurements, Maria plays and conducts the sound objects with a delicate yet intentional focus. The subtle sound textures created solely with touches by hand, stones, leaves, sandpaper, and shells on the handmade instruments, processed for added aesthetic atmosphere.

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Raquel Acevedo Klein

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Raquel Acevedo Klein is an active conductor, vocalist, composer, and instrumentalist. Raquel has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Celebrate Brooklyn!, the Guggenheim, Rockefeller Center, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, WNYC, and elsewhere.

Recently, Raquel was commissioned by Little Island to premiere Polyphonic Interlace: a surround-sound music experience she composed using 40 layers of her own singing voice. Polyphonic Interlace went on to be performed by American Composers Orchestra in their first concert since the pandemic. As part of NY PopsUp, Raquel curated the four-week festival entitled NYC FREE, to celebrate the opening of Little Island. Her performances and curations have caught the attention of publications including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, and Time Out New York.

Raquel conducts for the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra among other projects. She has premiered works and operas by Philip Glass, Caroline Shaw, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Paola Prestini, Bryce Dessner, and George Lewis to name a few. She has recorded and performed with artists including Glen Hansard, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The National, Grizzly Bear, Cory Smythe, Sufjan Stevens, The Knights, NY Philharmonic, and International Contemporary Ensemble among others.

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Ledah Finck

Ledah Finck is a violinist, violist, improviser, and composer who currently resides in NYC. A passionate creator, performer, and curator of contemporary classical music, she is a member of the contemporary-music string quartet Bergamot Quartet, currently the Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the New School where the group is mentored by the JACK Quartet. Her pursuit of contemporary music is strongly supplemented by performing and collaborating in other genres such as jazz manouche, Appalachian and Celtic folk, and experimental music. Compositional projects include commissions by Imani Winds, Alarm Will Sound/Now Hear This, the Bridge Ensemble, The Peabody Community Chorus, and a work for the Bergamot Quartet and percussionist Terry Sweeney, which received a New Music USA grant. She released her first solo album, Mayfly, in 2020 and is at work on her second.

She has completed studies at the Banff Centre, the Lucerne Festival, Ensemble Moderne’s Klangspuren Academy in Austria, the Aspen Music Festival, and Bang on a Can among others. She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in violin performance and composition from the Peabody Conservatory, where she studied with Herbert Greenberg, Oscar Bettison, Judah Adashi, and Mike Formanek.

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Marc Alberto

Euro-Caribbean artist Marc Alberto (they/them) is a musical polyglot whose work seems to escape categorisation.
Besides developing a personal language as a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist, as well as composing, improvising and performing electro-acoustic chamber music – they have been working in a continuous carrousel of interdisciplinary collaborations as a sound artist, lyricist, arranger, producer, director and performer.

Marc is currently based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

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Shara Lunon

Shara Lunon is the product of the evolution of Black American musical traditions. As a poet, vocalist, composer, and improviser, her art finds the ethereal in the chaotic. With voice as the foundation, Shara’s music is an exploration of text and sound that seamlessly weaves through the ceaseless relationship of struggle, resilience, hope, and resolution. She has performed with leading improvisers including Darius Jones, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Shara’s work has been featured in The Gothamist, and can be heard in collaboration with Marisa Tornello in the spring of 2021 at Roulette Intermedium.

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Kristina Teuschler

Kristina Teuschler performs classical music, makes electronic music, and creates spaces for contemporary music.
With clarinet and bass clarinet as her primary instruments, she joined the West Point Band full-time in 2019. She is also an active freelancer, performing with professional orchestras, contemporary ensembles, and indie bands in New York.
She co-directs Madison New Music Festival, a weekend-long event in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, and curates the Wisconsin Composers Project.
Kristina’s original music combines clarinets, found sounds, vocals and synthesizers. Her debut album is currently in production, which combines original works with electroacoustic works for clarinet by others, including a commission by Morgan Henderson (Fleet Foxes, Blood Brothers, Cave Singers).
Learn more at kristinateuschler.com

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Topu Lyo

Topu Lyo is a Brooklyn based multi-disciplinary electronic and acoustic experimental cellist. He has performed/recorded with artists such as: Emily Wells, Caroline Polachek, Ruth B, and performed at venues such as MOMA, LA Natural History Museum amongst many others.

