Collaborators

Edna Cantoral Acosta, visual artist

Edna Cantoral Acosta was born in Mexico City, 1976.  She studied in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, where she currently works. In 1996 she obtained the Sogem diploma in literary creation.  She undertook undergraduate studies in plastic arts at the University of Guadalajara. (1998-2001).  She took classes with artists and in the engraving workshop of Herculano Álvarez during the period between 2002-2003.  She was granted a scholarship to study at the ENSAD, Paris, during the period from October 2004 to August 2005.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Jean Ahn, composer

Jean Ahn holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.A. and B.A. from Seoul National University.  Her compositions have been featured at Aspen Music Festival, American Composers Orchestra’s Ear Shot (by Memphis Symphony), June in Buffalo, Oregon Bach Festival, Festival of Contemporary Music, IAWM and Pacific Korean Music Festival, among others.

Commissions include works for the Leftcoast Chamber Ensemble, Gayaguem Soloist JUL, Volti Chamber Choir, Duo Camaraderie, Locrian Chamber Players, and the Pianissimo among others.  She is currently working on “Folksong Revisit”, a collection of Korean folksong for professional singers.  She is currently a Lecturer and an assistant choral director at UC Berkeley.  She is also the director of Ensemble Ari.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Allen County Public Library

The Allen County Public Library has been part of the social and cultural fabric of Fort Wayne, Indiana and surrounding communities since 1895. Then known as the Fort Wayne Public Library, it served residents with 3606 volumes in a room in City Hall. Since then it has grown to consist of the main library in downtown Fort Wayne and thirteen branches in the city and outlying communities. 

Fort Wayne has been cited as the Best Read City in the United States by Places Rated Almanac, due in large part to the library's collection and patrons' use of it.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Stephanie Bauer, visual artist

My work is influenced by the process of deconstruction.  After a shattering disclosure that left me isolated, I starting writing in unreadable streams of consciousness.  This process allowed me to deconstruct the situation and reduce the resulting quagmire into something exploratory.  The resulting patterning of the writing inspired me to explore the tension between exposure versus subversion.  I painted in thin layers over the writing.  The horizontal nature of the writing would push the painting towards a landscape and I found myself exploring the idea of landscapes and waterscapes deconstructed to their most basic elements.  I work on a dozen or more paintings at a time in various stages.  I write madly on fresh canvas, draw pictures, explore patterns and color relationships until a landscape starts to emerge.  I then follow and develop the image until I achieve a balance between the chaos of the written word beneath, the riot of paint and color, and a sense of peace.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Rose Bishop, flute

Victoria Rose Bishop holds the position of Adjunct Instructor of Flute at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri and plays piccolo with the Oneota Valley Orchestra.  An active freelance musician in the region, she also regularly performs with the Southeast Iowa Symphony, the Muscatine Symphony and the Ottumwa Symphony and has appeared as a soloist with the Monmouth College Wind Ensemble.  Ms. Bishop is a passionate educator and her students have won positions in prominent youth orchestras, attended prestigious summer programs and have placed well at state contests and competitions.  

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Victoria Rose Bishop received her Master of Arts Degree in Flute Performance from the University of Iowa and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Georgia State University.  At both institutions Rose played principal flute and piccolo in the University Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Wind Ensembles.  She has participated in master classes in the United States and abroad with several prominent flutists including Sarah Jackson, Walfrid Kujala, Angela Jones-Reus, Michel Bellavance, and Leone Buyse, among others.  Her principal teachers include Nicole Esposito and Sarah Kruser Ambrose, with additional study with Jim Walker.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Erin Cameron, clarinetist

Erin Cameron is a clarinetist, composer, and new music advocate. She has been heard in performances across the country, including appearances on Toledo’s WGTE radio station and with Ohio’s Noise-to-Signal Ensemble, of which she is a founding member. She is an active educator and has worked with young clarinet players at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp and at the Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne Summer Woodwind Camp, in addition to serving as the Graduate Teaching Assistant at Bowling Green State University. She has played with several symphonies, including the Toledo Symphony, Adrian (MI) Symphony, and Lima (OH) Symphony. Erin is Composer-in-Residence of the Zafa Collective in Chicago. Upcoming projects include collaborations with composers Weston Olencki, Adam Kennaugh, Celka Ojakangas, and Aaron Hynds.

