Artists

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.

Ted Moore is a composer, sound designer, and music educator living in Minneapolis, MN. His work has been reviewed as “an impressive achievement both artistically and technically” (Jay Gabler, VitaMN), “wonderfully creepy” (Matthew Everett, TC  Daily Planet), and “epic” (Rob Hubbard, Pioneer Press). Moore’s work focuses on live electronic processing with live performers using the digital signal processing programming language SuperCollider.

A native of Texas, Mel Mobley (b. 1966) currently resides and teaches in Monroe, Louisiana. He holds degrees from the University of Texas, University of South Florida, and University of Illinois. Active as a performer, composer, and advocate of new music, Mel has been involved in new music festivals and performances all around the country. Performed here and abroad, his works include orchestral, band, chamber, choral, and electronic music. His largest work to date, a chamber opera titled Sylvan Beach, premiered in the spring of 2010. His percussion trio with piano titled [pleez], (plez), /pliz/ was released on the 2013 Revello Records compact disc, Piano Concerti with Percussion Orchestra.

Lisa Miles is a creative artist of 25+ years from Pittsburgh PA. Uniquely blending the arts and humanities, she composes and performs, is the author of two books and a personal and professional development consultant. She has a B.A. in English and Applied Music minor (Youngstown State). Grants have included Meet the Composer and PA Arts & Humanities Initiative; recent recognition has been inclusion in John Shelton Ivany's "Top 21" (Natl. News Bureau).

Jennifer Bernard Merkowitz (b. 1981) is a composer, pianist, and violist whose diverse inspirations have included liturgical chant, basketball games, the growth patterns of plants, and frog calls. Her music has been performed in national and international venues such as the Society of Composers, Inc. National Conference, the National Flute Association Convention, the International Computer Music Conference, and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. Recent commissions include And The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon for percussionist Joseph Van Hassel, which has been released on Soundset Recordings; Brothers and Sisters for Otterbein University’s Concert Choir; and The Best of Both Worlds for the Ohio Music Teachers Association.

Beth Mehocic (USA), composer, poet, visual artist, filmmaker and author received her B.M. in music composition from the Dana School of Music, Youngstown State University and her M.M. and Ph.D. in music composition from Michigan State University, East Lansing.  She is currently the Composer-in-Residence, Music Director and Full Professor for the Department of Dance at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Having been taught and mentored by Henry Cowell and having developed his electronic music techniques in the studios under the direction of Ianis Xenakis, Barton McLean has had a 20-year teaching career in which, as director of the electronic music/music technology programs at Indiana University-South bend and the University of Texas-Austin he pioneered the first large-scale commercially-available digital sequencer (Synthi 100) and sampler (Fairlight CMI), and with his wife Priscilla produced 14 LP recordings and ten CDs, some of which have become staples in electronic music courses. In 1983 he and Priscilla McLean left academia to develop their electroacoustic duo The McLean Mix, which has proven itself in hundreds of concerts and installations throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, as a full-time career.

Priscilla McLean has had a long and illustrious career as composer and performer, first as composer of orchestral, chamber, solo and choral music, then beginning in 1974 as composer and performer of electronic and electroacoustic music, and recently as video artist as well. With husband Barton McLean she toured as The McLean Mix , from 1974 until 2010, fulltime since 1983, performing their music in yearly concert tours and giving audience interactive installations in 42 U.S. states, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Malaysian Borneo.

Kim McCormick is on the artist faculty of the University of South Florida and a member of the Opera Tampa Orchestra, the Florida Wind Band, and the McCormick Duo for flute and percussion. As an advocate for new music, she has commissioned and premiered numerous new works for flute. Her recordings on the Honeyrock and Capstone labels have received high critical acclaim in some of the leading audiophile journals. She has performed extensively in the United States and has also recently given concerts in Ecuador, Canada, France, China and South Korea. She is Past President of the Florida Flute Association and holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of North Texas.

Robert McCormick is currently Professor of Music at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He served as principal percussionist/assistant timpanist with the Florida Orchestra for 20 seasons. He is a former member of the Harry Partch Ensemble and often performs and records with high profile artists of all genres. In 2010, he conducted the premiere performance of Chan Hae Lee’s Korean folk opera Simcheongga at the National Center of Performing Arts in Seoul. In March 2014 McCormick performed the world premiere of Baljinder Sekhon’s Double Percussion Concerto at Carnegie Hall with percussionist Lee Hinkle. McCormick was the 2006 recipient of the Florida Music Educator of the Year Award; the 2007 Grand Prize in the Keystone Percussion Composition Award; the 2010 University Distinguished Teacher Award; and the 2015 Percussive Arts Society Lifetime Achievement in Education Award. He has also received several Global Music Awards for his albums, many of which are published on the Ravello Records label and distributed by Naxos. McCormick proudly endorses Encore Mallets, Grover Pro Percussion, and Zildjian Cymbals.

