SoundArtist, Composer, Educator
(She/Her)

“She’s essentially invented her own hybrid of song and spoken word, a scat style for today’s avant-garde.” - The New York Times 

Fay Victor is a sound artist and bandleader that uses performance, improvisation and composition to examine representations of modern life and blackness. Based in Brooklyn, NY, Fay’s ‘everything is everything’ creative aesthetic permeates her working approach to the vocal instrument. Having released eleven critically acclaimed albums as a leader, including her latest release,“WE’VE HAD ENOUGH!” with her improvising quartet SoundNoiseFUNK (ESP-Disk) in October 2020 and having performed with luminaries such as Gary Bartz, Archie Schepp, Nicole Mitchell, Randy Weston, Roswell Rudd and Moor Mother, Victor has shown the through line of her unique vocal force and expansion. An innovative educator, Victor is on the faculty of the New School and Long Island University. 

flutist, vocalist, sound artist, educator, community organizer
(she/her)

Flutist and vocalist Alice Teyssier brings “something new, something fresh, but also something uncommonly beautiful” to her performances. She has appeared as a soloist with the San Diego Symphony, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Bach Collegium San Diego, Talea Ensemble, La Jolla Symphony, Ensemble Echappé, Cantata Profana, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and is regularly featured on Los Angeles’ renowned Monday Evening Concerts series. A uniquely gifted advocate for new music, Alice has given residencies for composers and performers of new music at such universities as Harvard, Brown, Stanford, Huddersfield, Oberlin and University of Michigan. She has premiered hundreds of works and appeared at the Ojai, Mostly Mozart, June in Buffalo, Resonant Bodies and Huddersfield Contemporary Music festivals. Equally devoted to historically-informed yet inventive performances of early music, she is co-founder of the chamber ensemble La Perla Bizzarra. She has earned degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the Conservatoire de Strasbourg and the University of California-San Diego. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she is a core member of the International Contemporary Ensemble and founding member of the interdisciplinary troupe The Atelier. Alice serves as Clinical Assistant Professor of Performance in the Music Department at New York University.

composer, musicologist, computer-installation artist, and trombonist
(He/Him)

George Lewis, Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, is an American composer, musicologist, computer-installation artist, and trombonist. A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Lewis is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin. Other honors include the Doris Duke Artist Award (2019), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), and a MacArthur Fellowship (2002). His music is performed worldwide, and he is widely regarded as a pioneer in the creation of improvising computer programs. He is the author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press) and co-editor of the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies.  Lewis holds honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, New College of Florida, and Harvard University.

violinist, composer, improviser
(He/Him)

Josh Modney is a violinist and creative musician working at the nexus of composition, improvisation, and interpretation. A “new-music luminary” (The New York Times) hailed as "one of today's most intrepid experimentalists" (Bandcamp Daily), Modney is a foremost interpreter of adventurous contemporary music, and has cultivated a holistic artistic practice as a composer, solo improviser, bandleader, writer, arts administrator, and collaborator. Modney is the violinist and Executive Director of the Wet Ink Ensemble, and a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Modney has composed music for violin solo, chamber ensemble, and film ("Dreamland", Paramount Pictures), and has a forthcoming album of quartet music written for acclaimed creative musicians Ingrid Laubrock (saxophones), Mariel Roberts (cello), and Cory Smythe (piano). Modney's triple-disc debut solo release, Engage (New Focus Recordings, 2018), featuring works written for Modney by Kate Soper, Eric Wubbels, and Sam Pluta alongside music by Anthony Braxton, J.S. Bach, and Modney’s own solo violin music, was lauded by The New York Times as “one of the most intriguing programs of the year”. Modney's writing on Just Intonation and collaborative musical practices has been published on Sound American and New Music Box, and he is the co-founder and editor of Wet Ink Archive, an online journal of adventurous music.

cellist, interdisciplinary artist, improviser, composer
(She/Her)

Hailed by The New York Times as “a player of formidable expressive gifts,” cellist Katinka Kleijn enjoys a genre-defying, interdisciplinary career. Classically trained, she has cultivated an exploratory, interactive practice at the fertile intersection of improvisation, composition, and collaboration. Much of Kleijn’s work illuminates the cello’s anthropomorphic qualities, often by placing the instrument in thought-provoking new contexts (Water On the Bridge, The Body as a Variable Resistor, RESIDUUM). Her collaborations with Daniel Dehaan and Industry of the Ordinary resulted in Intelligence in the Human-Machine, a duet for cellist and brainwaves which Time magazine called “a balancing act for Kleijn’s whole body.” Kleijn often presents her projects as co-constructions with the performer(s) or audience, as in her situation-based composition Forward Echo, for 11 improvisers, presented at the 2022 Big Ears Festival by Ensemble Dal Niente, and her silent video project Screenplay in 4.