His band Live Footage has composed and produced many tracks for: HBO, BMW, VICE and most currently a 3 part documentary on Kanye West called Jeen-Yuhs set to be released on Netflix in February. They have also held a 10 year residency in Chinatown’s Apotheke.

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Charlotte Greve

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

Charlotte’s Brooklyn-based indie-pop influenced band Wood River released their Debut LP in 2015 and released their second full length album “More Than I Can See” on Yellowbird Records in 2020. Her large scale multi genre piece “Sediments We Move” was released on New Amsterdam and Figureight Records in October 2021 and received significant attention-

“Best 25 classical tracks of 2021” - The New York Times
"Greve is definitely her own artist, and the blend of approaches here manages to surprise while also feeling carefully thought through … Greve displays a tight focus on arrangement and composition, with all the aesthetics at her disposal."– The New York Times, 5 Classical Albums to Hear Right Now
"A stirring composite of choral hymns, progressive rock, and free jazz … rich in detail, but never overwrought. Instead … a fluid cycle of matter as sound: building, dissipating, and crystalizing once again.” – Pitchfork, 7.5

Further projects in New York include the trio "The Choir Invisible” and the ambient duo “Sooner”. As a side-woman, Charlotte continues to collaborate with different artists such as Chris Morrissey, Marta Sanchez and Vinnie Sperrazza.
Charlotte has been granted several awards for her work, including the 2012 and 2018 Echo Jazz, the 2010 JazzBaltica Award and the 2008 Praetorius-Musikpreis.

Since 2010 Charlotte has been touring with her own projects in the US, Europe, and South Asia and played at several major jazz and pop festivals such as Jazz Baltica, Jazzfest, Berlin, Haldern Pop, and Jazzfest Kolkata.

Born in 1988, Greve began playing classical flute at the age of eight and picked up the saxophone at age the age of sixteen. She received her undergraduate degree at the Jazz Institute Berlin in 2012. The same year, she moved to New York City to pursue a graduate degree at NYU Steinhardt.

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Marisa Tornello

Marisa Tornello is a composer, vocalist, performance artist, mover, and maker from and based on Staten Island. From bodypaint to projection art, Tornello cultivates a platform for dialogue around the human psyche through the dual lens of trauma and healing. Their works have been shown at Roulette, the Tank, Jack, La MaMa ETC, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Vital Joint, Invisible Dog Arts Center, and Judson Church, and have been featured in the Exponential Festival and Ladyfest at the Tank. Tornello recently received a Jerome Commission at Roulette Intermedium for Spring 2022 and is a member of ECHO Ensemble.

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Theo Walentiny

Pianist, composer, producer and improviser Theo Walentiny grew up in an artistic home. His world of influences includes Cecil Taylor, Charles Mingus, Toru Takemitsu and Henri Dutilleux. Along with performing across top venues in New York City, Theo has performed globally including places such as Israel, Switzerland and China. He is an alumnus The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and The Banff International Jazz Workshop. He released his debut album “Looking Glass” (a collection of solo piano improvisations) in April of 2021, to critical acclaim. Theo is currently developing an electronic-oriented project for a subsequent album release.

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Eli Greenhoe

Eli Greenhoe (b. 1994) is a composer, songwriter, and guitarist hailing from Brooklyn, New York. His works have been commissioned and performed by such artists and ensembles as loadbang, Bergamot Quartet, Aki Takahashi, S.E.M. Ensemble, and George Manahan, among others. His music has been programmed at the Bang on a Can, Chatter, Yellow Barn, Ostrava Days (CZ), and Tokyo to New York (JP) festivals. In 2018 he was awarded a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Recently, he was selected as a finalist in the Beth Morrison Projects “Next Generation” program.

As a performer, Greenhoe has led bands in New York City and elsewhere nearly his entire life. Currently he performs as a solo artist, as well as with his duo Airborne Charlie (with Hans Bilger), and his cabaret act Bergman & Bloustein (with Natasha Thweatt). He is also active in interdisciplinary collaboration: his film music has been featured in Vogue Magazine and the 2020 Maryland Film Festival. Greenhoe is currently a doctoral candidate at the Yale School of Music, where he completed his M.M. in 2018.

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Kaitlyn Raitz

New York-born Nashvillian Kaitlyn Raitz grew up surrounded by a wide array of musical genres, finding each one more exciting than the next. These curiosities have led her to a career as a multi-style cellist, composer, and songwriter. In October, she released her debut album “Me, Myself, Myself, and I,” an album of classical-crossover cello quartets and quintets. She is also the cellist for country singer-songwriter Brandy Clark, one half of her own folk/Americana duo Oliver the Crow, and the cellist and creative director for the Atwood Quartet.

