Christopher Biggs is a composer and multimedia artist residing in Kalamazoo, MI, where he is Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Technology at Western Michigan University. Biggs’ recent projects focus on integrating live instrumental performance with interactive audiovisual media. In addition to collaborating with artists in other disciplines on projects, he treats all of his works as collaborations between himself and the initial performing artist by working with the performers during the creative process and considering their specific skills and preferences.

Biggs’ music has been presented across the United States and Europe, as well as in Latin America and Asia. His music is regularly performed on conferences and festivals, including the SEAMUS Conference, Visiones Sonoras, Electronic Music Midwest, and Society for Composers Inc. His music is available on Ravello Records, Irritable Hedgehog, SEAMUS CD Series, PARMA Recrodings, Electroacoustico Records and Thinking outLOUD Records.

Biggs received the 2008 Missouri Music Teacher’s Association composer of the year award, the 2009 SEMAUS/ASCAP first place award, the 2011 MACRO International Composition Award, the 2012 Issa Music and Dance Faculty Award, and a 2013 Kalamazoo Artistic Development Initiative Grant. He was a Preparing Future Faculty Fellow at the University of Missouri-Kansas City from 2007 to 2010. Biggs has presented on his work at numerous universities. He is co-founder and Director of Composition Activities at SPLICE Institute. He was a co-founder and board member of the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance.

Biggs teaches acoustic and electronic music composition, electronic music, digital media, and music theory. He was integral in developing Western Michigan University's Multimedia Arts Technlogy (Music) program and in revamping the B.M. in Music Compositon at WMU. He received degrees from American University (B.A. in print journalism), The University of Arizona (M.M. in music composition), and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (D.M.A. in music composition). He studied music composition with Zhou Long, Chen Yi, James Mobberley, Joao Pedro Oliveira, Daniel Asia, and Paul Rudy.

Jason Bolte is an Assistant Professor of Music and Director of the MONSTER Studios at Montana State University where he teaches courses in composition and music technology. Jason is a member of the organizational board of the Electronic Music Midwest Festival, and a founding board member of the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance. Jason earned a B.M. with an emphasis in Music Engineering Technology and a M.M. in Music Composition from Ball State University. He also holds a D.M.A. in Music Composition from the University of Missouri - Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance, where he was a Chancellor’s Doctoral Research Fellow, a School of Graduate Studies Dean’s Doctoral Fellow, and an Ovation Scholar. Before joining the faculty at MSU, Jason taught at the University of Central Missouri and the Kansas City Kansas Community College.

A composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music, his work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, South America and Asia. In the summer of 2007, he was an Associate Artist in Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Master Artist Denis Smalley. Jason’s music has received awards and recognition from the International Competition for Composers "Città di Udine" (Finalist: 2010), ISCM Miami Section, World New Music Days (Selection 2010), VII Concurso Internacional de Miniaturas Electroacusticas (Finalist: 2009), 2nd. International Electroacoustic Music Contest – CEMVA (Third Prize: 2008), 9th Electroacoustic Composition Competition Música Viva (Prizewinner: 2008), Bourges International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art (Selection: 2006, 2008), ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition (Second Prize: 2008), ETH Zurich Digital Arts Week Soundscape Competition (Recognition: 2007), Music Teachers National Association and Missouri Music Teachers Association (Missouri Composer of the Year/Commission: 2007), and International Society of Bassists Composition Competition (First Prize, Media: 2005). Jason’s music is available on the Vox Novus and Miso Records labels.

Sarah Cahill, recently called “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by the New York Times and “a brilliant and charismatic advocate for modern and contemporary composers” by Time Out New York, has commissioned, premiered, and recorded numerous compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to her include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, and Ingram Marshall, and she has also premiered pieces by Lou Harrison, Julia Wolfe, Toshi Ichiyanagi, George Lewis, Leo Ornstein, and many others.

Cahill has researched and recorded music by the important early 20th-century American modernists Henry Cowell and Ruth Crawford, and has commissioned a number of new pieces in tribute to their enduring influence. She enjoys working closely with composers, musicologists, and scholars to prepare scores for performance.