A member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and International Contemporary Ensemble, Kleijn presented solo multimedia presentations at the Library of Congress, North Carolina Performing Arts, and the Chicago Humanities Festival. Kleijn’s 2016 world premiere performance of Dai Fujikura’s cello concerto at Lincoln Center was released by SONY Japan. A Drag City recording artist, she has improvised with musicians like Bill MacKay, Ken Vandermark, Lia Kohl, Joe McPhee, Caroline Davis, Mark Feldman, and Claire Rousay.

pianist, ensemble director of recordings
(he/him/his)

Pianist Jacob Greenberg’s work as a soloist and chamber musician has earned worldwide acclaim. He is a longtime member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, with whom he has performed throughout the Americas and Europe, and serves as the Ensemble’s Director of Recordings. Mr. Greenberg’s concert series, Music at Close Range, shows his equal commitment to classics of the repertoire; his own solo discs on New Focus Recordings include works by over a dozen composers. Mr. Greenberg is on the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center, and has taught at Hunter College, City University of New York, The Juilliard School, and the State University of New York at Buffalo. As a composer, he makes recorded works with spoken and sung texts.

electronic instrument design and performance practice
(He/HIM)

Born in Bucharest, Filipino-American Levy Marcel Ingles Lorenzo works at the intersection of music, art, and technology. His body of work spans custom electronics design, sound engineering, instrument building, installation art, free improvisation, and classical percussion. With a primary focus on inventing new instruments, he prototypes, composes, and performs new electronic music. Lorenzo’s work has been featured at MoMA PS1, MIT Media Lab, STEIM, Pitchfork, BBC, Rewire, Burning Man, and The New York Times which named him an “electronics wizard”. He is a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble and a core collaborator in Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project. He has worked with artists such as Peter Evans, George Lewis, Alvin Lucier, Leo Villareal, Autumn Knight, Christine Sun Kim, Steve Schick, and Henry Threadgill. Dr. Lorenzo is frequently invited to give electronics lectures and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Technologies at The New School, College of Performing Arts. This upcoming season, he will make his debut as a featured electronic concerto soloist with the NY Philharmonic.

Bassoonist, Improviser, Composer
(She/they)

Rebekah Heller's work aims to expand the sonic possibilities of her instrument — both in her solo work and through a deep collaborative practice. Called "an impressive solo bassoonist" by The New Yorker, she is dedicated to exploration, experimentation, and the democratization of sound. She has two solo albums of music written for and with her, and in 2018, Rebekah made her solo debut with the New York Philharmonic. A member of the International Contemporary Ensemble since 2008, Rebekah has served many roles in the leadership of that organization, most notably as Co-Artistic Director, Director of Individual Giving, and since 2021, a member of the Board of Directors. Rebekah teaches and lectures at the Mannes School of Music, where she is Co-Chair of the Wind Department.

Guitarist/Label Owner
(HE/HIM)

Guitarist Daniel Lippel, called an “exciting soloist” (New York Times) has a multi-faceted career. Recent recital highlights include Le Poisson Rouge (NYC), Sinus Ton Festival (Germany), and the National University of Colombia in Bogota. As a contemporary chamber musician, he has been a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble since 2005, Flexible Music since 2004, and counter)induction since 2019, and played as a guest with many ensembles, performing at the Mostly Mozart Festival, Ojai Festival, Ottawa Chamber Festival, Macau Festival, and Kunst Universitaet Graz (Austria). He has worked closely with many composers including Mario Davidovsky, Nils Vigeland, Ken Ueno, Dai Fujikura, Tyshawn Sorey, Wang Lu, and Du Yun, as well as in various improvised and creative contexts. He is the co-founder, owner, and director of New Focus Recordings, performing and producing on several of its albums, as well as appearing on recordings on other labels including Kairos, Sony Classical Japan, Bridge, and Tzadik. Lippel has given presentations and masterclasses at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule (Berlin), Curtis Institute, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and San Francisco Conservatory, among others. He completed his DMA at the Manhattan School of Music.

