Ermir Bejo. [born in 1987 in Tirana, Albania] is a composer interested primarily in experimental music, complexity, and computer-assisted composition. Both within and apart from his music, Bejo draws significant influence from visual art, cinema, classic literature, and philosophy. His music has been performed and commissioned by virtuoso performers and ensembles such as Ums n Jip, Nova, ACJW, Irvine Arditti, Malgorzata Walentynowicz, Elizabeth McNutt, Mia Detwiler, and Redi Llupa, among others. After being awarded a scholarship to attend the United World College of the Adriatic, where his studies focused on World Cultures and Art History, he subsequently completed his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Music in the U.S. In 2016, he will complete his Ph.D. in music composition at the University of North Texas. His primary teachers have included Joseph Klein, Panayiotis Kokoras, Andrew May, Marc Satterwhite, and Krzysztof Wolek. In addition, he has received meaningful guidance and lessons from James Dillon, Chaya Czernowin, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Since 2014, he has served as director of Youtube’s ScoreFollower channels, as well as instructor of composition and instrumentation at the University of North Texas.

Paul Clift (b. 1978) is an US-based Australian composer. His music often attempts to make abstract associations with a variety of concepts such as linguistics, modernist literature & painting, cognitive phenomena, and extra-European musical traditions. His compositional outlook is marked by formative studies with George Benjamin, Jean-Luc Hervé, Fred Lerdahl, Philippe Leroux, Fabien Lévy & Tristan Murail. His works have been featured in festivals such as Agora, MATA & ISCM, and he has participated in festivals & master-classes including Royaumont Voix Nouvelles, Acanthes, Domaine Forget, IMPULS, June in Buffalo, MATRIX, Internationale Sommerakademie der MDW & Darmstadt Ferienkursen. Paul obtained a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Columbia University, New York, a Masters of Music at King's College, London and also completed the IRCAM Cursus de composition et d'informatique musicale, culminating in the premiere of With my limbs in the dark, composed in collaboration with choreographer Alban Richard & Ensemble l'Instant Donné. In 2013, Le Détour Permet le Retour for string quartet, video & live-electronics was premiered by JACK. In 2016, Paul was awarded a residency at Villa Sträuli/Sulzberg Foundation in Switzerland. In addition to composing, Paul is active as a researcher; he has undertaken research-residencies notably at the Paul Sacher Foundation (2014), Basel and at IRCAM (2014-15). Paul is the Artistic-Director of neuverBand, a new-music chamber ensemble based in Basel. Paul's music is published online at www.babelscores.com. For more information, visit www.paulclift.net

Gil Dori is interested in interactive electronic music, graphic notation, proportional procedures, and Jewish music. His works has been featured on international festivals and conferences such as Sound and Music Computing, SEAMUS National Conference, MUSLAB, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Balance-Unbalance, and Explore!. He also participated in masterclasses and workshops with Georg Friedrich Haas, Philippe Leroux, and Jean-Francois Charles. Gil graduated with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Arizona State University, where he taught a Jewish music class, served as president of the Society of Composers, Inc. student chapter, and co-directed the Laptop Orchestra of Arizona State. Oded Zehavi, Glenn Hackbarth, and Garth Paine are among Gil's primary composition teachers, as well as Kotoka Suzuki, who chaired Gil's D.M.A. Committee.

http://gildori.com

William Dougherty was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1988 and currently resides in New York City. He has had his works performed internationally by ensembles including the Orchestre National de Lorraine, the BBC Singers, the London Chorus, the Lontano Ensemble, the Nemascae Lemanic Modern Ensemble, and the Ligeti String Quartet in venues such as the Southbank Centre in London, the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, and the Trinity Chapel in Fontainebleau, France. His music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and the Financial Times podcast FT Science. Dougherty has received recognitions and awards from the BMI Student Composer Awards, the PRS for Music Society, Sound and Music, the King James Bible Trust, the American Composers Forum, the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, Le Conservatoire Americain de Fontainebleau, the Institute for European Studies (Vienna), and the UK Foreign Aid and Commonwealth Office. As a student of composition, William has studied and participated in masterclasses with composers such as Philippe Hurel, Hughes Dufourt, Beat Furrer, Pierluigi Billone, and Mark Andre. As a scholar, William has written and presented research into the life and works of Romanian composer, Horatiu Radulescu, in the UK and Switzerland. His recent article on Radulescus 5th String Quartet before the universe was born can be found in the quarterly contemporary music journal, TEMPO. William earned his B.M. degree in composition summa cum laude from Temple University's Boyer College of Music and Dance in 2010 where he studied with Richard Brodhead and Jan Krzywicki. As a Marshall Scholar, William earned his MMus in composition with distinction from the Royal College of Music, London in 2012 working with Mark-Anthony Turnage and Kenneth Hesketh. That same year, William pursued Ergänzungsstudium (complementary studies) with Georg Friedrich Haas at the Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel. In the fall of 2014, William began his doctoral studies at Columbia University in New York City.

http://www.williamdougherty.org/

Richard Dudas is an American composer of contemporary classical art music. In addition to writing music for acoustic instruments, he has been actively invloved with computer music since the late 1980s. From 1996 to 1998 he taught computer music courses at the musical research center IRCAM in Paris, France, and from 1999 to 2008 worked for Cycling ’74, Inc., developing musical tools and audio effects for the musical software programming environment, Max/MSP. Since 2007 he has been teaching music composition and computer music at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea, where he currently holds the position of Assistant Professor.