This fall, Erin will start her doctorate at the University of North Texas, where she will serve as the Graduate Teaching Assistant and study with Kimberly Cole Luevano, She received a master’s degree in clarinet performance from Bowling Green State University and bachelor’s degrees in clarinet performance and music composition from Northwestern University. Her principal teachers include Kevin Schempf, Steve Cohen, J. Lawrie Bloom, and Leslie Grimm (clarinet); and Hans Thomalla, Jay Alan Yim, and Juan Campoverde (composition).  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Rebekah Chappell, choreographer

Rebekah Chappell is a performer, teaching artist, and dance maker.  She holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Iowa and a BFA in Dance from Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia.  Rebekah has taught dance throughout the United States, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua working with colleges, public and private schools, studios, and community programs.  Her choreography considers the relationship between art and efficacy, examining the processes that facilitate a transformation of a person, place, and/or community.  She is exploring how to connect embodied movement and lived experiences so that life, art, and the research inform and enrich one another.  Rebekah's MFA thesis, Flood, investigates overwhelming and overflowing states of being, considering the vessels and containers of our lives that have been flooded.  Participated in GRIT.

Reenie Charriere, visual artist

Reenie Charrière received her MFA in 2009 from Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine. She currently resides in Oakland, California. Her work addresses environmental issues exposing the natural beauty as well as the synthetic troubles all around us, and actively considers the consequences of our human conditions.
Reenie has received numerous grants including 2 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant in 2015,and 2011, and a Roderick Dew Travel Grant in 2008, as well as funded residencies by the La Napoule Art Foundation in France, 2012-14, SF MOMA, 2013, Arts Benicia, 2014, and Vermont Studio, 2011. Her work has been exhibited in venues internationally, as well as all over the United States.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Lydia Dempsey, composer and oboist

Lydia Dempsey (b. 1993) is a composer, oboist, and private lesson teacher. Since her completion of a collaborative ballet project titled The Wishing Well, her music is increasingly shaped by the concepts of movement and gesture. Dempsey is interested in how time and memory can alter a listener’s perception of sound. As an oboist, she is particularly drawn to performing contemporary and lesser-known works.

This summer, Dempsey’s piece Pas de Deux was premiered at the 2017 International Double Reed Society Conference by Nermis Mieses and Xavier Suarez. Her piece Passage was read in the 2015 Toledo Symphony Orchestra Reading Session. The chamber ensemble version of Passage was awarded honorable mention in the International Alliance for Women in Music’s 2014 Search for New Music Competition, Ellen Taaffe Zwillich Prize. She is the recipient of the President's Award for Academic Achievement at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), the J. Paul Kennedy Music Achievement Award at BGSU, the Center for Undergraduate Research and Scholarship at BGSU’s Glass Award, and the Presser Foundation Scholarship. Dempsey received first prize in the 2015 BGSU Double Reed Day Solo Competition and has recently performed with Michigan Opera Theater, the BGSU Philharmonia as principal oboist, the BGSU New Music Ensemble, and the Defiance College Choral Union.

Dempsey graduated summa cum laude from Bowling Green State University with a B.M. in Music Composition and Oboe Performance in 2016.  She has studied composition with Marilyn Shrude, Mikel Kuehn, Christopher Dietz, Andrew Martin Smith, and Christopher Rutkowski. Her oboe instructors include Nermis Mieses, Lynne Mangan, Diane Dickson, and Joan Wright.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Timothy Doyle, composer

Timothy Doyle is an emerging young Irish composer. Born 1991 in Dublin, Timothy went on to study music at Berklee College of Music and the Newpark Music Centre where he earned a first class honours degree in Jazz Performance. Timothy moved to New York in 2012 where he worked with performers and improvisers like Ohad Talmor and Steve Coleman, before returning to Ireland and beginning a PhD in Composition at UCC in Cork where he currently resides. 

