Artists

Matthew Burtner is an Alaskan-born composer and sound artist. An IDEA Award winner and first prize winner of the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music composition, is an Alaskan-born composer and sound artist whose work explores embodiment, ecology, polytemporality, and noise. His music has been performed in concerts around the world and featured by organizations such as NASA, PBS NewsHour, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the BBC, the U.S. State Department under President Obama, and National Geographic. He has published three intermedia climate change works including the IDEA Award–winning telematic opera, Auksalaq. In 2020 he received an Emmy Award for “Composing Music with Snow and Glaciers,” a feature on his Glacier Music by Alaska Public Media.

Lou Bunk (b. 1972) is an American musician inspired by many forms of experimental artistic expression. Educated in classical composition, and deeply influenced by the noise and improv. scene in and around Boston and New York, Lou’s music occupies a space between and among concert halls and fringe performance spaces. His sonically rich and intricate music investigates sound and silence through extended instrumental techniques, microtones, amplified found objects, electronics, and generative approaches to texture and form.

Julius Bucsis is an award-winning composer, electric guitarist, and visual artist. His compositions span a range of genres and include works for acoustic and electric instruments as well as computer generated audio and video. Since 2011 his works have been presented at almost 200 events across the world. His compositions have been included on albums released by Ablaze, Ravello Records, RMN Classical, and Soundiff. He received a Doctor of Arts degree from Ball State University.

Neely Bruce is a prolific composer, pianist, conductor, and scholar of American music. He has composed over 700 pieces of music, including three full-length operas, five one-act operas, oratorios and other choral works, about 300 solo songs, chamber music, seven documentary video scores for PBS, and 14 hours of solo piano music. In 2013, Bruce began This Is It! - a series of twelve recitals comprising his complete piano music - to conclude in 2017.

Richard Brooks (b. 1942) is a native of upstate New York and holds a B.S. degree in Music Education from the Crane School of Music, Potsdam College, an M.A. in Composition from Binghamton University and a Ph. D. in Composition from New York University.  From 1975-2004 he was on the music faculty of Nassau Community College where he was Professor and Department Chair for 22 years, supervising 13 full-time and c. 30 part-time faculty.

Based in Montreal, percussionist David Therrien Brongo has carved out a career as a performer, a pedagogue, and a researcher. He collaborates regularly with a number of ensembles; he holds the position of timpanist and principal percussionist with the Orchestre de l’Agora and the Orchestre symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. From 2016 to 2023 he held the principal percussion position in Ensemble Paramirabo. Therrien Brongo also plays in numerous other ensembles like the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Métropolitain, the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, Sixtrum Percussion Ensemble, and the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne.

A native of New York City, Allen Brings received a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Queens College  and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University, where he was a Mosenthal Fellow and a student of Otto Luening, and  a doctorate in theory and composition from Boston University, where he was a teaching fellow and a student of Gardner Read.

Boulder, Colorado-based pianist Amy Briggs has established herself as a leading interpreter of the music of living composers, while also bringing a fresh perspective to music of the past. From 2001 to 2016 she was a featured soloist and chamber musician on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW series, and played world, US and Chicago premieres of works by Pierre Boulez, Oliver Knussen, Augusta Read Thomas, David Lang, Simon Bainbridge, Tania Léon, Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Rakowski, and others.  She has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Illinois native Scott Brickman (b. 1963) was educated in the Chicago Public Schools and holds a B.M. from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in Music Composition and theory from Brandeis University. Brickman learned under both Chester Biscardi and Yehudi Wyner, whom he regards as his most important and influential composition teachers. Since 1997 he has taught at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, where he is Professor of Music and Education.