Kaitlyn holds a Bachelor of Music degree and a Performer’s Certificate from Purchase College, State University of New York where she studied with Julia Lichten and a Master of Music degree from McGill University where she studied with Matt Haimovitz.

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Jordan Lehning

From Hendersonville, TN. Writes Music.

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Larissa Maestro

Larissa Maestro is a cellist, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and composer originally from Ithaca, New York. Her resume is broad and varied, a testament to her deep love of creation, expression, and collaboration. Since her arrival in Nashville, TN in 2007, Larissa has co-founded a community orchestra (The Nashville Concerto Orchestra), joyfully screamed 90s covers to thousands of people with My So-Called Band, started a Star Trek podcast (Into the Wormhole with Larissa and Lauren), created countless string arrangements for recordings and live performances, and appeared on stages big and small, in person and on network television. The list of artists with whom she has collaborated and/or performed is as diverse as her interests: Eminem, Margo Price, Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings, Mickey Guyton, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Jake Wesley Rogers, H.E.R. & Daniel Caesar, Toni Braxton, Cam, Brandi Carlile, and more. She is currently writing and recording a solo pop project that she has named MZTZA, and touring with 3x 2022 Grammy award nominee and magical human, Allison Russell.

As a composer, Larissa has used chamber music to express her rich inner world, relationship to her neurodivergence, and identity as a Filipinx woman. Her compositions have been performed by Julian Schwarz (cello), Patrick Dailey (countertenor), ALIAS Chamber Ensemble, Lockeland Strings, La Vie Quartet, The Nashville Concerto Orchestra, and members of the Nashville Symphony. Her first work for dance, Fortitudine, a collaboration with choreographer Mollie Sansone, premiered in February 2022 with the Nashville Ballet.

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Sequoia Sellinger

Sequoia Sellinger is a composer and collaborative theater artist based in New York City. She is invested in new work that functions as a vehicle to reimagine the possibilities of what the world could be. She is a graduate of SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music where she studied classical composition under Laura Kaminsky and Du Yun. She has been a composer at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and the New Dramatists Composer Librettist Studio. She is a member of Maestra and the Dramatists Guild. Recent works include: Earth First (Macdowell Fellowship), Impossible Green (The York Theatre), Silent Springs (BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop), History of Traitors According to Sydney (The Wild Project) and is currently being supported by the Shubert Organization’s Artistic Circle. and Gravity of Me Gone (Ars Nova). www.sequoiasellinger.com

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Amelia Brey

Amelia Brey’s music has been described as possessing “haunting beauty” and “a deep, disquieting power” (National Sawdust Log). Her wind quintet, AR(i/e)AS, was the recipient of a BMI Student Composer Award; 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. Other accomplishments have included premieres by Ensemble Dal Niente, National Sawdust Ensemble, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, and members of Ensemble Intercontemporain and the New York Philharmonic, in addition to commissions from Essential Voices USA, Metropolis Ensemble, and New York Virtuoso Singers. Brey serves as the Composition Coordinator for zFestival, a virtual new music summer course for composers, performers, and audio engineers, as well as the chief editor of the Charlotte New Music Opportunity Newsletter. Hailing from Tallahassee, Florida, Brey studied with Michael Slayton and Stan Link at Vanderbilt University as the Harold Stirling Vanderbilt Honor Scholar in Music; she is currently a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at the Juilliard School, where she studies with Robert Beaser. Her works are published by Hal Leonard and Harp Column Music.

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Geoff Pynn

Geoff Pynn is a philosophy teacher, occasional church musician, and electronic music hobbyist in the Midwest. He started playing the piano at age five, guitar at 14, and ukulele at 42. An aesthetic gourmand, Geoff's compositions include minimalist piano loops, lo-fi ambient drones, mangled sample-based experimental noise, glitchy beats, shimmery blissed-out synth chorales, and bleep-and-bloop modular improvisations. His Flamekeepers contributions incorporate field recordings made in a local toy shop, samples of classic Italian giallo scores, AI-generated text-to-speech readings of ancient philosophy texts, sequenced tape hiss, piano, and a variety of inexpensive electronic instruments.

