Artists

Ben Johansen is an interdisciplinary composer fascinated with exploring new ways of creating and organizing sound, designing aesthetically compelling visuals, and working with small electronics to construct installation art. He challenges himself to 1) constantly expand the limits of performers and observers and 2) design atmospheres that foster improvisation and indeterminacy within boundaries that are accessible to participants. Teaching is a passion of his that accompanies his desire to continually learn, create, and research. Ben's schooling has greatly influenced his interests. He completed his Bachelor’s in Music Education and Master’s in Music Composition at Baylor University where he is currently employed. Ben earned his Ph.D. from University of North Texas in Music with an emphasis in Composition, a Specialization in Computer Media and a minor in Installation Art.

Mary Ann Joyce was born in Champaign-Urbana IL, and received her B.A. from Fontbonne University, St. Louis, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in theory and composition from Washington University, St. Louis. After graduate school, she moved to the New York City area where she has remained. She is an active composer of instrumental, choral and vocal music, and a professor of music at Manhattanville College. Her works have been performed at international festivals and concerts through the United States, Europe, and Russia. Mary Ann's works are published by Pioneer Drama, World Library of Sacred Music, Ars Nova, Scribner & Sons, and Gold Branch; her pieces are available on CDs from Navona Records, Capstone and Pioneer Drama.

Leonard V. Ball, Jr. was Associate Professor Emeritus of Composition and Theory at the University of Georgia, where he taught music theory, acoustic composition, electronic composition, and music technology. While at UGA, he was also Director of the University of Georgia electronic studio from 1987 to 1995; Director of the Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music Electronic Studios from 1995 to 2001; Director of the Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music from 2002 to June 2015; and Chair of the Composition/Theory area from 2010 to June 2015.

Thomas Juneau is active throughout the United States as both a conductor and composer. He is Music Director of Summit Chorale and the Juneau Vocal Alliance, as well as Director of Choral Activities at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia PA. His first choral pieces were published when he was 17. Juneau has numerous works in publication with Carl Fischer Music, ECS Publishing, Walton Music, Hal Leonard Corporation, Alliance Music, and Southern Music Company. He has conducted in major concert halls throughout the United States including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.

New York composer Debra Kaye has honed her craft collaborating with musicians of Manhattan's dynamic new music community. AND SO IT BEGINS, her debut album, is the result of this cross-pollination, with most of the music played by those who commissioned and premiered it. Music is movement - a concept from Kaye's Dalcroze studies, these pieces have a visceral, visual quality, balancing pathos and humor, poetry and drama, taking the listener on a wide ranging journey that blends her deep classical roots with traces of jazz, world music, folk and pop.

Steven Kemper composes music for acoustic instruments, instruments and computers, musical robots, dance and video. He is a co-founder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), a collective dedicated to designing, building, and composing original music for robotic instruments. He has received awards from Meet the Composer, the Danish Arts Council, and the International Computer Music Association. Steven received a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies from the University of Virginia and is Assistant Professor of Music Technology and Composition in the Music Department at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Colin Kemper is a composer, performer, and educator. His compositional interests are multifaceted; particularly, his art is concerned with matters pertaining to mental wellness, family dynamics, gender norms, addiction, trauma, and recovery. He is interested in collaborative endeavors involving notated music, electronic, electro-acoustic, popular song, theater, video games, film, dance, screendance, and multimedia installation.

Acclaimed by Fanfare Magazine as “Masterful...a modernized Rachmaninoff” Christopher J. Keyes (b. 1963) began his career as a pianist, winning many competitions and later making his “double-debut” in Carnegie Hall as both soloist and guest composer with the New York Youth Symphony. He began formal composition lessons at the University of California at Santa Barbara, earning a B.M. in Piano Performance and a B.A. in Creative Studies with an emphasis in composition. He continued his musical training at the Eastman School of Music, completing his doctorate in 1992. His major composition teachers include Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler, Christopher Rouse, and Robert Morris. Among his numerous awards are the Eastman Szernovsky Award, several ASCAP Grants to Young Composers, and the Rudolf Nissim Award for best orchestral work written by a living ASCAP member. He is also an author of various scholarly articles on subjects including audio engineering, the pedagogy of composition, and music technology.

Hee Yun Kim (b. 1971) is a composer of a wide variety of music including orchestra, chamber ensemble, chorus, and solo instruments. Her compositions have been performed by diverse ensembles across the globe, including Ensemble Calliopée, L’Orchestre de la Francophonie, University of Illinois Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Metropolitan Chorus, Dallas Asian Winds, New York New Music Ensemble, Alea III, Composers’ Ensemble of Northern New York, Juventas Ensemble, Loop 38, Euterpe Quintet, and HET trio. Her music has been reviewed as being “fully convincing” and “masterfully orchestrated” (Paris: La Lettre du Musicien).

Philip Koplow’s first association with professional Cincinnati musicians was the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra’s performance of his tone poem Generations in 1980. Koplow has had fine orchestral success — his music has been performed by the Cleveland Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cincinnati Pops, the National Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Wyoming Symphony, the Columbus Symphony, the West Chester Symphony, the Blue Ash Symphony, the Northern Kentucky Symphony, and has been recorded by the Silesian Philharmonic in Poland.