Jaime E. Oliver La Rosa (Lima, 1979). Oliver La Rosa’s music and research explores the concept of musical instrument in electronic and computer music, designing instruments that listen, understand, remember and respond. His open source Silent Drum and MANO controllers use computer vision techniques to continuously track and classify hand gestures. His most recent research [notes] explores computer assisted notation and generative music in Pure Data and LilyPond. His work has been featured in many international festivals and conferences, collaborating with several composers, improvisers and artists in a field of action that spans sound performance and installation, composing and performing music, and programming open source software. Some recognitions include scholarships and grants from the Fulbright Commission, the University of California, Meet the Composer and the Ministry of Culture of Spain, and composition and research residencies at ZKM and IRCAM. He obtained the 1st prize in FILE PRIX LUX 2010, a GIGA-HERTZ-PREIS 2010 special prize from ZKM and the 1st prize in the 2009 Guthman Competition from the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology. Oliver is Assistant Professor of Composition at NYU and co-director of the NYU Waverly Labs for Computing and Music. He obtained a PhD in Computer Music from the University of California, San Diego (2011) where he studied with Miller Puckette and was Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at Columbia University & the CMC in New York.

http://www.jaimeoliver.pe/

Cameron Robello is a New York-based composer whose creative output includes sonic art in a variety of mediums, including acoustic concert instruments and electronics in various capacities. Mr. Robello's portfolio includes commissions from UMS ‘N JIP, Duo Bartoloni, and numerous other individuals. He has been formally recognized for his works Lux Tintinnabulis, Yield: A Spectacle, and College. Cameron holds a Bachelor’s degree in music composition from Arizona State University and is currently pursuing a Master's degree in composition at Brooklyn College. He has studied composition with Jody Rockmaker, Kotoka Suzuki and Garth Paine.

https://cameronrobello.com

Adam Roberts’ music has been recently performed by ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, the JACK Quartet, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Callithumpian Consort, Earplay, fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, the Association for the Promotion of New Music, violist Garth Knox, Guerilla Opera, and at festivals such as Wien Modern (Vienna), Tanglewood, the Biennale Musique en Scene (Lyons), and the 2009 ISCM World Music Days (Sweden). Awards for Roberts’ music include the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Bernard Rogers Prize (Eastman), the New York Bohemians Prize (Harvard), the André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud Prize from the Orléans Piano Competition, the Earplay Donald Aird Award, the Christoph and Stefan Kaske Fellowship from the Wellesley Composers Conference, the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center, the Bldodgett Prize (Harvard) as well as other academic scholarships and awards. Commissions have come from the Callithumpian Consort, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, pianist Nolan Pearson, the Tanglewood Music Center, Guerilla Opera, and others. Roberts’ music has been called “a powerful success,” “arresting,” and “amazingly lush,” (theBoston Musical Intelligencer), “an attractive mix of the familiar and exotic,” and “otherworldly” (Boston Classical Review), and “invigorating” with a “persistent melodic urge” (American Academy of Arts and Letters citation). Roberts obtained a Bachelor’s degree in composition from the Eastman School of Music in 2003 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2010. Roberts also studied at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna from 2007-2008 on a Harvard University Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. Roberts’ primary teachers have included David Liptak, Augusta Read Thomas, Julian Anderson, and Chaya Czernowin, and he has also studied with Steven Stucky, Martin Bresnick, Bernard Rands, Joshua Fineberg, Magnus Lindberg, and Rand Steiger. In addition, Roberts has had lessons and masterclasses with composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, John Adams, John Harbison, Lee Hyla, Alvin Lucier, and Jonathan Harvey. Roberts has taught at Harvard University and Istanbul Technical University’s Center for Advanced Studies in Music. Roberts’ first disc, “Leaf Metal,” was released on Tzadik Records in January, 2014.

http://adamrobertscomposer.com/

Zach Thomas is a composer and media artist working within a mathematical aesthetic sabotaged by impulse and restlessness. His current projects are concerned with the use of appropriated technologies and networked performance environments. Zach is a PhD candidate at the University of North Texas where he works as a teaching fellow at the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia and as a researcher at the xREZ Art/Science Lab. He is a director of the new music non-profit, ScoreFollower.

http://www.zrthomas.com/

 