Timothy's particular compositional influences include American minimalists and post-minimalists such as Reich, Gordon and Lucier as well as Andriessen and the Hague School. He is especially interested in transformational (rather than generative) process in music and his work tends to explore both the perceptibility and impersonality of musical systems.

His music has been performed all over Ireland as well as performances in New York, Copenhagen and Paris. Most recently, his piece ''Veneer'' has been selected for performance at the National Concert Hall in Dublin by the world renowned Crash Ensemble. Timothy has also recently won second prize in the Kirkoskammer International Composition Competition for his work ''Bell Music 3''.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

The Englert Theatre

The mission of The Englert Theatre is to own, maintain and operate The Englert Theatre as a community arts center and performance space, enhancing the vitality of Iowa City’s historic downtown by preserving its last historic theater.  Participated in GRIT.

Daniel Fawcett, composer

Daniel Fawcett is a composer and visual artist looking to explore both new and diverse sound worlds. He is a recent 2016 graduate of New York University’s Steinhardt School with a M.M. degree in music composition where studied privately with Joan La Barbara and Morton Subotnick. Prior to this, he completed his B.M. studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago, studying with Stacy Garrop and Kyong Mee Choi. Additionally, he has participated in masterclasses with composers such as Mei-Fang Lin, David Dzubay, Amy Beth Kirsten, David Taylor and Judith Shatin. His work been featured at several events including the World Electro-Acoustic Listening Room (WEALR), the 2015 Look and Listen Festival, the Oregon Conference for Graduate Musicians, the 2015 Troublesome Gap Festival, the 2016 Pulsing & Shaking Festival and the International Computer Music Conference 2015. Future events include performances at Charlotte New Music Festival and the Fairbanks Summer Art Festival in 2017.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Robert Fleisher, composer

Robert Fleisher attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City, graduated with honors from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and earned his M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in composition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The recipient of seven Illinois Arts Council grants, his work has also received support from the Ruttenberg Arts Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and through resident fellowships at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, Millay Colony for the Arts, Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Montalvo Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. Author of Twenty Israeli Composers (1997), Dr. Fleisher is also a contributing composer and essayist in Theresa Sauer’s collection of new music scores, Notations 21 (2009). He has served on the faculties of the UIUC (1978-1980), UCLA (1980-1982), and Northern Illinois University (1983-2014), where he is Professor Emeritus.

Fleisher’s chamber music been described as “eloquent” (Ann Arbor News), “lovely and emotional” (Toronto Musicworks), “astoundingly attractive” (Perspectives of New Music), and “ingenious” (Strad); his electro-acoustic music as “rich, tactile” and “endearingly low-tech” (New York Times). His works have been heard globally, with more than 70 performances and broadcasts of a dozen works in 10 countries since 2010. In 2016, these included performances of three electro-acoustic works (in Brooklyn, NY; Tuscaloosa, AL; Ann Arbor, MI; and Leuk, Switzerland), and the premiere of his Five Pieces for Flute and Percussion (at Northern Illinois University). His music appears on Capstone, Centaur, Navona and SEAMUS labels.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Andrew Gentzsch, violin

Andrew Gentzsch, a native of Iowa City, has led the University of Delaware Chamber Orchestra and the University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra.  Mr. Gentzsch received music degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying with David Perry and the University of Delaware studying with Xiang Gao.  While at the University of Delaware, Mr. Gentzsch performed the Bach Concerto for Two Violins with Professor Gao.  Currently, Mr. Gentzsch is pursuing his D.M.A. at the University of Iowa studying with Scott Conklin, active in the UI Center for New Music as well as the UI String Quartet Residency Program.  Mr. Gentzsch spent the summer of 2014 at the Round Top Summer Festival Institute.  Participated in GRIT and Water: Our World.

Christina Craig Gentzsch, violoncello

Christina Gentzsch is a graduate from the University of Iowa with a Master of Arts degree in cello performance.  She earned her Bachelor of Music degree in cello performance with Honors from Washburn University. Her teachers include Steven Elisha, Anthony Arnone, and Hannah Holman.  