Recent appearances include a concert at San Quentin of the music Henry Cowell wrote while incarcerated there, four performances at the San Francisco Symphony’s Soundbox, a residency at the Noguchi Museum, and concerts at Le Poisson Rouge and the Italian Academy in New York. She performs as a duo with violinist Kate Stenberg and has performed chamber music with the Alexander String Quartet, New Century Chamber Orchestra, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and many other chamber groups. Performance highlights for the 2017-18 season include the Interlochen Arts Festival, Mendocino Music Festival, the Cleveland Museum of Art, concerts in Tokyo and Fukuoka, Terry Riley’s Sri Moonshine series, and New Music Miami.
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes over twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, and Pinna labels. Her 2013 release A Sweeter Music (Other Minds) featured musical reflections on war by eighteen composer/activists, commissioned especially for the album. In 2015, Pinna Records released her two-CD set of Mamoru Fujieda’s Patterns of Plants, a fusion of nature and technology created by identifying the musical patterns in the electrical impulses of plants. Cahill recently finished recording a four-CD set of Terry Riley’s solo and four-hand music with pianist Regina Schaffer for release in fall 2017 on the Irritable Hedgehog label.

Her radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and curates a monthly series of new music concerts at the new Berkeley Art Museum.

Kyong Mee Choi, composer, organist, painter, and visual artist, received several prestigious awards and grants including John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Robert Helps Prize, Aaron Copland Award, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, First prize of ASCAP/SEAMUS Award, Second prize at VI Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo, Honorary Mentions from Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges, Musica Nova, Society of Electroacoustic Music of Czech Republic, Luigi Russolo International Competition, and Destellos Competition.

She was a Finalist of the Contest for the International Contemporary Music Contest "Citta' di Udine and Concurso Internacional de Composicai eletroacoustica in Brazil among others. Her music was published at CIMESP (São Paulo, Brazil), SCI, EMS, ERM media, SEAMUS, and Détonants Voyages (Studio Forum, France). Ravello records published her multimedia opera, THE ETERNAL TAO, which was supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and Roosevelt University. Aucourant Records published her CD, SORI, featuring her eight compositions for solo instrument and electronics. The project was supported by the IAS Artist Project Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. She is an Associate Professor of Music Composition at Roosevelt University in Chicago where she teaches composition and electro-acoustic music. 

She received a D.M.A. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a M.M. in Music Composition at Georgia State University and a B.S. in chemistry and science education at Ewha Womans University and studied Korean literature in a master’s program at Seoul National University in South Korea.

Danny Clay is a composer and teaching artist from Ohio, currently based in San Francisco. His work is deeply rooted in curiosity, collaboration, and the sheer joy of making things. His projects often incorporate musical games, open forms, found objects, archival media, toy instruments, classrooms of elementary schoolers, graphic notation, digital errata, cross-disciplinary research, and the everything-in-between.

Recent collaborators include Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Sarah Cahill, Third Coast Percussion, Phyllis Chen, Post:Ballet, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Thingamajigs, Areon Flutes, Mobius Trio, the Living Earth Show, Friction Quartet, Nonsemble 6, MUSA Baroque, Anne Rainwater, Elevate Ensemble, the Trinity Alps Chamber Players, Mabel Kwan, David Grollman, Karl Fousek, Greg Gorlen, Joseph Edward Yonker, Quinn Walker, Wil Bolton, Stijn Hüwels, and Nobuto Suda.

His work has been released on Parlour Tapes, Patient Sounds, Hibernate Recordings, IIKKI Editions, Unknown Tone Records, Eilean Records, Rural Colours, Phinery Recordings, Heat Death Records, Futuresequence, Tessellate Recordings, and Turmeric Magnitudes.

As a teaching artist specializing in composition with elementary schoolers, he has worked with Little Opera, the San Francisco Opera, 826 Valencia, Thingamajigs, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Composers and Schools in Concert (CSIC), and currently curates Project Object, a net-label of experimental music by kids.
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He also serves as a resident curator at the Center for New Music in San Francisco and a host of Music from Other Minds on KALW radio.

Greg Dixon works as Assistant Professor of Music and Sound Design at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA, where he teaches courses in sound design and music composition. His compositional research focuses upon interactive music systems for video games, acoustic instruments, sensor technologies, and human interface devices. He has worked for more than a dozen years as a professional sound engineer, which has greatly influenced his strategies for composing electronic music in the studio. Greg’s electroacoustic compositions often make use of his own personal field recordings exploring a wide variety of source material, acoustic spaces, social and cultural artifacts, and transduction methodologies.

He holds a Ph.D. in composition with a specialization in computer music from the University of North Texas, where he worked as a composition teaching fellow, recording engineer, and technical assistant for CEMI. His composition instructors include Jon Christopher Nelson, Cindy McTee, Andrew May, David Bithell, Michael Pounds, Jody Nagel, Keith Kothman, and Cleve Scott.