Author, Playwright, Director
(Her/She)

IONE is an author/playwright/director and an improvising text-sound artist. She has taught and performed throughout the world with her spouse and creative partner Pauline Oliveros. Together, they have created large music theater works Including Njinga the Queen King; The Return of a Warrior, Io and Her and the Trouble with Him; A Dance Opera in Primeval Time and The Lunar Opera: Deep Listening For_Tunes. IONE 's film, Dreams of the Jungfrau .The Nubian Word for Flowers; A Phantom Opera premiered at Roulette Intermedium and NWF, The Pocket Edition premiered at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, February, 2020. IONE's memoir, Pride of Family; Four Generations of American Women of Color was a New York Times Notable Book on its publication. She is a Dream Specialist and author of Listening in Dreams and two Spell Breaking Anthologies of Women’s Mysteries. She is a Consultant at the Center for Deep Listening ®, RPI , Troy, NY. As Founding Director of The Ministry of Maåt, Inc., IONE disseminates the work of Pauline Oliveros and sponsors workshops and retreats, fostering women's creativity and encouraging a vibrant international community of artists. She is a member of the Distinguished Mentors Council of Composers Now. Her most recent opera is "Touch" Irish National Opera with composer Karen Power.

percussionist, videographer, arts administrator
(he/him/his)

Ross Karre (b. 1983 in Battle Creek, MI) is a per­cus­sionist and tem­poral artist based in New York City. His pri­mary focus is on com­bining media, including clas­sical per­cus­sion per­for­mance, elec­tronics, the­ater, moving image, visual art, and lighting design. Ross is a per­cus­sionist and the artistic director for the Inter­na­tional Con­tem­po­rary Ensemble.

conductor, curator, advocate, friend
(he/him/his)

Described as a conductor of “great intensity, without distancing, maneuvering, without indifference” (neuemuzikzeitung) who “clearly knows his way around an avant-garde score” (The Times - London), Zimbabwean-born conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni is widely sought-after for his depth of approach and his interpretive imagination and expressivity. This season he makes debuts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Boston Lyric Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, the Washington National Opera, and returns to conduct Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Contrechamps, the London Sinfonietta, and International Contemporary Ensemble.

Kaziboni currently serves as on the artistic leadership team of the Boston Lyric Opera as artistic advisor, a fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, artist-in-residence with the International Contemporary Ensemble, music director of the Composers Conference, and assistant professor of orchestral studies and contemporary music at Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

violinist/violist, interdisciplinary performing artist, and arts administrator
(they/she)

eddy kwon (they/she) is a violinist/violist, dancer, and interdisciplinary performing artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Their performance work explores transformation & transgression, ritual practice as invitation & discovery, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. Her work as an improviser & composer-performer is inspired by Korean folk timbres & inflections, textures & movement from natural environments, and American experimentalism as shaped by the AACM. She is a United States Artists Ford Fellow, Hermitage Fellow, Van Lier Fellow at Roulette Intermedium, Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, and Andrew W. Mellon Artist-in-Residence at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. In addition to an evolving, interdisciplinary solo practice, she collaborates with artists of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Du Yun, Senga Nengudi, Degenerate Art Ensemble, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Lesley Mok, Lester St. Louis, and Tomeka Reid, and has performed in improvisational ensembles with Mary Halvorson, Nicole Mitchell, Moor Mother, Susan Alcorn, Carla Kihlstedt, and more. eddy currently serves as Director of Individual Giving at International Contemporary Ensemble, where she is also a guest curator.

Cellist
(He/him)

A “long-admired figure on the New York scene,” (The New Yorker), cellist Michael Nicolas enjoys a diverse career as chamber musician, soloist, recording artist, and improvisor. As a member of the acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble, he has worked with countless composers from around the world, premiering and recording dozens of new works. He is also the cellist of the intrepid and genre-defying string quartet Brooklyn Rider, which has drawn praise from classical, world music, and rock critics alike. Another group, Third Sound, which Michael helped found, made its debut with an historic residency at the 2015 Havana Contemporary Music Festival, in Cuba. 