An active performer, Christina currently plays with orchestras around Eastern Iowa including Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra, South East Iowa Symphony Orchestra, Ottumwa Symphony, Dubuque Symphony, and Orchestra Iowa.  She performs often in pit orchestras for  community theater productions.   Christina is also a founding member of the Accipiter Quartet.  

Throughout her career, Christina has been an active chamber music participant working with several different ensembles.  She was an award winner in the Kansas Music Teacher's Association Solo Competition and toured around Honduras as principle cellist with the Washburn Symphony Orchestra.  She has also participated in the Apeiron Research Forum for several years presenting research and performances of historical composers, as well as debuting works from new, contemporary composers.  She has performed and worked with several well-known artists including Taylor Mac, The Kronos Quartet, and Rod Stewart.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Yotam Haber, composer

His music hailed by New Yorker critic Alex Ross as “deeply haunting,” by the Los Angeles Times as one of five classical musicians "2014 Faces To Watch," and chosen as one of the “30 composers under 40” by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Project 440, Yotam Haber was born in Holland and grew up in Israel, Nigeria, and Milwaukee. He is the recipient of a 2013 Fromm Music Foundation commission, a 2013 NYFA award, the 2007 Rome Prize and a 2005 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He has received grants and fellowships from New Music USA, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, Yaddo, Bogliasco, MacDowell Colony, the Hermitage, ASCAP, and the Copland House. Recent commissions include works for Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor; an evening-length oratorio for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, CalARTS@REDCAT/Disney Hall (Los Angeles); The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra; New York-based Contemporaneous, Gabriel Kahane, Either/Or, and Alarm Will Sound; the 2015 New York Philharmonic CONTACT! Series; the 2012 & 2014 Venice Biennale; 2012 Bang on a Can Summer Festival; the Neuvocalsolisten Stuttgart and ensemble l’arsenale; FLUX Quartet, JACK Quartet, Cantori New York, the Tel Aviv-based Meitar Ensemble, and the Berlin-based Quartet New Generation.

He is currently working on Voice Imitator, an evening-length cycle of piano works with visual artist and MacArthur Fellow Anna Schuleit Haber, based on the stories of Thomas Bernhard; New Water Music, an interactive work (premiering 2017) for the Louisiana Philharmonic and community musicians to be performed from boats and barges along Bayou St. John in New Orleans; and a new work for the Kronos Quartet in collaboration with the electronic performer Philip White.

Haber is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of New Orleans and Artistic Director Emeritus of MATA, the non-profit organization founded by Philip Glass that has, since 1996, been dedicated to commissioning and presenting new works by young composers from around the world. His music is published by RAI Trade.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Chiayu Hsu, composer

Born in Banqiao, Taiwan, Chiayu is an assistant professor of composition at UW-Eau Claire.  She was the winner of Lakond prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer’s Awards, 2013 IAWM Search for New Music, Copland House Award, Lynn University international call for scores, the 2010 Sorel Organization recording grant, music+culture 2009 International Competition for Composers, the Sorel Organization’s 2nd International Composition Competition, the 7th USA International Harp Composition Competition, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Awards, the Maxfield Parrish Composition Contest, the Renée B. Fisher Foundation Composer Awards among others. Her work has been performed by the London Sinfonietta, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Nashville Symphony, the Toledo Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra, the Lynn Philharmonia Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival Contemporary Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, Ciompi Quartet, and Prism Quartet. She has received her Ph.D. at Duke University, Master of Music at Yale University School of Music, and Bachelor of Music at the Curtis Institute of Music.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Naoki Izumo, intermedia artist

Naoki Izumo is a Nisei, which means second generation Japanese-American, who grew up in the Chicagoland area.  He earned his BA in Television from Southern Illinois University, where he then worked on several commercial media productions in Chicago.  He shifted his focus of interest when he came to the University of Iowa to study in the Intermedia program.  From personal experience and academic study, he learned the partnership of image and sound elicits visceral bodily responses that can provoke intellectual insights through his video installation work.  His practice in video involves deconstructing histories to encourage different ways of thinking through new or alternative assemblages of the past.  He hopes to reach people, especially those who occupy second-generation status, to encourage to seek out their own lineage and to understand that history is fragmentary and incomplete.  Participated in GRIT and Water: Our World.