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Patrick Burke

Patrick Burke writes music for piano, film, orchestra, and chamber ensembles, including NOW Ensemble, which he co-founded in 2004. His music, while deeply spiritual, is also “glittering fun…at once very sophisticated and instantly accessible” (Third Coast Digest). Patrick likes to collaborate with musicians from other genres and traditions, as he did in the Independent Music Award-winning album Rounder Songs, which was co-composed with his wife, old-time musician and songwriter Emily Pinkerton.

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Ted Reichman

Ted Reichman was born in Aroostook County, Maine in 1973. He began studying jazz piano at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School in 1987 and went on to study experimental music and ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University with Alvin Lucier, Sumarsam, and his most important early mentor, Anthony Braxton. At Braxton’s urging, Reichman began playing accordion, the instrument that would become the basis of his work in music. After beginning his professional career with Braxton while still a student, Reichman moved to New York City where he worked with a panoply of musical greats in styles ranging from improvised music and jazz to rock and roll and various forms of Jewish music. In addition to his work with Braxton, which includes the first recordings and performances of “Ghost Trance Music,” he is best known for his ten-year-plus tenure with John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet. He also founded the music series at alt.coffee which would evolve into Tonic, one of the world’s most crucial venues for avant-garde music. He has been on the faculty of the New England Conservatory for over ten years and spent four years as an Assistant Professor of Film Scoring at Berklee. He currently lives outside Boston where he records, produces and mixes records and composes music for films. Photo by Lisa Rinzler.

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Jacob Rudin

Jacob “NTHNL” Rudin is a classically trained composer and pianist turned multi-flutist, producer and sound-healing practitioner. Having created electronic and acoustic music in a wide variety of contexts since 2012, Jacob works in both the healing and contemporary music worlds, drawing on a rich sonic practice that involves experimental sound design, field recording, and virtuosic performances on a wide range of instruments. He currently lives in Queens, NY, where he teaches piano lessons, hosts regular soundbaths throughout the city and gigs with his band, NTHNL.

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Anna Roberts-Gevalt

Anna RG is an artist whose work moves outward from her immersion in communities of traditional music, and a decade of apprenticeships with elder masters of banjo and fiddle and ballads in rural Appalachia. Her eight year multimedia collaboration with ballad singer Elizabeth LaPrelle was heralded “a radical expansion of what folk songs are supposed to do” by the New Yorker, and culminated in a release by Smithsonian folkways of re-imagined New England ballads. Performance highlights include Carnegie Hall, Newport Folk Festival, Cafe Oto, Big Ears Festival, NPR’s Tiny Desk, Hirshhorn Museum, The BBC and The Stone, and residencies at the Smithsonian and the MacDowell Colony. As a fiddler, she has worked with musicians from a broad span of genres, from free improvisation to songs to Kentucky square dance bands -- including Glen Hansard, Henry Jamison, Timo Andres, Sarah Hennies, Susan Alcorn, Carlo Costa, Jim White, the Aizuri Quartet and Ellen Fullman. She is currently working on an MFA in Sculpture at Bard College, in addition to her daily work of care as an artist living with chronic illness. She is a proud member of RAMPD—Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities, and lives in Lenapehoking (Queens.)

Image description: black and white photo of Anna, in profile. she is a white woman with messy light brown hair in a bun and a grey t-shirt. her eyes are closed and she is playing the fiddle, on a stage.

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Jonathan Starks

Jonathan Starks is an active drummer, producer, and improviser based in Boston, MA. He plays drums in several bands, including the acclaimed Birthday Ass, and produces club adjacent soundscapes on his computer.

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Andrew Yong Hoon Lee

Andrew Lee was born in Winnipeg to Korean ancestry and currently lives and works in New York. His various activities encompasses sound, performance, video, drawing, photography, sculpture and installation. He writes, records and performs music as Holy Hum.

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Alec Toku Whiting

Alec Toku Whiting is a composer and improviser from Yokohama, Japan, currently based in Boston, Massachusetts. He makes music on the koto, electronic instruments, and the computer. His work results from the investigation and synthesis of intuitive structures and abstract formal processes in pursuit of a multiplicitous musical event. Alec has collaborated with musicians including Mark Fell, Wendy Eisenberg, Lina Tullgren, and Ted Reichman. His album with Lina Tullgren, "Unfamiliar Ceilings", was released on Astral Spirits in April 2022.