His music has been released on labels including Kohlenstoff Records, SEAMUS, Irritable Hedgehog, New Adventures in Sound Art, Vox Novus, Pawlacz Perski, winds measure, Flannelgraph Records, and on his own label, noxious fumes.

Paul A. Epstein's compositions include two chamber operas as well as works for string orchestra and for a variety of small ensembles. He has written extensively for voice, including a setting of Robert Coover's The Leper's Helix and a series of collaborations with poet and novelist Toby Olson. He has received commissions from the Relâche Ensemble (The Leper’s Helix and AlgoRhythms 2) and baritone Thomas Buckner (Reading.) Epstein is a member of BMI. 

In American Music in the Twentieth Century, critic Kyle Gann cites Epstein as “One of the finest postminimal composers...” and calls Chamber Music: Three Songs from Home “...a vocal setting for winds and keyboards of great contrapuntal beauty.” Epstein's music has been presented in the U.S. and abroad by such ensembles as Relâche, counter)induction, the Circle ensemble of London, and ONIX Nuevo Ensamble de México. It is available on compact disk on the Mode, Navona, and Capstone labels.

Paul A. Epstein is Professor Emeritus of Music Theory at Temple University, where he taught from 1969 to 2001. Born in Boston in 1938, he is a graduate of Brandeis University and the University of California at Berkeley. His composition teachers included Harold Shapero, Seymour Shifrin, and Luciano Berio, with whom he studied privately on a Fulbright grant to Italy in 1962-63. Epstein has been involved in closely collaborative work with artists in theater and dance. He was associated with the New York environmental theater group The Performance Group from 1969 to 1972, and from 1974 to 1987 he was composer and music director for ZeroMoving Dance Company of Philadelphia.

An article by Kyle Gann, “American Composer: Paul A. Epstein,” appears in the December, 2004 issue of Chamber Music, a publication of Chamber Music America.

Randy Gibson is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY composing with sound, time, light, and space. Gibson’s work unfolds at a glacial pace and treats the perception of time as a defining factor in thematic development and the experience of pure just intonation intervals. His work has been described as “engag(ing) with rhythms and temporality existing outside of our socially-constructed rhythms, offering a glimpse of time outside of time” (I Care If You Listen), "luxuriantly unhurried, intensely focused" (Thought Catalog), “an hypnotic mass of slowly mutating sound” (Textura) “a booming, throbbing sine wave that filled the room” (New York Times), and “a gorgeously expansive dronescape” (Aquarius).

Gibson has received commissions from choreographers Kim Olson/Sweetedge, Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, Transit New Music Festival, Erik Carlson, R. Andrew Lee, The Tapeworm, and Cassauna. The 2010 London Premiere of The Third Analog Pillar..., hailed by Liminal's Scott McMillan as "a moment of relative calm, of stillness, and of pleasingly soporific and mind-emptying purity," was made possible by a grant from the American Music Center (now called New Music USA). Gibson was awarded a fellowship in Music and Sound from the New York Foundation for The Arts in 2016. His solo just intonation piano album, Aqua Madora V-ii-2008 21:07:26" - 21:54:40" (NYC), was selected by Textura as one of the top 10 albums of 2011.

Gibson’s studies of rāga singing in the Kirana tradition with Khan Sahib La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and Jung Hee Choi, and extensive direct exposure to many of Young and Zazeela’s seminal works, have brought intense focus to the environments he creates. In late 2009, inspired by Young’s systemic and eternal approach to pitch and Vertical Hearing, Gibson began developing a set of tuning theories called The Four Pillars which has provided the harmonic, conceptual, and tonal language for all of his subsequent work including his recent works with pure projected light.

He has presented performances and installations at festivals around the world including the Avant Music Festival in New York City, the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art in Minnesota, The Transit New Music Festival in Belgium, The Internationale Tanzmesse NRW in Düsseldorf, The Boulder and Minnesota International Fringe Festivals, HOT DAM: the opening festival of the Denver Art Museum, the Sans Souci International Festival of Dance Cinema, the ISIM 3rd annual conference, the Erick Hawkins Legacy Forum in New York, the Korea Experimental Arts Festival in Seoul, and the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt.

Gibson was raised in Boulder, Colorado, traveling into the high mountains to look at the stars and the Milky Way and meditate on the expanses of life. This formative experience has instilled in his work a grand spaciousness and scale. In 2001, Gibson moved to New York City and since 2003, has studied music and composition with seminal Minimalist pioneer La Monte Young.

