Artists

Bryan Pezzone is the consummate cross-over pianist of his generation. He excels in classical, contemporary, jazz, and experimental genres and is well known for his versatility and virtuosity as a recording and performing artist, improviser, and composer.

Flutist, pianist, composer, and conductor Byron W. Petty holds a BM in flute performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with the noted flutist Britton Johnson. He has served as Instructor of Piano at Roanoke College and Instructor of Flute and Piano at Southern Virginia University. He is a Lecturer in Music and has taught courses in Composition and Musical Analysis as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Washington and Lee University. From 1995-2002, Petty was the Conductor/Music Director of the Eurydice Community Orchestra of Roanoke and subsequently, the Artistic Director from 2002 through 2003.

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.

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. 

Samuel Pellman has been creating electroacoustic and microtonal music for nearly four decades. Recently his music has been presented at festivals and conferences in Melbourne, Paris, Basel, Vienna, Montreal, New York City, Beijing, Capetown, Buenos Aires, Taiwan, and Perth. Pellman is also the author of An Introduction to the Creation of Electroacoustic Music, a widely-used textbook. He teaches music theory and composition at Hamilton College, in Clinton NY, and is co-director of its Studio for Transmedia Arts and Related Studies (STARS).

Composer Gemma Peacocke grew up in Hamilton, New Zealand, and she moved to the United States in 2014. She writes a broad range of music including art-pop songs, EDM-inspired tracks and orchestral music. She has a particular love of interdisciplinary work and often collaborates with artists, writers, and theatre designers.

Composer Paul Osterfield's works have been performed throughout the United States and internationally by soloists and ensembles, including the Blakemore Trio, neoPhonia, the Stones River Chamber Players, and the Cleveland Orchestra at their "Family Key Concert" series. His music is available on the Equilibrium and Capstone labels. A recent artist at the MacDowell Colony, he has also received awards from BMI, ASCAP, the National Federation of Music Clubs, and the Library of Congress. Paul Osterfield has served on the faculties at Middle Tennessee State University, where he is Associate Professor of Music Composition and Theory, and Ithaca College. He holds degrees from Cornell University, Indiana University, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, having studied composition with Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, Eugene O'Brien, Frederick Fox, and Donald Erb.

Dr. Leslie Odom is Associate Professor of Oboe and Music Theory at the University of Florida. Her teachers include Richard Killmer (Eastman School of Music), James Lakin (University of Iowa), Malcolm Smith, (Butler University), and Marion Gibson (Principal Oboe, Louisville Symphony Orchestra). Dr. Odom received her Bachelor of Music in Oboe Performance from Butler University, in Indianapolis, Indiana; her Master of Music in Music Theory and her Doctorate of Musical Arts in Oboe Performance from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester New York. She also received the coveted Performer’s Certificate during her doctoral work.

Kirk O'Riordan's music has been referred to as “unapologetically beautiful” and is often praised for its uniquely “visual” qualities that depict a wide range of striking moods. Gramophone Magazine praised O’Riordan as “a composer for whom imagery is a defining inspiration. ...[He] is a deeply sensitive composer who savours going gently into the night.” O’Riordan (b. 1968) is an active composer, conductor, saxophonist, and teacher.

James O’Callaghan (b. 1988) is a composer and sound artist based in Montréal praised for his “mastery of materials and musical form” (Electromania, Radio France). His music has been described as “very personal... with its own colour anchored in the unpredictable” (Goethe- Institut). His work spans chamber, orchestral, live electronic and acousmatic idioms, audio installations, and site-specific performances. It often employs field recordings, amplified found objects, computer-assisted transcription of environmental sounds, and unique performance conditions.

Composer/pianist Ketty Nez joined the Boston University School of Music in 2005. Her ethnographic chamber opera, The Fiddler and the Old Woman of Rumelia, was premiered in 2011 by Xanthos Ensemble, and staged by Juventas Ensemble in 2012. Her portrait CD with Albany, Listen to a Wonder Never Heard Before!, was released in 2010. Ketty's first opera, An Opera in Devolution: Drama in 540 Seconds, was premiered at the A*Devantgarde Festival in Munich in 2003. A visiting composer/scholar at Stanford Universityís Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) in 2001, Ketty studied at IRCAM in 1998-9, after working for two years with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam.