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Elias Stemeseder

Elias Stemeseder is a pianist, electronic musician and composer working in a wide-ranging variety of contemporary musical idioms. He has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Craig Taborn, Ingrid Laubrock, Peter Evans, Joe McPhee, Anna Webber, Hamid Drake and Christian Lillinger, among others. Elias’ debut album Piano Solo was released by the acclaimed Swiss label Intakt Records in 2022. Elias Stemeseder is a longtime member of acclaimed drummer Jim Black’s piano trio (with Thomas Morgan on bass) which has released four critically acclaimed albums. He appears on over 30 recordings released by labels such as Intakt, Winter&Winter, Clean Feed and Pirouet Records, and has performed at the Village Vanguard, Elbphilharmonie, The Stone, Jazzfest Berlin and Copenhagen Jazzfestival among others.

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Sydney Spann

Sydney Spann, originally from Baltimore, MD, is a sound artist and musician based in New York. She works with synthesis, chance operations, recursive compositional processes and voice to intervene within a personal archive of field recordings, culminating in long form compositions and improvised performances. Her music engages the private experiences that shape public spaces, and the affective dynamics within childcare work. She has released albums with Ehse Records (Baltimore), She Rocks! (NYC), and Reading Group (NYC), with a full-length release forthcoming on Recital in 2022. She has performed at the High Zero Festival of Experimental Free Improvised Music, Bar Laika by e-flux, Performance Space New York, Center for Performance Research, Cafe OTO (London), KM28 (Berlin) and in diy spaces and galleries throughout the US. Recent works for streaming include Sending up a Spiral of on Montez Press Radio and Attached/Detached (partial disappearance) for ISSUE Project Room’s With Womens Work Series. She is a 2022 Artist in Residence at ISSUE Project Room and an MFA candidate in Music/Sound at Bard College.

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Maya Keren

Maya Keren is a pianist, vocalist, composer, and songwriter from Philadelphia. They are interested in the process of environing people, voices, instruments, and sounds in ways that invite connection with one’s erotic instinct, embody compassionate and queer relations with the self and the collective, and destabilize learned systems of domination.

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Aliya Ultan

Aliya Ultan (b. 1996) is a composer/improviser, cellist and vocalist from Brooklyn, NY. Born into a family of artists and musicians, Ultan was immersed in a variety of creative mediums and environments. Ultan grew up, periodically homeless with her mother and sister traveling across the U.S. and Canada. At age 12, Ultan fell in love with the cello turning it into her way out of poverty. Emerging from a unique yet challenging childhood, Ultan participated in the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composer’s Program where her music was both workshopped and performed at the Lincoln Center. Throughout her classical training, Ultan maintained an interdisciplinary approach to creating art which has led to performances with artists such as Douglas Ewart (Chicago Art Ensemble) and Katinka Kleijn of the International Contemporary Music Ensemble, among others.

Ultan primarily performs as a singer-cellist, using both instruments to contort pitch centers and embrace a kind of noise based maximalism. This approach has led to the development of techniques such as particular ways of detuning the cello to expand its range, allowing it to cross instrumental bounds. In addition to her sound focused research, Ultan has created works for film that involve breaking, burying, and submerging cellos underwater. These performance pieces aim to detail a new perspective on the anatomy of the cello through playful experimentation.

While studying Cello Performance and Composition at the Oberlin Conservatory, Ultan often performed with Aaron Dilloway of Wolf Eyes as well as other local noise artists in Ohio. While living in the midwest, Ultan founded a circus group (Les Filles Circus) with her sister Taiga Ultan, in collaboration with the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater and Minneapolis Institute of Art. With a passion for physical theater, circus arts, and opera, Ultan has won numerous awards for multimedia works including From the Top’s Jack Kent Cooke Award, YoungArts, and XARTS.
Ultan holds a BM in Composition from the Oberlin Conservatory and a Masters in Composition with Dr. Tyshawn Sorey at Wesleyan University.

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Sivan Cohen Elias

Sivan Cohen Elias is an electroacoustic experimental composer and intermedia artist, originally from Israel, who seeks to create new mixed-media experiences with the aim to sharpen the connection between our senses. She received numerous international awards, residencies, and commissions including Akademie Schloss Solitude residency, Stuttgart, Music Theatre Competition Staatstheater, Darmstadt, and most recently she received the Fromm Commission Award. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University. This summer she is relocating from New York to Minneapolis, MN, where she has been appointed as an Assistant Professor of composition/music technology emphasis, starting in Fall 2022.