In 2003 Gibson founded Avant Media, a non-profit organization dedicated to expansive collaborative artistic endeavors, and, since 2010, curated the Avant Music Festival, celebrating composers’ singular visions in dedicated concerts and installation experiences.

After graduating from Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she studied with Gregory Fulkerson as a violin performance major in addition to receiving a Mathematics degree, Myra Hinrichs made the great migration to Chicago, where in addition to performing in the Madison Symphony and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, she teaches at several community music schools in the greater Chicago area. Myra has appeared with fixtures of the Chicago new music scene, including the Morton Feldman Chamber Players, Dal Niente, a.periodic, Mocrep, and NON:op, and is a founding member of string trio Chartreuse and the Houndstooth Quartet. Myra began playing the violin at age 6 with Jung-Kyu Min in Saint Paul, MN. She has attended the Aspen Music Festival and School, National Orchestral Institute, Mimir Chamber Music Festival, National Repertory Orchestra, and Spoleto Festival USA. 

For more info on Dennis Johnson, this interview by The Wire is as comprehensive as anything that is publicaly available.

Tom Johnson, born in Colorado in 1939, received B.A. and M.Mus. degrees from Yale University, and studied composition privately with Morton Feldman. After 15 years in New York, he moved to Paris, where he has lived since 1983. He is considered a minimalist, since he works with simple forms, limited scales, and generally reduced materials, but he proceeds in a more logical way than most minimalists, often using formulas, permutations, predictable sequences and various mathematical models.

Johnson is well known for his operas: The Four Note Opera (1972) continues to be presented in many countries. Riemannoper has been staged more than 30 times in German-speaking countries since its premier in Bremen in 1988. Often played non-operatic works include Bedtime Stories, Rational Melodies, Music and Questions, Counting Duets, Tango, Narayana's Cows, and Failing: a very difficult piece for solo string bass.

His largest composition, the Bonhoeffer Oratorium, a two-hour work in German for orchestra, chorus, and soloists, with text by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was premiered in Maastricht in 1996, and has since been presented in Berlin and New York.

Johnson has also written numerous radio pieces, such as J'entends un choeur (commissioned by Radio France for the Prix Italia, 1993), Music and Questions (also available on an Australian Broadcasting Company CD) and Die Melodiemaschinen, premiered by WDR Radio in Cologne in January 1996.

The principal recordings currently available on CD are the Musique pour 88 (1988) (XI), An Hour for Piano (1971) (Lovely Music), The Chord Catalogue (1986) (XI), Organ and Silence (2000) (Ants), and Kientzy Plays Johnson (2004) (Pogus), Rational Melodies and Bedtime Stories performed by clarinetist Roger Heaton (Ants Records AG12) and Symmetries (Karnatic LabsKLR 010).

Recent projects include Tilework, a series of 14 pieces for solo instruments, published by Editions 75 in 2003, Same or Different, a piece commissioned by the Dutch radio in 2004, and the Combinations for String Quartet, premiered in Berlin on the MärzMusik festival in 2004, and more recently, scores such as Kirkman’s Ladies, Networks, Septet, and 55 Chords for two electric keyboards, all derived from combinatorial designs. As performer he frequently plays his Galileo, a 40-minute piece written for a self-invented percussion instrument.

Johnson received the French national prize in the victoires de la musique in 2001 for Kientzy Loops. The latest orchestra score is 360 Chords, premiered in July 2008 by Musica Viva in Munich.

Elainie Lillios's music reflects her fascination with listening, sound, space, time, immersion and anecdote. Her music explores many sound worlds; sometime referential ones such as the human voice, cars, wind chimes, or water. Other times her materials are less obvious, like crunching branches, walking through snow or pebbles shuffling in water. Her compositional output includes electroacoustic and acoustic works, music for instruments with live interactive electroacoustics, and collaborative immersive multimedia audio/visual installation environments. Her research interests include sound diffusion as the performance practice of electroacoustic music, audio spatialization employing Ambisonics (3D audio), critical listening as a creative aid and Deep Listening.

Her creative work and research has been funded through grants and commissions from organizations including the International Computer Music Association, La Muse en Circuit, New Adventures in Sound Art, Reseaux, ASCAP/SEAMUS, Kalamazoo Animation Festival International, Louisiana State Universitys Center for Computation and Technology, Sonic Arts Research Centre Belfast, Ohio Arts Council, Mid-American Center for Contemporary Music, Ohio Board of Regents and National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts. She has also received commissions from individual performers including saxophonist Steve Duke, soprano Diane Ragains and pianist Thomas Rosenkranz. Elainies composition,Veiled Resonance for soprano saxophone and live, interactive electroacoustics was recently awarded First Prize in the 36th International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art/Bourges 2009. Elainies music has received other awards and recognition from international competitions including the Concurso Internacional de Musica Electroacustica de Sao Paulo, Concorso Internazionale Russolo, Concours Internationale de Bourges, Pierre Schaeffer Competition, Kalamazoo Animation Festival International and La Muse en Circuit Radiophonic Competition.