Composer Andrew May is best known for chamber music that combines classical instruments with interactive computer systems. During his childhood in Chicago he studied violin, wrote chamber music for his friends, manhandled tape recorders to make odd sounds, and wrote computer software - but these were all separate activities. Then he learned about interactive computer music, and it turned out they could all work together. These days, May teaches composition and computer music at the University of North Texas, where he directs the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia. He still plays violin, writes chamber music for his friends, and writes computer software - but now, sometimes some of the friends are the software.

Inspired by the worlds of nature and literature, Michael Matthews creates music that compels the listener to step beyond the everyday to dwell for a while in images of paradox, to consider the ever-changing tapestry of life. Matthews has a deep love for the contemporary symphonic tradition and has established himself as a master of large-scale musical structures, motivic relationships and organic wholeness, all of which lie at the core of symphonic thought. The symphony is, for Matthews, both a vital form and a special challenge that allows for musical ideas to be carried between movements. Compositional influences include Beethoven, Mahler, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Schnittke and, more recently, Scandinavian composers Pettersson and Aho.

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.

David J. Martins is Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Adjunct Professor of Music at Boston University. Combining an active teaching and conducting schedule, Martins directs both the Boston University Wind Ensemble and the University of Massachusetts Lowell Wind Ensemble. During the past several years, he has been in demand as a guest conductor and has conducted festival ensembles throughout the Eastern United States. As clarinetist of both orchestral and chamber music, he performs with the Boston Classical Orchestra, and as substitute, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and the Boston Ballet Orchestra. He can be heard on orchestral and chamber recordings on the CRI, Koch, Titanic, Gasparo, and Albany labels.

Ed Martin (b. 1976) is an award-­winning composer whose music has been performed worldwide at events such as the ISCM World New Music Days, International Computer Music Conferences, World Saxophone Congresses, the Seoul International Computer Music Festival, Confluences – Art and Technology at the Edge of the Millennium in Spain, and the International Electroacoustic Music Festival Santiago de Chile. His works have been heard at numerous venues throughout U.S. by ensembles such as the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, Ear Play, the Empyrean Ensemble, the Synchromy Ensemble, Musical Amoeba, the Bells of the Cascades, and duoARtia. His music is released on Ravello Records, Mark, Centaur, innova, Emeritus, and SEAMUS labels, and has received first prize awards from the Percussive Arts Society, Musical Amoeba, the Electro-­Acoustic Miniatures International Contest, the Craig and Janet Swan Composer Prize for orchestral  music, and the Tampa Bay Composers’ Forum.

Robert J. Martin is known for music projects based on images and metaphors from the world at large. Martin's composition titles and, in the case of multi-movement works, movement titles are image-based, giving listeners a puzzle to solve or an idea to listen for. Examples of Martin's image-centered pieces include works for soloists such as Limoncello Suite for cello; My Mind's Attic for tenor pan; Hommage Á Tom et Jerry for soloist alternating between flute and piccolo (recorded by Ronda Ford Benson, available from rondaford.com); Ten Thousand Things Moving for flute; Two for One, for soloist alternating between alto and soprano saxophone; and a body of piano works, including the two works in this set: 100 Views of Mt. Fuji: 100 Pieces in One Hundred Minutes - Homage to Hokusai and stone & feather. Ensemble image-based pieces include Here There Be Dragons for brass choir; Palace of the Winds for flute choir; Embrace the Wind: A Celebration of Wind and Wind Energy, a seventy-five minute cycle for string quartet; and The Owl and the Pussycat for harp and flute.

Described as "...a performer of virtuosic ability and one of the new generation of recitalists and gifted players from around the world", Matthew Marshall is one of New Zealand's leading classical guitarists.

Composer Pamela J. Marshall (b.1954) writes chamber, orchestral, choral, and electronic music. Nature and environmental themes run through Marshall's music. There are influences of Bartok, Messiaen, jazz, and American songs from the 1800s. Clever twists, humor, beautiful melody, and wild noise sometimes occur. She loves obscure American folk music, bird songs, and any kitchen object that makes an interesting noise.

Joel Mandelbaum (b.1932) (ASCAP) is Professor Emeritus at Queens College, C.U.N.Y., where he has taught since 1961. He has degrees from Harvard, Brandeis and Indiana Universities, where he studied composition with Walter Piston, Irving Fine, Harold Shapero and Bernhard Heiden, augmented by summer studies with Dallapiccola and Copland. Other influential teachers were Angela Diller, Helen Grant Baker and Tibor Kozma.