Chaz Underriner (b. 1987, Texas) is a composer and intermedia artist based in Dallas, Texas, USA. Chaz’s work explores the notions of landscape and portraiture through the juxtaposition of video projections, audio recordings and live performers. Chaz has collaborated with numerous choreographers, experimental filmmakers, animators, and writers. As a composer, Chaz has created works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, chamber and symphony orchestras, jazz combos, choir, and electronics. Chaz’s work has been programmed at the Los Angeles Philharmonic National Composer’s Intensive, the Proyector International Video Art Festival (Madrid, Spain), the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (Hawick, Scotland), the International Computer Music Conference, the Impuls Festival (Graz, AU), the Morley College Engine Room Sound Art Exhibition (London, UK), the National Building Museum (Washington DC), the 2012 Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt (DE), the Global Composition Conference (Dieburg, DE), Ostrava New Music Days (CZ), Champ dAction’s Laboratorium (Antwerp, BE), the Charlotte New Music Festival (USA), the Louisville New Music Festival (USA), Dogstar Orchestra (Los Angeles), the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival (Texas), and the American College Dance Festival Association Regional Conference (Texas).

http://chazunderriner.com/biography/

Lucie Vítková is a composer, improviser and performer (accordion, harmonica, voice and tap dance) from the Czech Republic, 2017 Herb Alpert Awards in Arts nominee in category of Music. Her compositions focus on sonification (compositions based on abstract models derived from physical objects), while in her improvisation practice explores characteristics of discrete spaces through the interaction between sound and movement. In her recent work, she is interested in the musical legacy of Morse Code and the social-political aspects of music and art in relation to everyday life. She graduated in accordion performance at Brno Conservatory in 2010 and composition at Janácek Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno (CZ) in 2013. Along with her study of music she used to teach tap dance at the Theatre Faculty of JAMU. She is a member of the Brno Improvising Unit, Ensemble Marijan, Dunami, Dust in the Groove and Prague Improvisation Orchestra. She is a founder of Temporary Ensemble (2011). During her Master Degree, she studied at Royal Conservatory in The Hague (NL) and at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia (USA). She has studied with Martin Smolka, Jaroslav Štastný, Martijn Padding, Gillius van Bergijk and Michael Pisaro. In her PhD. studies she is analyzing music of Christian Wolff, researching on the hierarchy and social relations in his music and looking for the composition techniques which express this phenomena. Furthermore, she is placing his music and scores into the context of free improvisation to explore the definitions of composition and improvisation. As a student of JAMU Brno, she was realizing her PhD. research at Universität der Künste in Berlin (partly on DAAD scholarship) under the supervision of Marc Sabat (2014-2015). Recently, she is based in New York City and is enrolled at Columbia University as Visiting Scholar with Prof. George Lewis.

http://www.vitkovalucie.com/

Bihe Wen was born in China in 1991. His works include instrumental and electroacoustic music, and he is interested in the relationship between traditional aesthetics and music language of sound composition. He was awarded First Prize in 2011Musicacoustica-Beijing competition, Jury Special Mention for innovation in the use of the sound material in XXVIII Luigi Russolo Contest, and First Prize in Monaco International Electroacoustic Composition Competition CICEM 2014. His work has been selected as the designated work to be performed and analyzed by the participants to Concours de Spatialisation 2012 in Brussels. The piece was released on CD by Musiques & Recherches. His music has been performed at concerts and festivals in Beijing (MUSICACOUSTICA-BEIJING), Shanghai (Electronic Music Week 2015), Italy (Turin Confucius Institute), Brussels (L'Espace du Son 2012), France (UN SON PAR LA Festival 2012), Vienna (ElectroAcousticProject), Stockholm (Sound and Music Computing Conference 2013), New York (2014 NYCEMF), Monaco (Monaco Electroacoustique 2015), 41st International Computer Music Conference 2015. He began to study electronic music at Central Conservatory of Music Middle School in 2007. He studied electroacoustic music composition under Professor Xiaofu Zhang and Dr. Peng Guan, and he received Bachelor of Music from Central Conservatory of Music. Since 2016, he has studied composition under Professor Panayiotis Kokoras and is currently pursuing his master degree at University of North Texas.

Viola Yip, a native of Hong Kong, is a Brooklyn-based composer and performer, who tries to find the boundaries and push the boundaries in her imaginary sound world. As a composer, her compositions are not limited to acoustic music, electronic music, graphic scores and structured improvisation. Recent works appeared in ArtX at Bowling Green State University, Women Composers Festival of Hartford, Ravinia Festival, Fresh Inc Festival, soundSCAPE Festival, TEDXSMU, University of Florida, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NASA saxophone conference, ThingNY spam v3.0 concert, Quiet City concert, Vox Novus Concert, Musicarama 2012 (Hong Kong) and PAUSA Art House in Buffalo. As a new music advocate, she also performs contemporary works regularly as a pianist and an improviser. Her recent interest falls on using human natural voice as an instrument and explore its expressivity and musicality.