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Keisuke Matsuno

Keisuke Matsuno is a guitarist & sound / noise maker in the realm of composed & improvised music. His own aesthetics in music have been described as »salt of the earth« (Bird is the Worm) & »most extravagant, mind-blowing, & unheard-within-the-unheard« (Blow Up). He is the founding member of the post-krautrock band »Trio Schmetterling«, is currently a core member of bands such as Jim Black's »Smash & Grab«, Charlotte Greve’s »Wood River«, Sana Nagano’s »Smashing Humans«, Briggan Krauss’ »The Need Trio«, Lukas Akintaya's »Hues«, Andrej Ugoljew's »3ZvoVII«, & John Zorn’s »Bagatelles«, & has further collaborated with artists such as Chris Speed, Thomas Morgan, Rudy Royston, Tommy Crane, Ted Poor, Marja Burchard, Hans Tammen, Greg Cohen, Stefon Harris, Grey McMurray, Talibam!, & Red Baraat. Besides having performed in over 30 countries on five continents & contributed to over 30 records, he has also collaborated in dance, theater, & film. Born in the divided Berlin, Keisuke grew up in the reunified city and relocated to New York City in 2010. Photo by Katya Vlasova

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Skyler Hill

Skyler Hill is a sound maker, performer, and improviser who is deeply interested in dissolving sonic, social, and performative boundaries. Currently, they are pursuing research into interactive musical spaces and creating a new form of musical game, titled House, which questions the audience-performer binary and allows for experimental forms of participation. Under the name Wavy Enneper, they also recently completed a concept EP which documents the process of trans becoming through the musical embodiments of anxiety, euphoria, and self acceptance. With backgrounds in jazz and improvisation, the making of sound in particular moments and environments is a lens through which many of their projects are focused. However, they are also active as a producer, electronic/electroacoustic artist, and mixing and mastering engineer, working with sound in unique ways through analog and digital means. A recent piece of theirs which combines many of these methods is Mood, Irrealis, for string quintet, saxophone, voice, and electronics. Written, arranged, recorded, mixed, and mastered by them, this piece shows the beginning-to-end process of music making that they’ve grown to enjoy, as well as the combinations of song and experimentalism that informs much of their work.

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Arlo Tomecek

Arlo Tomecek works to combine creative expression with activist work. They are an audio engineer, dancer, choreographer, poet, and musician. Arlo’s work has been shown in Berlin, Edinburgh, New York, Oaxaca, and Tulsa. Their podcast series, Poetry Walks, airs every Tuesday 6PM EST on Radio Kingston. Their work controlling the UNcontrollable, a written work, was published in April 2021 by the Smolny Institute and later presented the work as a Guest Speaker for the RAW Conference for UNT Dallas, Texas in 2023. Their poetry was recently published by the Pink Moth Collective in Minnesota. Arlo strives to cultivate practices that reimagine possibility where there once was obstacle; finding power in the powerless, control in the uncontrollable.

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Teddy Tawil

Teddy Tawil aka TEDTEDTED is an multi-instrumentalist and electronic artist from Beirut, residing in Berlin. His artistic journey started out as a drummer who was fascinated by the possibilities of imitating electronic music with his body. His exposure to jazz music from an early age influenced his perception of time in music, as he found himself drawn to complex rhythmic structures. Eventually, electronic music became his main focus, as it grounded his virtuosic needs while providing him with a wide spectrum of expression alleys, influenced from IDM to electronica, breakbeats and experimental dance music.

TEDTEDTED's work is heavily focused on exploring the intersections of political struggle, noise, sound design, dystopia, dysphoria and catharsis by way of designing soundscapes and decorating time with frustrated beats and nervous transients. In his work, he attempts to rebuild what is constantly destroyed in a deteriorating world.

TEDTEDTED’s first album was released in collaboration with Ruptured Label, an independent experimental music label based in Beirut. His second album was released independently. He also co-wrote two of Kinematik’s most recent albums, a Lebanese experimental ensemble.

Currently, TEDTEDTED is delving into a science fiction project of resistance, vulnerabilities, humanoid warring machines and brain deconstructions. The project is a continuation of his exploration of dystopian themes, highlighting the resilience of the human spirit in face of adversity and hegemony.

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