Joseph Koykkar is a musician who is at home in a variety of music from classical to avant-garde to rock and blues. As a composer, he has had his music performed nationally and internationally for over the past 30 years. Besides Double Takes and Triple Plays, his music can be heard on ten additional CDs, including an all-Koykkar release on Northeastern Records in 1992. In the past ten years three of his compositions (Out Front, Panache, and Streets and Bridges) have been in contention for a Grammy in the “Best Contemporary Classical Composition” category. He has composed for a variety of media including chamber music, orchestra, music for dance, film/video scores, and electronic/computer music. In addition to composing he is a pianist and conductor. He holds degrees from Indiana University (M.Mus.) and the University of Miami (DMA) and has received grants and awards from such sources as the Pew Charitable Trust for Music, the NEA, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, the American Music Center, the Wisconsin Arts Board and the American Composers Forum.

Described by The Washington Post as "tantalizing ... engaging, with a touch of the provocative," Jessica Krash's compositions have been presented in both traditional and experimental settings. Many of Krash's works have been collaborations with choreographers, including a piece for saxophonists on both sides of the C & 0 Canal (in a thunderstorm); a children's ballet in a rundown, former amusement park; a piece for voice, dancer and large mobiles at the Joyce SoHo in New York City; and her performance of Beethoven's Appassionata in a Pierrot costume for a dance concert at Lincoln Center. The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts has presented a full concert of her work. Schools and synagogues have commissioned her to write music for the dedications of their new buildings, including a piece combining klezmer band, jazz percussion, and classical piano.

Michael Laurello is a composer, pianist, and recording engineer based in Northwest Ohio. His compositions reflect his fascination with temporal dissonance and emotional immediacy, and have been presented at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, MATA, PASIC, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Carlsbad Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire, NASA, National Conference of the Society of Composers, Inc., and other venues and festivals. He has collaborated with ensembles and soloists such as icarus Quartet, Nashville Symphony, Sō Percussion, arx duo, HOCKET, Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, Yale Percussion Group, and Ensemble Repercussion featuring the Duisburger Philharmoniker and Deutschen Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz.

Richard Lavenda composes music that is sometimes boldly dramatic and sometimes poignantly lyrical, but always emotionally expressive and formally coherent. No matter what the piece, there are always clearly defined motives, an imaginative and personal use of instrumental color and melodic counterpoint, and strong rhythmic energy that comes as much from jazz and rock and roll as from his classical role models. His catalog of more than sixty works ranges from works for solo flute to an opera, and includes numerous pieces for orchestra and for a wide diversity of chamber ensembles.

Dr. Sang-Hie Lee, Professor of Music at the University of South Florida, is an active teacher, pianist, researcher, author, and cross-disciplinary administrator. As the founder of Ars Nostra, she performs piano ensemble music by significant living composers: her music is featured on six albums by Ravello, Centaur, Capstone, and Albany labels. Lee is the principal author of Scholarly Research in Music: Shared and Disciplinary-Specific Practices (McGraw Hill, 2012-2013, Routledge 2017, 2022). She is the primary editor of Perspectives in Performing Arts Medicine: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Springer 2020) and was the founding Editor of the Cultural Expressions in Music Monographs Series (College Music Society 2008-2014). She is the author of 74 scholarly publications, has presented 85 conference papers, keynotes, and lectures, hosted seven international conferences, and performed numerous solo and chamber-music concerts in the United States, South Korea, China, Serbia, Brazil, Italy, and Canada.

Leonard Lehrman (b. 1949) (ASCAP, GEMA), former Critic-at-Large of The New Music Connoisseur, Associate Editor of Opera Monthly, Editor of Opera Today, and Assistant Chorus Master of the Metropolitan Opera, founded the Jewish Music Theater of Berlin and the Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus, and is the composer of 226 works to date, including 11 operas (4 based on works of Russian literature), 7 musicals, 79 individual instrumental pieces, 90 for chorus, and 255 for solo voice, as well as 64 translations (from French, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, and especially Russian – including the operas  Женитьба, Жизнь за царя, and ;Русалка) and 18 adaptations.

Brooklyn-based pianist Beth Levin is celebrated as a bold interpreter of challenging works, from the Romantic canon to leading modernist composers. The New York Times praised her “fire and originality,” while The New Yorker called her playing “revelatory.” Debuting as a child prodigy with the Philadelphia Orchestra at age twelve, Levin was subsequently taught and guided by legendary pianists such as Rudolf Serkin, Leonard Shure and Dorothy Taubman, Another of her teachers, Paul Badura-Skoda, praised Levin as a pianist of rare qualities and the highest professional caliber. Her deep well of experience allows an intuitive connection with the great pianistic traditions, to Bach, to Mozart, to Beethoven.

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.

David Liptak's music has been described as "luminous and arresting," "richly atmospheric," and having "transparent textures, incisive rhythms, shimmering lightness".

Paul Lombardi holds a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Oregon, and studied composition with David Crumb, Robert Kyr, Stephen Blumberg, and Leo Eylar. His music has been performed in more than 30 states across the United States, as well as in other areas in North America, South America, and Europe. Recordings of his music are available from PARMA Recordings, Capstone Records, Zerx Records, ERMMedia, and Thinking outLOUD Records.