Artists

Tom Prescott is an electroacoustic composer, researcher and software developer. He studied computer science and music technology at Keele University. He then went on to an MRes in music which investigated the application of interactive genetic algorithms to the control of granular synthesis and spatialisation techniques. This was followed by a Ph.D funded by the Keele Research Institute for the Humanities which involved the development of compositions and software that investigate a range of approaches to the application of interactive genetic algorithms to sound design, composition and performance. His compositions are inspired by nature and focus on explorations of the formation of planets and the evolution of life on Earth.

Originally from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Joshua Tomlinson is a composer, sound artist and teacher specializing in electroacoustic music and technology. His background is in rock music with subsequent classical training in voice and guitar, and his compositions incorporate a range of musical styles, instrumentation and media. Joshua serves on the steering committee of the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and he has participated as a composer and audio technician at NYCEMF since 2012. His compositions have also been performed at the PARMA, NSEME, SEAMUS, and EMM music festivals.

Lou Bunk (b. 1972) is an American musician inspired by many forms of experimental artistic expression. Educated in classical composition, and deeply influenced by the noise and improv. scene in and around Boston and New York, Lou’s music occupies a space between and among concert halls and fringe performance spaces. His sonically rich and intricate music investigates sound and silence through extended instrumental techniques, microtones, amplified found objects, electronics, and generative approaches to texture and form.

Jeri-­Mae G. Astolfi is a Canadian-­born pianist whose playing has been lauded as “brilliant” (New Music Connoisseur), “persuasive” (Sequenza21), and “beautiful” (American Record Guide). Her repertoire, ranging from the Renaissance era through the present, clearly affirms her keen interest in new music, which has led her to commission and premiere many new solo and collaborative works—music that has been featured on live radio broadcasts and released by Albany Records, Innova Recordings, Ravello Records’ Capstone Collection, Ravello Records, as well as various recordings for the Society  of Composers Inc. Performers Recording Series.

Jon’s work has been shown in concerts, festivals, and galleries across North America and Europe, including Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS); Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS); the Smithsonian Museum of American History (D.C.); International Computer Music Conference (ICMC); with special performances at the Casa da Musica (Porto, Portugal) and CCRMA (Palo Alto, CA). His music and media explore environmental sustainability, data-driven interactivity, site-specific sound, and choreographic composition. Jon is a co-director of Harmonic Laboratory, an interdisciplinary arts collective focused on art and technology collaborations.

Doug Bielmeier creates commercial drone and experimental electronic music tailored for boutique audiences and media. His 2017 release of “Betty and the Sensory World” on Ravello Records explores his technique of Windowing, which deals with the manipulation of found sound files by the stretching and compression of time, sample rate, bit depth, and window size.

Bob Bliss is a musician, software engineer, and instrument designer residing near Santa Cruz, CA. Born in Michigan, he was playing guitar in his first band at age 10, and bass guitar and keyboards soon after. He studied the French horn and composition in middle and high schools, and by age 16 was building electronic music synthesizers in his basement. Interleaving college and music, he played bass in two college jazz bands, and by 18 he was playing pop, rock, and funk keyboards nightly as a professional, while still studying electronics technology, computers, piano, and music theory.

Jim Schliestett studied French horn with Ralph Pyle of the LA Philharmonic as a youth, recalling as a highlight performing with orchestra Mozart's Concerto #3. He studied electronic music and composition with Gordon Mumma and David Cope while at UC Santa Cruz in the 70s, and the seeds were planted for an abiding interest in Eastern European contemporary classical music.

Deemed a “musical force of nature” by Gramophone, composer Gina Biver writes music for large chamber ensembles, dance, choir, multimedia, and film. Her work is inspired by the written word and by visual art, both static and moving. She collaborates with musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, poets, computer artists, sculptors, painters, and video artists. Her work has been presented in the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada, and Mexico.