Of mixed French-Canadian and Taiwanese heritage, Michael was born in Canada, and currently resides in New York City. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School.

INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST, VOCALIST, PERFORMER, COMPOSER, FILMMAKER
(Li, Li’s)

Lisa E. Harris, Li, is an independent and interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, creative soprano, performer, composer, improvisor, writer, singer/songwriter and educator from Houston Texas. Recognized by Huffington Post as “one of fourteen artist transforming Opera”, Li's work resists genre classification as she focuses on the energetic relationships between body, land, spirit and place. Using voice, theremin, photography, movement, improvisation, meditation, and new media to explore spatial awareness, substantivalism, relationalism, intuition, panoptic surveillance, sonification and personification, Li maintains a focused concentration on healing in performance and living. She is the founder and creative director of Studio Enertia, an arts collective and production company in Houston Texas. Li is the 2021 recipient of the Dorothea Tanning Award for Music/ Sound, awarded by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Saxophonist
(He/Him)

Ryan Muncy is saxophonist of the International Contemporary Ensemble, having been praised for his “amazing virtuosity” (The Chicago Tribune) and ability to "show off the instrument's malleability and freakish extended range as well as its delicacy and refinement" (The Chicago Reader). His work emphasizes collaborative relationships with composers and artists of his generation and aims to reimagine the way listeners experience the saxophone through contemporary music. Ryan is a recipient of the Kranichstein Music Prize awarded at the 46th Darmstadt Summer Courses, a Fulbright Fellowship in France, the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists, The Harriet Hale Woolley Fellowship of the Fondation des Etats-Unis (Paris), and has participated in the creation of more than 250 new works for the saxophone, highlighted by deeply collaborative relationships with leading artist-creators including Ashley Fure, Tyshawn Sorey, Du Yun, Wang Lu, Marcos Balter, Wojtek Blecharz, and Matana Roberts. Ryan holds the Doctor of Music degree from Northwestern University and currently serves on the music faculty at The New School’s College of Performing Arts (Mannes School of Music).

pianist-improviser-composer 
(he/him)

Pianist Cory Smythe has worked closely with pioneering artists in new, improvisatory, and classical music, including saxophonist-composer Ingrid Laubrock, violinist Hilary Hahn, and multidisciplinary composers from Anthony Braxton to Zosha Di Castri. His own music “dissolves the lines between composition and improvisation with rigor” (Chicago Reader), and his first record was praised by Jason Moran as “hands down one of the best solo recordings I’ve ever heard.” Smythe has been featured at the Newport Jazz, Wien Modern, Trondheim Chamber Music, Nordic Music Days, Approximation, Concorso Busoni, Darmstadt, and Mostly Mozart festivals. He has received commissions from Milwaukee’s Present Music, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, the International Contemporary Ensemble, of which he is a longtime member, and the Shifting Foundation. Smythe received a Grammy award for his work with Ms. Hahn and has played regularly in the critically acclaimed Tyshawn Sorey Trio.

Composer, TRUMPET PLAYER, Improvisor, Bandleader
(HE/HIM)

Peter Evans is a composer, trumpet player, improvisor and bandleader based in New York City since 2003.  Evans is part of a broad, hybridized scene of musical experimentation, and his work cuts across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions.  Peter is committed to the simultaneously self-determining and collaborative nature of musical improvisation as a compositional tool, and works with an ever-expanding group of musicians and composers in the creation of new music.  

He leads and composes for the band Being & Becoming (with Joel Ross, Nick Jozwiak and Savannah Harris) as well as several other groups. The Peter Evans Ensemble features a rotating cast of some of the most innovative performers in contemporary music: Mazz Swift, Levy Lorenzo, Ron Stabinsky, Sam Pluta, Jim Black, and many more. He leads a trio, “Forever 21” with virtuosi Andy Berman (guitar) and Michael Ode (drums). As well as collaborative projects such as his duo with Elias Stemeseder, Pulverize the Sound, Evans continues to work in a variety of new formations, exploring through-composed music, group improvisation, arranging, Jazz standards and electronic music. 