An active soloist and chamber musician, American pianist Kate Boyd has performed solo recitals at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Schubert’s birth house in Vienna, the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the Musikhalle Hamburg, in addition to many places throughout the US, Greece, Ireland and Canada. As a faculty member at Butler University, she has appeared as a soloist with each of the University’s large ensembles in performances ranging from Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Jeffrey Bowen is a composer and guitarist currently living in Seattle, Washington. His compositions feature gradually evolving processes and explorations of liminal spaces, and have been performed by Pascal Gallois, Maja Cerar, Beta Collide, Ensemble DissonArt, and the Luminosity Orchestra, among other ensembles in the USA and Europe.

Jennifer Borkowski enjoys an active and varied career as a flutist, researcher, teacher, and composer. She was founding member of the Ensemble-Zeitfluss Graz and has performed with the Klangforum Wien at the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and at modern music festivals Wien Modern and Steirischer Herbst. She has worked with composers such as Peter Ablinger, Nikolaus Huber, and Salvatore Sciarrino. Together with Andy Icochea, Borkowski co-founded the Ensemble Vienna Nova, performing chamber operas including three world premieres in Vienna’s Musikverein and at the Sagra Musicale Umbria in Italy. Prior to this period, she spent a decade as a freelance orchestral musician in the Philadelphia and New York areas.

Bob Bliss is a musician, software engineer, and instrument designer residing near Santa Cruz, CA. Born in Michigan, he was playing guitar in his first band at age 10, and bass guitar and keyboards soon after. He studied the French horn and composition in middle and high schools, and by age 16 was building electronic music synthesizers in his basement. Interleaving college and music, he played bass in two college jazz bands, and by 18 he was playing pop, rock, and funk keyboards nightly as a professional, while still studying electronics technology, computers, piano, and music theory.

Deemed a “musical force of nature” by Gramophone, composer Gina Biver writes music for large chamber ensembles, dance, choir, multimedia, and film. Her work is inspired by the written word and by visual art, both static and moving. She collaborates with musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, poets, computer artists, sculptors, painters, and video artists. Her work has been presented in the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada, and Mexico.

Christopher Biggs is a composer and multimedia artist residing in Kalamazoo, MI, where he is Associate Professor of Music Composition and Technology at Western Michigan University. Biggs’ recent projects focus on integrating live instrumental performance with interactive audiovisual media. His compositions reflect on extramusical concepts, including climate change, physics, philosophy, and politics. Biggs is a co-founder and the director of SPLICE Institute, a weeklong intensive summer program for performers and composers to experience, explore, create, discuss, and learn techniques related to the creation and presentation of music for instruments and electronics.

Doug Bielmeier creates commercial drone and experimental electronic music tailored for boutique audiences and media. His 2017 release of “Betty and the Sensory World” on Ravello Records explores his technique of Windowing, which deals with the manipulation of found sound files by the stretching and compression of time, sample rate, bit depth, and window size.

Sauro Berti, bass clarinetist of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, has collaborated with the most important Italian orchestras (Teatro alla Scala, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, RAI National Orchestra), the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyvaskyla. He has played under G.Prêtre, R.Chailly, M.W.Chung, R.Muti, W.Sawallisch, V.Gergiev, L.Maazel, P.Boulez, and Z.Mehta.

Utah composer, Marie Nelson Bennett (1926 – 2018), earned her music degree from Yale while studying with Paul Hindemith. She earned her PhD in composition from the University of Utah.

Critically acclaimed as “a passionate pianist and scholar,” Svetlana Belsky is a highly-demanded recitalist and chamber pianist, noted for her remarkable rapport with audiences and stylistic versatility. She has appeared in Italy, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Canada, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States. Belsky has received awards both for her performances in international piano competitions and for her advocacy of new American music.

Jon’s work has been shown in concerts, festivals, and galleries across North America and Europe, including Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS); Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS); the Smithsonian Museum of American History (D.C.); International Computer Music Conference (ICMC); with special performances at the Casa da Musica (Porto, Portugal) and CCRMA (Palo Alto, CA). His music and media explore environmental sustainability, data-driven interactivity, site-specific sound, and choreographic composition. Jon is a co-director of Harmonic Laboratory, an interdisciplinary arts collective focused on art and technology collaborations.