Artists

The ANIMO flute and piano duo is the creation of flautist Sarah Waycott and pianist Yanna Zissiadou. Both experienced performers and educators, they came together in 2018 to form an idea for a contemporary music duo that will break through the “Classical Music” norms and perform music that is soulful and accessible by all, regardless of its origins, style, and medium.

Chris Chafe is a composer, improvisor, and cellist, developing much of his music alongside computer-based research. He is Director of Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). At IRCAM (Paris) and The Banff Centre (Alberta), he pursued methods for digital synthesis, music performance, and real-time internet collaboration. CCRMA's SoundWIRE project involves live concertizing with musicians the world over. Online collaboration software including jacktrip and research into latency factors continue to evolve. An active performer either on the net or physically present, his music reaches audiences in dozens of countries and sometimes at novel venues.

Formed in 2014, DRAX is a faculty ensemble-in-residence at the University of Missouri School of Music with Leo Saguiguit (saxophone) and Megan Arns (percussion). Dedicated to performing and creating new repertoire for this unique combination of instruments, the duo made its international debut at the World Saxophone Congress in Strasbourg, France. DRAX has performed at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, conferences of the North American Saxophone Alliance, Odyssey Chamber Music Series of Columbia, Mareck Center for Dance, and residencies at universities including Virginia Tech University, Sam Houston State University, Colorado State University, and the Eastman School of Music.

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.

Pianist Dr. Martha Thomas has given concerts and presentations across the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, South America, and Africa. Thomas is featured on 11 albums on the ACA Digital, Centaur, Ravello, and Albany labels. Her latest, ECHOES: Past and Future, features music from the 20^th and 21^st centuries, including Noggin by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Melinda Wagner. She has been praised for the “lyrical beauty of her playing” and “her mastery of rhythmic and textural complexities.”

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.