As a composer, he has been commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Wet Ink, Yarn/Wire, the Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival, the Jerome Foundation's Emerging Artist Program, and the Doris Duke Foundation. Evans has presented and/or performed his works at major festivals worldwide. He has composed works for his own ensembles, soloists, chamber ensembles, and choir. In 2022 Evans was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition. 

As an educator, Evans has given masterclasses and conducted workshops on improvisation, composition, instrumental practice and creativity at the Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, the New School of Social Research, Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Hochschule für Musik Köln, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Institute of Sonology, Melbourne University, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, University of Toronto, University of Oregon, Cornish College, Oberlin Conservatory, and Cleveland Institute of Music. Between 2019 and 2022 Evans conducted a series of performance-centered workshops with young musicians in Lisbon, Porto and the Azores called Som Crescente. In 2020 he received a grant from the US Embassy in Lisbon to further develop this series. 

COMPOSER
(SHE/HER)

Anahita Abbasi’s music has been described as “a dizzyingly sophisticated reverie, colorful and energetic. It embodies tremendous timbral exploration and multilayered performance gestures”… (Classical Voice America and A Cunning plan).
According to Guardian …” She takes even a more radical line with creating dense and pulsing textures”… “Her music has the capacity to immerse the hall into a dark multichannel throat and hissing” … (Bachtrack)
Anahita Abbasi’s music has been commissioned and performed by distinguished soloists and ensembles such as Mahan Esfahani, Steven Schick, Vimbayi Kaziboni, Rebekah Heller, Sergej Tchirkov, Artyom kim, Ensemble Modern, International Contemporary Ensemble, UmeDuo, Klangforum Wien musicians, Wavefiled Ensemble, San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, Disonart Ensemble, Platypus Ensemble, Quatuor Diotima, Mivos Quartet, Argonaut Quartet, Tak Ensemble, Schallfeld Ensemble, Zafraan Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Blaue Reiter, Off Spring Ensemble, and has been showcased at festivals all around the world.
Aside from teaching composition, giving lectures and curating workshops on fundamentals of creation, and serving as a juror at composition competitions, she is also a founding member of Schallfeld Ensemble in Graz, Austria as well as IFCA (Iranian Female Composers Association) in New York City; where she is curating concerts, workshops, conferences, creating platforms and advocating for young composers and acts as their ambassadors in presenting their music to others.

Violist and educator
(she/her/hers)

Violist Wendy Richman is a distinguished educator and interpreter of contemporary and traditional repertoire. She is a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, with whom she performs regularly in New York City and around the world. Wendy is a sought-after clinician at universities and conservatories across the country, offering classes on viola repertoire and technique, lectures on string instrument notation and learning contemporary repertoire, and workshops on contemporary and “extended” string techniques. She frequently performs with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and has been a regular guest with the orchestral viola sections of Atlanta, Minnesota, and St. Louis. Through her vox/viola project, she commissions pieces in which she sings and plays simultaneously. Wendy’s debut solo album, vox/viola, was released on New Focus Recordings (2020). A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory (B.M.), New England Conservatory (M.M.), and Eastman School of Music (D.M.A.), she is a lecturer at UCLA and previously taught at NYU.

Saxophonist
(He/Him)

Ryan Muncy is saxophonist of the International Contemporary Ensemble, having been praised for his “amazing virtuosity” (The Chicago Tribune) and ability to "show off the instrument's malleability and freakish extended range as well as its delicacy and refinement" (The Chicago Reader). His work emphasizes collaborative relationships with composers and artists of his generation and aims to reimagine the way listeners experience the saxophone through contemporary music. Ryan is a recipient of the Kranichstein Music Prize awarded at the 46th Darmstadt Summer Courses, a Fulbright Fellowship in France, the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists, The Harriet Hale Woolley Fellowship of the Fondation des Etats-Unis (Paris), and has participated in the creation of more than 250 new works for the saxophone, highlighted by deeply collaborative relationships with leading artist-creators including Ashley Fure, Tyshawn Sorey, Du Yun, Wang Lu, Marcos Balter, Wojtek Blecharz, and Matana Roberts. Ryan holds the Doctor of Music degree from Northwestern University and currently serves on the music faculty at The New School’s College of Performing Arts (Mannes School of Music).