Sophia Jarrell, choreographer and dancer

Involved in the arts since age three, Sophia Jarrell was determined goal to open a school where families would receive instruction in multiple areas of the arts in one facility. After teaching privately for 6 years, she launched the Black Swamp Fine Arts School in Bowling Green, OH; in the first year, the studio welcomed over 100 students to study music, dance, and visual art. Jarrell currently serves as the school director in addition to teaching violin, ballet, and coaching chamber music. Jarrell has choreographed and presented a children's ballet, The Wishing Well, coordinated and promoted the tour of a German youth orchestra to her home town, and served as the music director for The Radiant TV Network. As an undergraduate at Bowling Green State University, she competed in The Hatch (a Shark Tank-inspired event), and received funding from investors to develop Scherzo, a music-reading curriculum that is presented as a game.

Sophia immensely enjoys teaching violin and dance to the next generation of artists and has completed Suzuki teacher training courses. She holds a BM in violin performance with a minor in business entrepreneurship from Bowling Green State University, where she graduated with the highest honors. She has trained as a ballet dancer in the Toledo area as well as at BalletMet and the English National Ballet. She is currently pursuing a MM in violin performance at BGSU.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Amelia Kaplan, composer

Amelia Kaplan is Associate Professor of Composition at Ball State University in Muncie, IN, where she teaches composition, theory, and directs the New Music Ensemble. She previously taught at Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Iowa, and Roosevelt University. She completed her A.B. at Princeton University, and her A.M. and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago as a Century Fellow, where her primary teachers were Shulamit Ran and Ralph Shapey. She worked with Azio Corghi at the Milan Conservatory on a Whiting Fellowship, and also received a Diploma of Merit from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana while studying with Franco Donatoni, and a Diploma from the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau. Ms. Kaplan has had residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has been performed at numerous contemporary music festivals including SCI, SICPP, Wellesley Composers Conference, Gaudeamus, Darmstadt, June in Buffalo, and others. In 2013 her work Insolence was a runner up in the Forecast Call for Scores. Recordings can be heard on Albany, NAVONA (Parma), and Centaur labels.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Teresa Leung, visual artist

Born and living in Hong Kong, Teresa Leung exhibited her works previously in Armenia, Brazil, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and the US.  She was awarded a project grant for participation in an artist-in-residence program in South Caucasus countries Armenia and Karabakh during Sep-Dec 2015 by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

She was also one of the 40 finalists selected from more than 3,100 entries in the Contemporary Talents 2012 competition organized by the Fondation Francois Schneider in France.  Teresa’s interested in the possibilities of urban non-places, art-as-an-experience, and urban development and transformation in post-soviet countries such as those in South Caucasus, which led her to join artist-in-residence programs in Armenia’s capital city Yerevan in both 2014 and 2015.  She graduated from the MA in Fine Arts program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2011.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Philip Mantione, composer

Philip Mantione is a Los Angeles-based sound artist, composer, sound designer, guitarist, computer musician, educator and multimedia artist whose career spans over two decades.  His work includes music for orchestra, various chamber ensembles, computer, fixed media, interactive performance, multimedia and sound installation, and experimental video.  He writes custom software to meld field recordings, samples and computer generated sounds into unique sonic textures.  Mantione is the recipient of two Meet the Composer grants and a recent commission from New Music USA.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Alex Meaux, bassoonist