Her pieces have been presented nationally and internationally at conferences, concerts and festivals including the International Computer Music Conferences (New York, Belfast, New Orleans, Miami, Goteborg, Cuba, Berlin), Society for ElectroAcoustic Music in the United States National Conferences (Minnesota, Indiana, Utah, Iowa, Oregon, California, Arizona, Louisiana, Texas, New Hampshire), Australasian Computer Music Conference, Festival di interpretazione della musica acusmatica and others.Her collaborative animation work has been screened at international festivals including SIGGRAPH 2009, Melbourne Animation Festival, London Animation Festival, Les Sommets du Cinema DAnimation de Montreal, Visual Music Marathon, Red Stick Animation Festival, Kalamazoo Animation Festival International and the International Digital Media Art Association IDEAS Festival. She has been featured as a special guest composer at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, Rien a Voir, festival lespace du son, June in Buffalo Festival, Mountain Computer Music Festival, Future Music Oregon, Western Oregon University Electronic Music Festival, Louisiana State University and Ionian University Corfu.

Elainie's music is available on the Empreintes DIGITALes, StudioPANaroma, La Muse en Circuit, and SEAMUS labels, and is included in New Adventures in Sound Arts The Radio Art Companion. Three of her pieces were released in 2009; Veiled Resonance for soprano saxophone and live interactive electroacoustics on SEAMUS Volume XVIII, Toronto Island Contrasts on Deep Wireless 6, and Listening Beyond the LMJ Mix on Leonardo Music Journal Volume 19.

Elainie serves as Associate Professor of Composition and Coordinator of Music Technology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio where she teaches applied composition, music technology and experimental digital audio and animation.

Mike McFerron is Professor of music and Composer-in-Residence at Lewis University in the Chicago area. At Lewis University, McFerron teaches music composition and directs the music technology program. He received a DMA in composition from the Conservatory of Music--University of Missouri at Kansas City where his primary teachers were James Mobberley, Chen Yi, and Gerald Kemner. A native of Oklahoma, McFerron also studied composition with Ray E. Luke. He has been on the faculty of UMKC and the Kansas City Kansas Community College, and he has served as resident composer at the Chamber Music Conference of the East/Composers' Forum in Bennington, Vt. McFerron is founder and co-director of Electronic Music Midwest. 

McFerron's music has received critical acclaim and recognition. His Loving Is, a chamber opera, premiered at Carnegie Hall by the Remarkable Theater Brigade. Perspectives for orchestra was awarded first prize in the Louisville Orchestra Composition Competition, was a recipient of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's "First Hearing" Program (2001), was awarded an honorable distinction in the Masterprize International Composition Competition (2003), and an honorable mention in the Rudolf Nissim Prize (2001). McFerron was chosen the winner of the Cantus Commissioning/Residency Program, and he was a recipient of the 2005 CCF Abelson Art Song Commission. His music was a finalist in the 1st International Electroacoustic Music Contest - CEMJKO, the 2004 Confluencias Electronic Miniatures II International Competition, the 2005 Truman State/MACRO Composition Competition, The 2005 American Modern Ensemble Composition Competition, the 2002 Swan Composition Competition, the 1999 Salvatore Martirano Composition Contest, and the 1997 South Bay Master Chorale Choral Composition Contest. McFerron has been a composers fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Ucross, June in Buffalo, and the Chamber Music Conference of the East/Composers' Forum in Bennington, Vt. His music has been featured on SCI National Conferences, SEAMUS National Conferences, the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), University of Richmond's 3rd Practice Festival, Spark Conference, Annual Florida Electroacoustic Music Festivals, Spring in Havanna, the MAVerick Festival, several SCI regional conferences, and concerts and radio broadcasts across the U.S. and throughout Europe. He has received commissions from Cantus, SUNY-Oswego, GeNIA, the Chamber Music Conference of the East/Composers' Forum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Lewis University, Sumner Academy of Arts and Science, and four times by the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra. 