Performer and sound artist
(She/Her)

Described by The New York Times  as “spellbinding” and “delightfully quirky matched with interpretive sensitivity,” Phyllis (2022 Guggenheim Fellow, 2019 Cage-Cunningham Fellow) is a composer, pianist and sound artist whose music draws from her tactile exploration of object and sound.  She has performed her music at Lincoln Center, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Abrons Arts Center, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Los Angeles County Museum, Baryshnikov Arts Center and numerous other places.

Composer, Percussionist, Electronic Music Artist
(he/him)

Percussionist and composer Nathan Davis "writes music that deals deftly and poetically with timbre and sonority" (NYTimes). He has premiered hundreds of works by luminaries and by emerging composers, and has appeared as a concerto soloist on hammered dulcimer with the Seattle Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, and Nagoya Philharmonic. The BAM Next Wave Festival and American Opera Projects presented the world premiere of Davis’s “Hagoromo”, a chamber dance-opera featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble, soloists Katalin Karolyi and Peter Tantsits, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and featuring dancers Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto.

Lincoln Center presented the premiere of “Bells” and other works written for International Contemporary Ensemble. He has also received commissions from Donaueschinger Musiktage, GMEM and Ensemble CBarré, Claire Chase, Steven Schick, Miller Theatre, the Calder Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, and Yarn/Wire, with premieres at Tanglewood, Park Avenue Armory, and Carnegie Hall. The 2018 Aaron Copland Fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, Davis received awards from Camargo, PEW, Fromm, and Jerome Foundations, MATA, and ASCAP. Recordings of his music include “On the Nature of Thingness” on Starkland, and others on New Focus, and Bridge, and he can be heard as a percussionist on dozens of albums. Davis holds degrees in composition and in percussion from Rice, Yale, and the Rotterdams Conservatorium on a Fulbright Fellowship.He taught percussion at Dartmouth College for eight years and currently teaches composition and electronic music at The New School.

arts leader passionate about advancing equity throughout the arts ecosystem
(She/Her)

Jennifer Kessler is currently the Executive Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, a musician's collective that develops and performs the works of living composers.  Previously, Jennifer served as Executive Director of Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls. In positions at Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Carnegie Hall, Jennifer produced concerts for children around NYC, launched a daily after school youth orchestra program, and managed pre-professional training programs with world-renowned artists. As a consultant, Jennifer developed education initiatives, produced festivals, raised money, and oversaw grantmaking at organizations including the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation, the Inner City Youth Orchestra of LA, and the League of American Orchestras.

Jennifer began her career as a performing French hornist in Europe, and holds music degrees from Northwestern University in Illinois and Hanns Eisler Musikhochschule in Berlin, Germany. She was an El Sistema fellow at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, receiving a graduate certificate of nonprofit management with a focus on Venezuela’s El Sistema youth orchestra program.

Composer, Conductor, Artist
(they/them)

Ahmed Al Abaca is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, conductor, and facilitator. They’ve had the fortune of being commissioned and performed by ensembles, national radio, and Theatre companies throughout the United States and Europe. As the new Music Director of the South Loop Symphony Orchestra, a community orchestra based in Chicago, Ahmed’s focus is to present new music, specifically music written by composers of color. Ahmed believes in the transformative power of music, and if you do as well, please support your local music organization, composer, performer, and programs that showcase art and music by overlooked communities.

Composer, Interdisciplinary Artist
(She/her)

An avid collaborator, Camila Agosto is a composer and interdisciplinary artist whose work intersects with various artistic fields through partnerships with other musicians, visual artists, choreographers, and creators. Within her works, Camila seeks to explore the sonic potentialities of acoustic instruments, different timbral and textural elements, and highlight and expose the human element of live performance. In recent projects, Camila has designed and constructed various instruments and performative installation pieces to use in her compositional work. Her music has been featured at venues and festivals in the United States and abroad. Upcoming projects include Paracusia IV, a continuation of a multi-movement, concert-length program scored for solo saxophone and live electronics co-commissioned with Justin Massey, with a grant awarded from the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as solo works for pianist Robert Fleitz and cellist Thea Mesirow, and a work for large ensemble commissioned by Earspace ensemble.