Michael Wittgraff (b. 1962) is an electronic music composer whose recent work explores live manipulation of feedback, interactive improvisation, and time as data. His music has been performed in North America, Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia, and appears on the Eroica, New Ariel Recordings, and SEAMUS labels. He has awards, commissions, and recognition from ASCAP, Modern Chamber Players, National Symphony Orchestra, Tempus Fugit, Louisiana State University, University of Minnesota, University of North Dakota, Florida State University, PiKappa Lambda, Zeitgeist, Chiara String Quartet, Bush Foundation, North Dakota Council on the Arts, and more.

Scott Barton composes, performs, and produces (electro) (acoustic) music. His interests include rhythmic complexity in beat-based contexts, machine rhythms, auditory and temporal perception, musical robotic instrument design, human-robot interaction in composition and performance, and audio production. As a composer, his works explore how we perceptually organize sonic information into rhythms, (dis)continuities and forms.

Richard Brooks (b. 1942) is a native of upstate New York and holds a B.S. degree in Music Education from the Crane School of Music, Potsdam College, an M.A. in Composition from Binghamton University and a Ph. D. in Composition from New York University.  From 1975-2004 he was on the music faculty of Nassau Community College where he was Professor and Department Chair for 22 years, supervising 13 full-time and c. 30 part-time faculty.

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.

David Taddie, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, spent his teenage and young adult years playing in rock bands, serving as a church organist, arranging and performing on radio and TV commercials, finally beginning his formal studies in music theory and composition at Cleveland State University at the age of 20. He received his BA and MM from CSU, where he studied composition with Bain Murray, Rudolph Bubalo, and Edwin London. From 1985-1992, he served as pianist with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. He also composed for, and performed with, the New Music Associates in Cleveland, performed as a duo-piano team with his wife, Karen, and was active as a theory and piano teacher. After a decade of working as a freelance composer, performer, and music teacher, he moved to Boston in 1992 to attend Harvard University where he received his Ph.D., studying composition with Donald Martino, Bernard Rands, and Mario Davidovsky.

Collaborating as Duo Sureño since 1999, Nancy King and Robert Nathanson share a passion for commissioning and performing new music. As a duo, they have toured extensively throughout the United States, Germany and Austria, with world premieres most recently in Wilmington, NC and Honolulu, Hawaii. Waking The Sparrows, their newest release on Ravello Records represents an almost twenty-year journey, exploring the beauty of the human voice blended with the guitar, as expressed through the music of today's most compelling composers.

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.

A composer, songwriter, educator, guitarist, and radio host, Chris Cresswell is a curious musician whose work betrays his affection for sonic wanderlust. With an ear that incorporates all sorts of sounds, from field recordings to a singer/songwriter at an open mic night, Cresswell’s music “… blurs the boundaries between industrial and organic, soothing and suspenseful, and introspective and anxious” (International Clarinet Association) and “…is not really my thing, but it’s cool to hear him on the radio.” (his Mom). Having once shared the stage with a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and a Top 40 country star (two different occasions), Cresswell’s music has been heard in coffee shops, concert halls, and venues around the world, from chic Brooklyn venues like Areté Venue and Gallery and The Firehouse Space, to Birmingham, England’s renown Symphony Hall and the Paleis voor Schone Kunsten in Brussels.

Born in Trondheim 1952. The Music Conservatory of Bergen (now The Grieg Academy) 1969-1971 (Church musician, composition studies with Ketil Hvoslef). Royal College of Music in Stockholm 1971-1972 (composition studies with Ingvar Lidholm). Full time composer since 1974. Has written commissioned works for the large orchestras of the country, for choirs like Bergen Cathedral Choir and The Norwegian Soloists Choir, for chamber ensembles like the Oslo String Quartet and Grieg Trio, and for soloists like Geir Inge Lotsberg (violin), Arvid Engegård (Hardanger fiddle), Njål Vindenes (guitar), Jan Hovden (piano), Geir Draugsvoll (accordeon), Bjørn Ianke (double bass), Eirik Birkeland (bassoon), Øyvind Bjorå (violin), Willy Postma (harp), Jun Zhi Cui (Chinese harp), Nils Økland (Hardanger fiddle), Ellen Sejersted Bødtker (harps), Kåre Nordstoga (organ) and many others.

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.

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.