McFerron the chair of the executive committee of Society of Composers, Inc. and serves on the board of directors for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra. McFerron's music can be heard on numerous commercial CDs as well as on his website at http://www.bigcomposer.com. 

Michelle McIntire is a conductor, a director, a singer, a pianist and (most of all!) a teacher. She has performed widely throughout the south and mid-west in concert and stage venues, and is actively pursuing a career in music. As well as singing traditional classical recitals and performances, she has also been very active in musical theater. She has performed several roles, including Reno in "Anything Goes, "Aldonza in "The Man of la Mancha", Mother Abbess in "The Sound of Music", and Rosie in "Bye, Bye Birdie".

Michelle holds a Master of Music in Voice Performance from Ithaca College, a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from the University of Missouri - Kansas City, and a Bachelor of Music in Voice from Florida Southern College. In addition to NATS, memberships include: Music Educators National Conference, Missouri Music Educators Association, and the American Choir Directors Association.

Michelle has been teaching voice and piano since 1989. In that time, she has worked with college and high school aged students, beginning adults, young children and retirees, gifted and special needs students, raw beginners and experienced professionals. Michelle feels that her love of people helps her to connect with her students on a very special level, which allows both to grow, no matter what the starting point! For school aged students, she strongly encourages parental involvement. Michelle has a strong track record of past student success. Michelle has experience in coaching singing actors, acting singers, singing dancers, and triple threats. In addition, Michelle regularly participates in local community theaters, either in the cast or behind the scenes as musical director--or even playing in the pit!

Regina Myers performs as a solo artist and with ensembles around the Bay Area. She received a Bachelor's degree in Piano Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a Master's in Piano Performance and Literature from Mills College, where she focussed on new and experimental music under the guidance of pianist Marc Shapiro and percussion master William Winant.

In 2004 she founded the concert series and now ensemble New Keys: New Keys' mission is to surface and promote the newest and most innovative music for the piano. We challenge composers to explore the vast untapped potential of the piano and strive to craft the experience of a piano recital as both captivating and approachable for our audience.

Other current projects include gearing up for recording all the Terry Riley 4-hand pieces with her duo partner Sarah Cahill.
Before going on hiatus to rapidly and accidentally expand her family, Regina proudly taught piano to beloved students for 17 years.

She has participated in the Hot Air, Switchboard, Garden of Memory Summer Solstice and SF Friends of Chamber Music SF Music Day music festivals and has had the honor of playing many concerts with the William Winant Percussion Group as well as the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and on Luciano Chessa's recently released album Petrolio.

Regina prides herself on expanding the reach of new music for piano by commissioning new works and organizing concerts for their premieres and recording. She relishes working with young and emerging composers as well as keeping seminal new music masterpieces alive.

PAULINE OLIVEROS is a senior figure in contemporary American music. Her career spans fifty years of boundary dissolving music making. In the '50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. Recently awarded the John Cage award for 2012 from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Oliveros is Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College. Oliveros has been as interested in finding new sounds as in finding new uses for old ones --her primary instrument is the accordion, an unexpected visitor perhaps to musical cutting edge, but one which she approaches in much the same way that a Zen musician might approach the Japanese shakuhachi. Pauline Oliveros' life as a composer, performer and humanitarian is about opening her own and others' sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Since the 1960's she has influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. Pauline Oliveros is the founder of "Deep Listening," which comes from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics. Pauline Oliveros describes Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening is my life practice," she explains, simply. Oliveros is founder of Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation, now the Center For Deep Listening at Rensselaer.

After a relatively short career as a mechanical engineer, Michael Pounds turned his energies toward composition, studying at Bowling Green State University, Ball State University, the University of Birmingham in England, and the University of Illinois, where he completed his doctorate. He studied electroacoustic composition with Jonty Harrison, Scott Wyatt, Guy Garnett, Cleve Scott, Jody Nagel, and Burton Beerman. His awards include the 1998 ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Award, a Residence Prize at the 25th Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition, and a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship for studies in England. His music has been performed throughout the United States and in Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, France, Spain, Austria, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. He was a co-host of the 2005 national conference of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the U.S. (SEAMUS). Michael is currently the Assistant Director of the Music Technology program at Ball State University, where he teaches courses in composition, acoustics, music perception, recording and computer music.

Gyan Riley (born 1977) is an American guitarist and composer. He is a son of minimalist composer Terry Riley. They frequently collaborate, including a tour in Europe in September 2016. Gyan Riley studied at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He released his solo album Stream of Gratitude in 2013 on John Zorn's Tzadik Records. He also performed with Zakir Hussain, Dawn Upshaw, San Francisco Symphony among others. In 2015, he released Nayive Eviyan, a collaboration with Czech violinist Iva Bittová.

Elena Ruehr says of her music “the idea is that the surface be simple, the structure complex.” An award winning faculty member at MIT, she has also been a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute and composer-in-residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which performed and recorded her major orchestral works (O’Keeffe Images, BMOP Sound) as well as the opera Toussaint Before the Spirits (Arsis Records). Three of her six string quartets were commissioned by the Cypress String Quartet, who have recorded How She Danced: String Quartets of Elena Ruehr. Her quartets have also been performed by the Biava, Borromeo, Lark, ROCO and Shanghai string quartets. Her other recordings include Averno (Avie with the Trinity Choir, Julian Wachner, conducting), Jane Wang considers the Dragonfly (Albany), Lift (Avie) and Shimmer (Metamorphosen Chamber Ensemble on Albany).

Milky Way or Galaxy are traditional Korean translations of the first name of flutist Meerenai Shim  Pronounced “me-ren-ay,” the unusual name befits this unique and forward thinking musician.

Meerenai is a founding member of the innovative flute and percussion duo, A/B Duo. In 2016, she joined the award-winning contemporary flute ensemble, Areon Flutes. She is also one half of the newly formed contrabass flute and contraforte duo, Keyed Kontraptions. She has performed all over the United States as a soloist and chamber musician. Recent performances include the Soundwave Biennial in San Francisco, the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, the National Flute Association’s Annual Conventions, and numerous universities. In addition to regular broadcast of her recordings on classical radio stations, Meerenai's recordings and performances have been featured on Music from Other Minds, Live from WFMT, and New Music Box.

In 2015 Meerenai founded Aerocade Music, a record label specializing in contemporary classical, electronic, and experimental music. Her third solo album, the all-electroacoustic Pheromone, is the first release on the label. Regarding Pheromone, Fanfare Magazine says, "Flautist Meerenai Shim has the chops and the heart to do these recently composed pieces full justice, and this inaugural release on her own Aerocade label is the proverbial proof of the pudding."

After a practice-related injury almost derailed her flute career, Meerenai started studying the Alexander Technique, body mapping, and the Feldenkrais Method. She now teaches musicians how to play better by improving their movement. Her pedagogical philosophy of using the principles of the Feldenkrais Method in flute study can be seen in her book, Scale Studies for Beginner and Intermediate Flutists. She is currently training to become a Feldenkrais Practitioner.

Ever adventurous, Meerenai has never been afraid to learn new things. Whether it’s picking up the tenor banjo to play an informal concert at the Aspen Music Festival where she was conducting student, or trying her hand at producing an independent film, she has always been willing to rise to the occasion and learn new things. Between receiving her Bachelor of Music in flute performance from DePaul University and the Master of Music in flute performance from San Francisco State University, Meerenai worked in the Information Technology field and in Management Consulting. All of her past experiences and can-do attitude naturally led her to seeking out new repertoire and contemporary music.

As a part of A/B Duo, and on her own, Meerenai has commissioned new works from numerous composers including Daniel Felsenfeld, Andrea La Rose, Isaac Schankler, and Ken Ueno. Her frequent collaborator Matthew Joseph Payne has written Meerenai a few pieces with accompaniment by Gameboy or other circuit-bent instruments. She enjoyed playing in Matthew Joseph Payne's chiptune band The Mineral Kingdom and is constantly thinking of starting or joining a punk band as a drummer.

Meerenai Shim is a fiscally-sponsored affiliate of InterMusic SF, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to small-ensemble music in the San Francisco Bay Area. She resides in Silicon Valley with her husband Dave, and their Great Dane mix, Lady.

Christine Southworth (b. 1978) is a composer and video artist based in Lexington, Massachusetts, dedicated to creating art born from a cross-pollination of sonic and visual ideas. Inspired by intersections of technology and art, nature and machines, and musics from cultures around the world, her music employs sounds from man and nature, from Van de Graaff Generators to honeybees, Balinese gamelan to seismic data from volcanoes.
Southworth received a B.S. from MIT in 2002 in mathematics and an M.A. in Computer Music & Multimedia Composition from Brown University in 2006. In 2003 she co-founded Ensemble Robot, a collaborative of artists and engineers that design and build musical robots. She is the general manager of the MIT-based Gamelan Galak Tika, and has composed several pieces for the group and performed at venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, EMPAC, the Cleveland Museum of Art, several Bang on a Can Marathons, and the Bali International Arts Festival. In 2010, she helped design Gamelan Elektrika for her piece Supercollider, which was premiered at Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival with the Kronos Quartet. In addition to gamelan, she studies bagpipe, playing both the Galician Gaita and the Great Highland Bagpipe.

Southworth's compositions have been performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and Indonesia by ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Gamelan Galak Tika, Calder Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gamelan Semara Ratih, California EAR Unit, Andrew W.K., and Ensemble Robot. She has received awards from the American Music Center, UCross Foundation, LEF Foundation, American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), the MIT Eloranta Fellowship, and Bang on a Can and has been a fellow at UCross Foundation and The Hermitage Artist Retreat.

She has four recordings available on Airplane Ears Music: Zap! (2008) and Gamelan Galak Tika: Bronze Age Space Age (2009), Christine Southworth String Quartets (2013), performed by The Calder Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Gamelan Galak Tika, and Face the Music, with support from the American Music Center CAP Recording Grant, and In My Mind and In My Car (2013), for Evan Ziporyn on bass clarinet, electronics and video.

Philip Thomas (b.1972, North Devon) specialises in performing new and experimental music, including both notated and improvised music.

He is particularly drawn to the experimental music of John Cage, Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff, and composers who broadly work within a post-Cageian aesthetic. In recent years he has been particularly associated with the music of Christian Wolff, giving the world premiere of his Sailing By in 2014 and Small Preludes in 2009, the UK premiere of Long Piano (Peace March 11), having co-edited and contributed to the first major study of Wolff’s music, Changing the System: the Music of Christian Wolff, in 2010, and currently recording all of Wolff’s solo piano music for sub rosa. He is an experienced performer of John Cage’s music, having performed the Concert for piano and orchestra with both Apartment House and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as well as most of the solo piano and prepared piano music, including a unique 12-hour performance of Electronic Music for piano

He has commissioned new works from a number of British composers whose ideas, language and aesthetic have been informed in some ways by the aforementioned American composers, such as Stephen Chase, Laurence Crane, Richard Emsley, Michael Finnissy, Christopher Fox, Bryn Harrison, John Lely, Tim Parkinson, Michael Parsons, and James Saunders.

After significant encounters with the music of AMM and Sheffield-based musicians Martin Archer, Mick Beck and John Jasnoch, Philip has worked with improvisers in a variety of contexts and in 2005 devised a programme of composed music by musicians more normally known as improvisers as well as others who have been influenced by improvisation in some form. This led to his first CD release, Comprovisation, which featured newly commissioned works by Mick Beck, Chris Burn and Simon H Fell. Since then he has released many more CDs, including music by Martin Arnold, John Cage, Laurence Crane, Christopher Fox, Jürg Frey, Bryn Harrison, Tim Parkinson, Michael Pisaro, James Saunders, Linda Smith, Christian Wolff, as well as with improvisers Chris Burn and Simon H Fell.

Philip is a regular pianist with leading experimental music group Apartment House, with whom he has performed in festivals across the UK and Europe. In recent years he has performed and recorded with Quatuor Bozzini, Ensemble Grizzana, and pianist Mark Knoop. He has also performed with pianists Catherine Laws, Ian Pace and John Tilbury, as a trio with flutist Richard Craig and percussionist Damien Harron, and with composer James Saunders (electronics). He performed with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company during their farewell tour in 2010-11.

In 1998 Philip was awarded a PhD from Sheffield University in the performance practice of contemporary piano music. Between 2000 and 2005, he was Head of the Sheffield Music School whilst pursuing an active performing and teaching career. He joined the staff team at the University of Huddersfield in 2005, and became Professor of Performance in 2015. Philip is one of the Directors of CeReNeM, the University’s Centre for Research in New Music. In 2016 he was awarded an AHRC grant to fund research about John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra, details of which can be found here. He lives in Sheffield, where he premieres the majority of his programmes, with his wife Tiffany and children Naomi and Jack.

Robert Voisey (born 1969) is a composer and producer of electroacoustic and chamber music. He founded Vox Novus in 2000 to promote the music of contemporary composers and in 2001 created The American Composer Timeline, the first in-depth listing of American composers, spanning from 1690 to the present, to appear on the Internet. A producer of new music and multi-media concerts and events, Voisey is best known for producing the 60x60 project, which he started in 2003 in order to promote contemporary composers and their music. He also founded and directs the Composer's Voice Concert Series as well as the chamber music project Fifteen Minutes of Fame as well as vice president of programs for the Living Music Foundation.