Kwami's artistic practice is directed at an improvisatory music that exists at the nexus of research and pleasure
(he/him)

Kwami Coleman is an assistant professor of music at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. His research is focused on improvised and experimental music, aesthetics, and identity in postwar American music history. His book in progress, Change: Modern Jazz and the “New Thing,” is a study of the creativity and context of experimentalist improvisers in the United States during a historical moment marked by jazz’s institutionalization, a changing commercial music industry, American cultural hegemony, and civil rights struggle: the 1960s. Coleman is a pianist, composer, and electronic musician; his first recording as an ensemble leader, Local Music, was released in 2017, and he performs regularly in New York City.

Consultant
(He/him)

Dr. Durell Cooper is one the nation's leading cultural strategists and is the Founder and CEO of Cultural Innovation Group; a boutique consulting agency specializing in systems change and collaborative thought leadership. He is also the creator and host of the web series, Flow and the Podcast Fluency. He is also an adjunct instructor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, New York University, and The City College of New York. Durell graduated from the Impact Program for Arts Leaders (IPAL) at Stanford University in 2018. He is a member of the Diversity Scholars Network at the National Center for Institutional Diversity, University of Michigan. He earned a B.F.A from Southern Methodist University, and both a M.A & Doctorate of Education from New York University.

Flutist, composer, arts administrator
(she/her)

Raised in Austin, TX, Alice Jones welcomes new listeners into the world of music through music creation, education, and collaboration. She was praised by Mario Davidovsky as “the flute player who could really play” and Fanfare Magazine called her 2017 album with Ensemble 365 “pretty music faultless... required listening.” Her composition projects include the #tinyefforts series, as well as recent commissions from Gaudete Brass, Decoda, Amity Trio, Millikin University, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, and the Phoenix Orchestra (Boston). In 2018 she was named to the inaugural CreateNYC Leadership Accelerator cohort by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. Alice teaches flute in Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program and Luzerne Music Center. In 2020, she became the Assistant Dean of Community Engagement and Career Services at The Juilliard School. Alice graduated from Yale University, SUNY Purchase, and the CUNY Graduate Center. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, where, when she's not musicking, she’s likely walking her dogs or making ice cream.

MUSICIAN, PRODUCER, ACTIVIST
(ALL PRONOUNS ARE WELCOME)

Garrett McQueen has enjoyed a successful career as an orchestral musician, working with groups including the Knoxville Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. In addition to remaining active in performance spaces, Garrett has offered presentations and guest lectures on music and equity with recent collaborators including the Kennedy Center and the Apollo Theater, and continues to host and produce nationally-syndicated radio programs including "The Sound of 13" and "Gateways Radio". In the press, Garrett has been noted as "one of America's most interesting classical musicians", a "classical agitator", and "a Black talent in public media that you may not know, but should", with his weekly podcast, TRILLOQUY, noted by the New York Times as "required listening for industry leaders and listeners alike."

drummer, composer, improviser
(She/her)

Lesley Mok is a drummer, composer, and improviser based in Brooklyn, NY. Interested in the ways social conditions shape our beings, Lesley’s work focuses on transposing, augmenting, and overacting humanness to explore ideas about normalcy, alienness, and privilege. She likes to write in a way that considers the whole expressive range of each instrument, often utilizing extreme ranges and dynamic timbres in her writing as a framework for individuality and personal expression. Her ongoing explorations with composition and improvisation are most notably documented in her ten-piece improvising chamber ensemble, The Living Collection.

Lesley's work has been recognized by the ASCAP Foundation and the Asian American Arts Alliance, and has been performed by International Contemporary Ensemble, Metropolis Ensemble, and JACK Quartet. She has collaborated with Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, William Parker, Cory Smythe, Jen Shyu, Sara Serpa, Elias Stemeseder, David Leon, Anna Webber, Adam' O’Farrill, and edi kwon.

Consultant, Educator, and Scholar
(he/him)

Antonio C. Cuyler, Ph.D. is the author of Access, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the Careers of Executive Opera Managers of Color in the U. S. and editor of a forthcoming volume, Arts Management, Cultural Policy, & the African Diaspora. He currently serves as the Director of the MA Program & Associate Professor of Arts Administration in the Department of Art Education at Florida State University (FSU), and recently completed an appointment as Visiting Associate Professor of Theatre & Drama in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan. He is also the Founder of Cuyler Consulting, LLC, a Black-owned arts consultancy that helps cultural organizations maximize their performance and community relevance through access, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI).