Artists

Born in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, David Mastikosa is a younger-generation composer. Mastikosa attended the University of Banja Luka, Academy of Arts where he obtained a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree. The same Academy elected him a Teaching Assistant in 2015, and later a Senior Teaching Assistant at the Department of Musical Theory and Composition in 2020.

Composer Karen Sunabacka often finds inspiration from puzzles, stories, and her Métis and mixed European heritage. She has deep roots in the Red River Area (what is now known as Manitoba, Canada) and feels a strong connection to the Métis, Scottish, Swedish and Finnish cultures. This mix of cultural connections sometimes creates conflicts and new perspectives which she finds both interesting and challenging. Her music reflects this cultural mix through the exploration of the sounds and stories of the Canadian prairies.

David R. Peoples writes with a ginger ale in-hand on a balcony surrounded by a forest. It’s from Flowery Branch GA, surrounded by nature, that all his compositions begin before being released into and around the world. 

Peoples enjoys sharing his own and other composers’ new music in recitals. From April 2021 to May 2022, he presented recitals featuring over 100 composers in all 50 states through the National Association of Composers, Music Teachers National Association, Research on Contemporary Composition Conference, and Electrophonic Concerts. Peoples also actively composes new music with recent performances by soloists, Luna Nova Music Ensemble, Argento Chamber Ensemble, Contemporary Chamber Players, West Point Band, and other performance groups — with premieres in North and Central America, Europe, and Asia. Additionally, he has enjoyed jazz premieres by the Jazz Surge with Randy Brecker, David Sanchez, Rufus Reid, and Gary Foster. 

David Rosenboom is a post-genre composer-performer, interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator known as a pioneer in American experimental music. Since the 1960s, his multi-disciplinary work has traversed ideas about spontaneously evolving musical forms, languages for improvisation, new techniques in scoring, cross-cultural and large-form collaborations, performance art and literature, interactive multimedia and new instrument technologies, generative algorithmic systems, art-science research and philosophy, and extended musical interface with the human nervous system. He was Dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music at California Institute of the Arts from 1990 through 2020, where he now holds the Roy E. Disney Family Chair in Musical Composition.

Sarah Belle Reid is a performer-composer who plays trumpet, modular synthesizer, and an ever-growing collection of handcrafted electroacoustic instruments. Her unique musical voice explores the intersections between contemporary classical music, experimental and interactive electronics, sound installation, visual arts, noise music, and improvisation. Often praised for her ability to transport audience members through vivid sonic adventures, Reid’s sonic palette has been described as ranging from “graceful” and “danceable” all the way to “silk-falling-through-space,” and “pit-full-of-centipedes” (San Francisco Classical Voice).

With his unique blending of musical styles, cellist Caleb Vaughn-Jones’s playing style has been described by The Baltimore Sun as an “exploratory grasp of the cello with an anything-but-classical approach to the classical repertoire.”

Born in Charleston SC, Vaughn-Jones had his first exposure to classical music by attending performances by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra.

During his teens, he was inspired by a wide range of musical styles. However, he grew increasingly interested in jazz and classical music during this time.

Avik Chari is a composer and sound designer obsessed with non-linear and interactive media. He embraces the use of space as a tool for musical structure and storytelling through his sound installations and electro-acoustic works. His latest works focus on ambience and space, and take a calm, meditative approach to rhythm, with pieces such as i’ll be there for you and memories. His music has been performed by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Transient Canvas, Eureka Ensemble, and the Boston Conservatory Choruses, and used in video games such as Covidopoly and Assemble This.

With music “[thriving] in the sustained tension, like the kinetic energy emanating from the corners of a frame, the opposing forces holding up a house” (Rachel Evangeline Chiong, 2022), Toronto-based composer Juro Kim Feliz has internationally presented his work across Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe. Born and raised in the Philippines, he studied composition at the University of the Philippines and McGill University under Jonas Baes and Melissa Hui. He also sought further mentorship from composers Liza Lim, Dieter Mack, Linda Catlin Smith, and Japanese koto artists Hiroko Nagai and Masayo Ishigure.

Mara Helmuth has been enthusiastically involved with electronic and computer music composition and research for decades. Recent works include Racket Routes, for eight-channel audio, based on tennis sounds, Opening Spaces, for video, based on a Menger sponge model, Cold Brew, a graphic score for flute, clarinet, and fixed media based on the coffee genome, Onsen: Hot Springs, for vibraphone and fixed media, and Tranquilarea, for virtual reality installation. She is currently Professor of Composition at College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati and director of its Center for Computer Music, where she developed a program of courses in computer music.

An engaging and accomplished clarinetist, Andrea Vos-Rochefort regularly premieres new works in recitals and at Clarinetfest, and has performed with the Dayton Philharmonic, Orchestra Kentucky, Richmond Symphony, Lima Orchestra, Carmel Symphony, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, West Virginia Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Corpus Christi Symphony, Midland-Odessa Symphony, and San Antonio Symphony. Vos-Rochefort is the Assistant Professor of Clarinet at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and previously served as Adjunct Instructor of Clarinet at University of Dayton and Stivers School for the Arts.