Alex Meaux is in his second year of graduate studies at Bowling Green State University in Bassoon Performance. Originally from a small town in Southeast Texas, he earned his undergraduate Music Education degree from Stephen F. Austin State University. Since beginning his BGSU career in 2014, his involvement in contemporary music endeavors have been substantial. He has participated in the New Music Ensemble, performed for multiple New Music Festivals, and strives to perform new works for the bassoon. His goal is always to bring contemporary music to all audiences regardless of age or background. He is currently teaching privately in the Bowling Green-Toledo area and is proud of his small herd of future bassoonists/trouble makers. In his spare time he enjoys learning new recipes, watching zombie themed movies/television, and surfing the internet for adorable cat pictures.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Maggi Payne, composer and visual artist

Maggi Payne composes music for concert presentation, video, and dance, and is a video artist, photographer, recording engineer, and Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches composition/media, electronic music, and recording engineering.

Her video works have been presented in the Americas, Europe, Japan, and Australasia. She received Composer's Grants and an Interdisciplinary Arts Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; video grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowships Program; and honorary mentions from Concours International de Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges and Prix Ars Electronica.

Her video Liquid Amber won the Amsterdam Video Festival Van Gogh Award: Best Environmental Film; the El Capitan Film Award, Environmental/Mountain Film Competition, 2009 Yosemite Film Festival; tied for third prize in the Experimental category of the Athens International Film + Video Festival Competition, Athens, OH; and received an Honorary Mention, 35th Concours Internationaux de Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges in the works for multimedia category          

Her works appear on Innova, Lovely Music, Starkland, Asphodel, New World (CRI), Root Strata, Centaur, Ubuibi, MMC, Digital Narcis, Music and Arts, Frog Peak, and/OAR, Capstone, and Mills College labels.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Nora Ponte, composer

Winner of the first Christoph Delz International Composition Competition (Basel, Switzerland) with an outstanding jury formed by Jonathan Harvey, Henri Pousseur and Frederic Rzewski, and recipient of the Municipal Prize of Composition of Buenos Aires, Nora Ponte’s works have been performed around the world.   She received grants from the Italian Government, Antorchas Foundation, Composers Conference, Argentine Catholic University and SUNY at Buffalo among others.  She has been guest composer at the Borealis Festival, the UNCG New Music Festival, the Caribbean Composers Forum, San Juan Sound Art Festival, the Interamerican Festival of the Arts, etc.

Her music has been featured in the International Computer Music Conference, the College Music Society National Conference, the Studio 300 Festival, Art, New Music and Sound Experimentation Festival, Sound Music Computing Conference, June in Buffalo, Composers Conference, Ictus Ensemble Workshop and many others conferences and festivals.  Ponte has earned a Ph. D. in Music Composition from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a BA in Music Composition from the Argentine Catholic University at Buenos Aires. She also studied Composition at the Fiesole School of Music (Florence, Italy) with Giacomo Manzoni and Electronic Music at the Santa Cecilia School of Music (Rome, Italy) with Riccardo Bianchini.

Currently she is an Associate Professor and Director of the Electronic Music Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, San Juan.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Pearson Lakes Art Center

The Pearson Lakes Art Center belongs to the community in Okoboji, IA; it is an additional benefit to living in the area; it exists due to the generosity, vision and hard work of in-numerous community members; and it is continually changing, updating and evolving. It is a meeting place, a learning center, a safe harbor, and a creative outlet. It embraces everyone.  Participated in Water: Our World.

J. Pouwels, visual artist

Born in Invercargill New Zealand. J received a Masters Degree in Fine Art in 2004 from Miami University in Painting and Drawing. He is currently living and working in Chico, CA.

IT IS MY GOAL TO SYNTHESIZE (to combine constituent elements into a singular unified entity) THE EXPERIENCES (the fact of personally observing, encountering or undergoing of things generally as they occur in the course of time) THAT MAKE TIME SPENT IN A GIVEN PLACE (a space, area or spot, set apart or used for a particular purpose) UNIQUE (limited to a single outcome or result; without alternative possibilities).  Participated in Water: Our World.

Public Space One

Public Space One is an artist-run, nonprofit arts organization that provides an independent, innovative, diverse, and inclusive space for making and presenting art while providing cultural educational opportunities, and advocating for the importance of art in everyday life for any and everyone.  Participated in ...not without breaking it...

Eva Redamonti, visual artist

Eva is an artist who depicts drawings that blend realism with fantasy, through movement and precision, using india ink on paper. Her mother, also an artist, taught her how to draw from her early childhood. Music has also had a great influence on Eva’s artwork. She uses it as a strong source of inspiration for her ideas and relies on it’s affect towards her art’s overall movement. Eva had been playing music since she was ten and began writing her own music later on in her career. Born and raised in Connecticut, Eva went on to pursue a degree in music composition at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA during Fall 2013. Finding the balance between the visual arts and her musical studies was a struggle during her time in school. She recently felt it was time to begin working on a series that gives its best representation to her new developed style and vision.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Leonie Roessler, composer

Born in the Ruhr District (Ruhrgebiet) in Germany, Leonie relocated to Los Angeles as a teenager.  She studied classical guitar at Los Angeles City College, and received a Bachelor Degree in Composition along with a Minor in Dance Performance at California State University Northridge in 2010.  She moved to the Netherlands and earned her Master Degree in Composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in 2013. She completed a one-year course at the Institute of Sonology thereafter and is currently finishing the fourth and last year of the Contemporary Music Through Non-Western Techniques Program at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.   She is active as a performer, composer, and sound artist in various countries and places nearby, but essentially lives with her five-year-old son in the center of The Hague.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Lindsey Schoeneman, visual artist

Lindsey Schoeneman is a visual artist, art therapist, and mental health counselor based in Seattle, Washington. She is a graduate of Antioch University Seattle with an MA in Counseling and Art Therapy; she earned her BFA in Photography and BA in French Studies from the University of Washington. Lindsey approaches creative expression as a practice in curiosity, intuition, self-confrontation, and as a conduit for compassion and empathy. Her practice in both art and counseling motivate her spirit and guide her engagement in social and ecological justice efforts.

 Lindsey's work explores the reflective metaphors exchanged between psychological spaces and the external natural world. She believes in the experience of aliveness as landscape, as weather, as moments of the moon, as wakeful and unconscious, and as dynamic encounters with paradox. Her work is an effort to illuminate the myste­rious, the nuanced, the nebulous, the intangible—the living of a life that asks us to embody the complexity of existence and remain open to what we do not know and what we cannot hold onto.  Participated in Water: Our World and Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Nina Shekhar, composer

Nina Shekhar (b. 1995) is currently a rising senior at the University of Michigan pursuing a B.M. in Music Composition and a B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering. Her works have been featured in the National Flute Association Convention, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Midwest Composers Symposium, and in the Detroit REVIVAL Project in collaboration with Detroit-based dance troupe ArtLab J. Nina is a recipient of the 2015 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award.

Aside from composing, Nina is a versatile performing artist. As a flutist, she currently studies with Amy Porter and previously with Holly Clemans. Last year, Nina performed in a masterclass given by Flutronix, a cutting-edge New York-based ensemble that incorporates electronics into contemporary classical music. As a pianist, she has performed in the Poland International Piano Festival as a soloist with the Lublin Philharmonic and studied under Tomoko Mack-Brzozowski and previously Brenda Krachenberg. Nina was selected to perform in the Detroit International Jazz Festival with her jazz band in 2012 and 2013 as lead alto saxophonist.

Nina currently studies with Bright Sheng and has previously studied with Evan Chambers, Kristin Kuster, and James Hartway. She is a native of Northville, Michigan.  Participated in Water: Our World.

David Snow, composer

The compositions of David Jason Snow have been performed in concert by the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the American Brass Quintet, the Harvard Wind Ensemble, the Yale University Band, and other artists and ensembles at venues in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. His Das Lied von der Magnetosphäre was one of ten electroacoustic works selected by MAARBLE, the European‐American space research project, as winners of its “Sounds of Space” musical composition contest. Snow has also been the recipient of composer fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, an ASCAP Foundation grant, student composer awards from BMI, and composition prizes from Musician magazine and Keyboard magazine, and he has been an artist resident at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs and the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, New York. He holds degrees in composition from the Eastman School of Music and the Yale School of Music.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Suzanne Sorkin, composer

Suzanne Sorkin (b. 1974) is active as a composer and educator.  She has received awards and commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, Chamber Music Now, Violin Futura, Third Millennium Ensemble, counter)induction, ASCAP, Meet the Composer and others.  Her work has been programmed on Piano Spheres in Los Angeles, Washington Square Contemporary Music Society in New York City, Denison University New Music Festival, Chamber Music Quad Cities, Florida State University Festival of New Music, and Vassar Modfest.  She has written for ensembles including Melomanie, Mannes Trio, Cabrini Quartet, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Third Angle, and Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.  Residencies awarded to her include Millay Colony for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, Artists’ Enclave at I-Park, ART342, Brush Creek, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and Atlantic Center for the Arts.  She received her Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Chicago through the support of a four-year Century Fellowship in the Humanities.

Suzanne Sorkin has taught music composition, theory, and music history at Vassar College.  She is currently an Associate Professor of Music at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where she teaches music composition and theory and serves as chair of the Department of Music, Theatre and Film.  Participated in Water: Our World.

Michael Wittgraf, composer

Michael Wittgraf is a composer who works in both electronic and acoustic genres.  He explores mathematical systems, 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.  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.
Mike is a multi-instrumentalist, performing as a bassoonist, in a number of rock-and-roll bands on keyboards, saxophone, and electric bass, and as a solo and collaborative performer on computer.  His newest venture is with the live electronics improvisational dance/club music trio Gemstone Debris.

He holds the title of Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor at the University of North Dakota.  His teaching specialties are music technology, composition, theory, and bassoon.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Henry Ross Wixon, composer

Henry Ross Wixon is a professional composer in the Washington, D.C. area. His compositions have been performed at universities, music festivals, and concert series in the United States, Brazil, Germany, and Italy. Ross’s large orchestral work, In Leviathan’s Wake, took first prize in the University of Maryland’s 2016 Walter Summer Composition Competition and was premiered in May 2017 by the UMD Symphony Orchestra and conductor James Ross. His latest commission, Rapid Transit (brass octet), was written for and recorded by the Illinois-based Transit Brass in June. Other notable projects include Double Quintet (combined wind and brass quintets), premiered by the UMD Wind Orchestra and conductor Michael Votta this past April, and Evening on the Town (trumpet and piano), which was featured on the 2016 International Trumpet Guild Conference New Works Recital and has since received performances by several collegiate trumpet faculty. Ross has taught music courses at the University of Maryland, the Community College of Baltimore County, Coppin State University, and Western Michigan University; this coming fall, he will serve as Adjunct Instructor of Composition at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Ross holds a D.M.A. in composition from the University of Maryland, where he studied with Robert Gibson and David Froom; previously, he earned an M.M. in trumpet performance at Western Michigan University and a B.A. in music at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.  Participated in Wind: Traveling Great Distances.

Alondra Vega-Zaldivar, composer

Alondra Vega-Zaldivar recently obtained her MMus in Composition at the University of Western Ontario under the supervision of Canadian Composer Omar Daniel with her Thesis Sophie, a one act Music Drama for solo soprano and chamber orchestra.

In 2014 Alondra’s String Quartet Lyra was premiered at Orford, Quebec by the 2014 String Quartet from the CreationWorkshop in July; her piece Luna for Soprano, Cello and Piano, was performed in Milna, Croatia by participants of the UpBeat Music Festival in August; and Rise of the Cuban Cicadas for Harp and Percussion was premiered by Sanya Eng and Ryan Scott in Toronto on September. On October, Alondra organized the Composition Student Concert at the University and her piece Midnight Feast was read by the ECM+ ensemble in November.

Last summer Alondra participated in Composition Summer Intensive in South Bend, Indiana and her piece A Haunted Tableau for Soprano and Piano was premiered in Halifax.  This year Alondra was selected a finalist for the Costello Composition Prize organized by the Lyra Society organization.  Participated in Water: Our World.