Composer Anne Neikirk is drawn to creative processes that involve interdisciplinary work. Her background in vocal music instilled a particular interest in the relationship between music and the written word. Past awards and grants include the Presser Music Award, an American Composers Forum Subito Grant, and inclusion in the Society of Composers CD Series. Neikirk has presented her work at conferences including those of the Society of Composers, the College Music Society, the Society of Electroacoustic Music in the United States, and the American Harp Society, among others. Her music is distributed by ADJective New Music, LLC.

Robert Nathanson, classical and baroque guitarist, is an active recitalist and orchestral soloist, now focusing on chamber music, with concerts throughout the United States, as well as performances in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, Slovenia, and Canada. He has been performing as part of the Ryoanji Duo (guitar and saxophone) and the North Carolina Guitar Quartet since 1992 and as part of Duo Sureño (guitar and soprano) since 1999.

Akemi Naito is a composer based in New York City. Born in Tokyo, she studied composition at the University Division of the Toho Gakuen School of Music and was a member of the school’s faculty from 1980 to 1991. Following her earlier activity as a composer in Tokyo, she received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council that enabled her to move to New York City in 1991.

Zvonimir Nagy is a Croatian-born, American composer, performer, and music scholar based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He earned a Doctor of Music degree in composition from Northwestern University, and also studied music at Texas Christian University and at the Academy of Music in Zagreb, Croatia. He studied composition with Jay Alan Yim, Augusta Read Thomas, Tristan Murail, and Marko Ruždjak, and organ with H. Joseph Butler. His creative and research work extends into interdisciplinary contexts and perspectives on music and embodiment, forging connections between psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and the arts. As organist, he has received the second prize in César Franck/Olivier Messiaen International Organ Comptition in Haarlem, the Netherlands.

Ron Nagorcka (born 1948) composes in his hand-built solar-powered studio in a remote forest in Tasmania (the island state off Australia’s south coast) where the natural world provides him with much of his inspiration. He has been exploring both music and nature since his childhood on an Australian sheep farm and studied music – including pipe organ, harpsichord, and composition – at the University of Melbourne and the University of California, San Diego. In the 1970s he was a prominent and influential figure in Melbourne as an innovative composer, teacher, keyboard performer and improviser with electronics.

Violinist Mikylah Myers' performances have been called “energetic and virtuosic” by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and “captivating” by Boulder, Colorado’s Daily Camera. An award-winning chamber musician, Myers is the violin professor at West Virginia University and Coordinator of the String Area. She was formerly concertmaster of the San Juan Symphony in Durango, Colorado, and a member of the Moores Piano Trio in Houston, Texas, which was the silver prize winner at the 2000 Carmel Chamber Music Competition. During her time in Houston, Myers regularly performed with the Houston Symphony and the Houston Grand Opera. She was also a violinist with the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida.  She has performed internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Spain, and was a 19-year member of the Britt Festival Orchestra in Jacksonville, Oregon.

Craig Morris began his compositional studies at eleven years old. Since then he has added violin, piano and voice to his musical education and studied under Shirley Bloom, Kevin Scott and Joelle Wallach. He has been a violinist with the Bronx Symphony Orchestra for forty years and has worked professionally as a cantor. His music has been performed by the Bronx Symphony Orchestra, the CETA Orchestra of New York, the North Jersey Symphony, Fifth International Music Festival of Buenos Aires, the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia, the Chamber Music Society of Formosa, members of the Amasi Trio, the Gregg Smith Singers and the Nyack College Chorale.

Jeff Morris creates musical experiences that engage audiences’ minds with their surroundings. His performances, installations, lectures, and writings appear in international venues known for cutting-edge arts and deep questions in the arts. He has won awards for making art emerge from unusual situations: music tailored to architecture and cityscapes, performance art for the radio, and serious concert music for toy piano, robot, Sudoku puzzles, paranormal electronic voice phenomena, and live coding using algebra and breath-controlled piano.

Robert Morris, born in Cheltenham, England in 1943, received his musical education at the Eastman School of Music (B.M. in composition with distinction) and the University of Michigan (M.M. and D.M.A. in composition and ethnomusicology), where he studied composition with John La Montaigne, Leslie Bassett, Ross Lee Finney, and Eugene Kurtz. In 1966 at Tanglewood, as a Margret Lee Crofts Fellow, he worked with Gunther Schuller.