To listen to Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi’s music is to become open to the possibility of hearing surprising things: in her work, and through her compositional methods, the familiar is made strange and the unfamiliar finds space to sound. One encounters quotations from music history (or are they imagined quotations?), as well as fragmented and invented languages. The listener is invited to explore the intimate and hidden, gestural and timbral qualities of sound. Working with scores, electronics, voices, and instruments, Ahvenniemi creates works that range from operatic and theatrical scenes to solo compositions.

With a charismatic blend of technical flair, polish, and grace, Portuguese-Canadian clarinetist Wesley Ferreira is widely considered a gifted expressionist. Equally at ease performing masterworks and contemporary repertoire, he has been praised by critics for his “beautiful tone” and “technical prowess” (The Clarinet Journal) as well as his “remarkable sensitivity” (CAML Review), and Fanfare Magazine notes that he is “clearly a major talent.”

The Sonic Arts Ensemble, founded by Marc Ainger and Ann Stimson (with Federico Cámara Halac as occasional co-director for this recording), is interested in sound and music as a multi-modal, embodied phenomenon. Their repertoire ranges from composed, notated scores to freely-structured co-improvisations. During the pandemic, the ensemble became a truly international group, leveraging the online environment to contribute to the emergent medium of networked performance, with members and guests joining together from the United States, Argentina, and Austria. Using software such as Jacktrip (Chris Chafe et al), and the elegantly titled Netty McNetFace (Puckette), the ensemble created audio networks using low-latency, high quality, uncompressed audio, facilitating real-time collaboration over “a long, thin wire” (hat tip to composer Alvin Lucier). The tracks here represent the ensemble’s live performances across the internet during this time.

James Dashow has had commissions, awards and grants from the Bourges International Festival of Experimental Music, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Linz Ars Electronica Festival, the Fromm Foundation, the Biennale di Venezia, the USA National Endowment for the Arts, RAI (Italian National Radio), the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Rockefeller Foundation, Il Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte (Montepulciano, Italy), the Koussevitzky Foundation, Prague Musica Nova, and the Harvard Musical Association of Boston. In 2000, he was awarded the prestigious Prix Magistere at the 30th Festival International de Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques in Bourges.

Mark Winges was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and currently resides in San Francisco, where he has been resident composer/advisor for the chamber choir Volti since 1990. He was also composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Choral Artists in the 2012–13 season. He is a graduate of both the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and San Francisco State University, and has studied at the Musikhögskolan in Stockholm, Sweden, with composer Arne Mellnäs.

Lucia Lin has performed as soloist, as chamber musician, and in orchestras throughout the United States and internationally in a diverse multi-faceted career that also includes teaching and collaborative efforts with both visual and performing arts. Lin made her debut at age 11, performing the Mendelssohn Concerto with the Chicago Symphony and went on to be a prize winner in numerous competitions, including Moscow’s prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition. Described as a soloist with “virtuosity and insight” who is “passionate and graceful” (Indianapolis Star), and whose playing has “a genuine fresh quality not often heard” (Cincinnati Enquirer), Lin’s performances include solo appearances with orchestras in Europe as well as a solo recital at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.

Jean-Paul Perrotte is an American composer of French and Ecuadorian descent whose work includes compositions for electronics, acoustic instruments, voice, video, dancers, and improvisation using Max/MSP. His works have been performed internationally and presented in prestigious art galleries like the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha NE. Perrotte has also co-written a chapter with Brett Van Hoesen titled Sound Art - New Only in Name: A Selected History of German Sound Works from the Last Century from the edited volume Germany in the Loud Twentieth Century. Perrotte received his Ph.D. in Composition from the University of Iowa in 2013 and is currently Assistant Professor of Composition and Director of the ElectroAcoustic Composition Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The 2014 and 2018 Latin Grammy® Nominee for Best Classical Album and 2008 Grammy® Nominee for Best Instrumental Soloist without Orchestra, pianist Allison Brewster Franzetti has received international acclaim from critics and audiences alike for her stunning virtuosity and musicality, both as a soloist and chamber musician. Her performances include the live Latin Grammy® Awards television broadcast, the Grammy® Awards Classical Music Tribute to Earl Wild and Lang Lang at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the American Classical Music Hall of Fame, the Robert Schumann Festival at the Marcella Sembrich Museum in Lake George NY, the Campeche Festival in Mexico, and at the opening of the VI International Festival of Music at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Alan Rinehart has over 45 years experience as a professional classical guitarist with many contributions to the guitar world as a performer, teacher, and music editor. Upon completing university he studied lute repertoire and technique in London, England at the Early Music Centre.

One of the most decorated saxophonists of her generation, Nicki Roman has won prizes at prestigious competitions such as the North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) Solo Competition, Music Teachers National Association Young Artist Solo Competition, William C. Byrd International Competition, Fischoff, and the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship. She has been a featured concerto soloist with the Eastman Symphony Orchestra, Eastman Wind Ensemble, UW-Milwaukee Wind Ensemble, Illinois Wind Symphony, University of North Florida Orchestra, and the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra. Across North America, Europe, and Asia, Nicki has shared solo and chamber music performances at venues such as the China National Centre for the Performing Arts, Shandong University of the Arts, Zagreb Academy of Music, Krannert Center for Performing Arts, Rio All-Suite Casino in Las Vegas, Brevard Summer Music Festival, and the Zelazo Performing Arts Center.