Selected List of Collaborating Composers
Ladislav Kubik
Ladislav Kubík was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1946. He studied composition and music theory at the Prague Academy of Music, receiving his Master’s degree in 1970 and DM equivalent in 1980. His compositional career has achieved prominence through 16 international and national awards which include the Guggenheim Fellowship, distinction at the International Rostrum of Composers UNESCO in Paris for Lament of a Warrior’s Wife (1974) and Concerto No.1 for Piano and Orchestra (1978); the Intervision Prize for the television ballet Song of Man (1986); 1st Prize in the International Franz Kafka Composition Competition for Der Weg (1993); 1st Prize in the U.S. NACWPI Composition Contest for Two Episodes for Bass Clarinet, Piano, and Percussion (1995); 2nd Prize in the World Music Contest, Kerkrade, Netherlands, for Symphony for Winds and Percussion (1995); and 2nd Prize in the New England Chamber Music Competition in Boston for Angels and Airplanes (1998). Two times he was awarded the Florida Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship (1998, 2005). In addition to these awards, he was a finalist of Prix Italia, Venice (1977); International New Music Competition, Miami (1989); and a semi-finalist of the Leonard Bernstein International Competition, Jerusalem (1997).
Kubík’s works have been commissioned by Radio France, String Quartet No.1 (1981) and Concerto Grosso (1987); the Salzburg Festival (through the assistance of the Mozarteum Foundation, Austria), Divertimento No.1, “Bläserharmonie” for Winds (1988); Centro para la Difúsion de la Música Contemporánea, Madrid, Spain, Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano (1988); Centre International de la Musique pour Voix d’Enfants, Paris, France, The Blue Bird (1989); the Czech Music Fund, Wolkeriana (1982), Trio for Violin, Viola, and Cello (1983), To the Earth of Future (1984); Florida Music Teachers Association, Elegy in Two Movements (1995), and other prominent organizations.. He has received grants from the National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors, State of Florida, Michigan State University and Florida State University.
www.ladislavkubik.com
Greg D’Alessio
Greg D’Alessio Is A Composer, Songwriter And Mixed Media Artist. He Is A Professor Of Composition At Cleveland State University, Where He Is Also The Coordinator Of The Electronic And Computer Music Program And Of The New B.A. Degree Focused In Popular Music. Among The Honors And Awards Recognizing His Work As A Composer Are A Commission From The Koussevitsky Foundation In The Library Of Congress, The Aaron Copland Prize, A Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, The Cleveland Arts Prize, 2 Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Award, The Board Of Director’s Prize From The Society For Electro-Acoustic Music (SEAMUS), The Commuinity Partnership For Arts And Culture, And The Otto Ettinger Fellowship To The Tanglewood Music Festival.
His Works Have Been Performed By Such Groups As The Da Capo Chamber Players, The Slee Sinfonietta, The Dali String Quartet, Earplay, No Exit, The Ars Futura Ensemble, The Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, And The Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Among Many Others. His Full-Length Mixed-Media Opera The World Above Us Was Presented By Cleveland Public Theater In 2013.
Christopher Goddard
Christopher Goddard is a Canadian composer and pianist. As a composer, he has collaborated with NYO Canada, Esprit Orchestra (Toronto), the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, TAK Ensemble, andPlay duo, and others. Recent commissions have come from the Royal Conservatory/Koerner Hall for the 21C Festival and from the City of Reutlingen. His work has been recognized by the Canadian League of Composers, the Graham Sommer Competition for Young Composers, and the Prix Collégien de Musique Contemporaine. His work has been broadcast on CBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 3. He holds degrees in composition, theory, and piano performance from McGill University, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Shepherd School of Music (Rice University).
christophergoddard.com
Keith Fitch
Keith Fitch currently heads the composition department at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he holds the Vincent K. and Edith H. Smith Chair in Composition and also directs the CIM New Music Ensemble. Called “gloriously luminous” by The Philadelphia Inquirer, his music has been consistently noted for its eloquence, expressivity, dramatic sense of musical narrative, and unique sense of color and sonority. Reviewing a performance of his work Totem by Wolfgang Sawallisch and The Philadelphia Orchestra (chosen by Maestro Sawallisch to celebrate the orchestra’s centennial), The Wall Street Journal praised “the sheer concentration of his writing, and its power to express a complex, unseen presence shaping the course of musical events.” His works have been performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan by such ensembles as The Philadelphia Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and new music ensembles around the country.
keithfitch.com
Christopher Stark
Christopher Stark (b. 1980, St. Ignatius, MT) is a composer of contemporary classical music deeply rooted in the American West. Having spent his formative years in rural western Montana, his music is always seeking to capture the expansive energy of this quintessential American landscape. Stark, whose music The New York Times has called, “fetching and colorful,” has been awarded prizes from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard, Chamber Music America, ASCAP, and the Barlow Endowment. Named a 2017 “Rising Star” by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, his music has been performed by such ensembles as Alarm Will Sound, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, BIT20 Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Momenta Quartet, Unheard-of//Ensemble, No Exit New Music Ensemble, and New Morse Code. In 2012, he was a resident composer at Civitella Ranieri, a fifteenth-century castle in Umbria, Italy, and in June of 2016 he was awarded a residency at Copland House. Recent highlights included performances at the 2016 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the 2016 NY Phil Biennial. In 2018, he was in residence in Bergen, Norway where he worked with musicians from the Bergen Philharmonic, and in 2020, he was in residence at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy as the Aaron Copland Fellow in Music. His score for the feature-length film, “Novitiate,” premiered at Sundance in January of 2017 and was theatrically released by Sony Pictures Classics. His debut CD, Seasonal Music, was released in 2019 on Bridge Records.
www.christopher-stark.com
Nasim Khorassani
Nasim Khorassani (b.1987, Tehran) is an Iranian composer, currently studying her PhD in Music Composition with Dr Katharina Rosenberger at the University of California San Diego. She studied her second master’s with Dr Andrew Rindfleisch and Dr Greg D’Alessio at Cleveland State University. University of Tehran was where she gained her first master’s and studied composition with Mr Mohammad Reza Tafazzoli, Mr Kiawasch Sahebnassagh, and Dr Sara Abazari. Mainly as a self-taught composer, Nasim started composing since the age of eight. However, her works did not receive any performance in Iran, until 2016 when she moved to the United States. Since then, she has received various commissions from No Exit New Music Ensemble, Del Sol String Quartet, Patchwork Duo, Zeitgeist, and Loadbang.
During her life in Iran, she managed to create and organize a group of music students which received the DAAD Study Visit scholarship in 2009, as the first Iranian group. In 2012, she met with Peter Ablinger and Klaus Lang in Tehran, and performed their music. In 2013, Nasim became among five selected sound artists from Iran, for Iran-UK Sonics residency in London, where she joined various workshops by Keith Rowe and Chris Watson, and had her first experimental improvisation with Veryan Weston at Queen Elizabeth Hall. The trip to Germany as her introduction to modern dance expanded throughout her life, influencing the style of music composition she follows today.
soundcloud.com/nasim-khorassani
Joshua Musikantow
Joshua Musikantow has been active as a composer and a percussionist, with performances in England, France, the Czech Republic, and the United States, and as a creative writer (specializing in poetry), editor, and writing consultant. Born in Chicago, 1981, he currently resides in the twin cities.
He earned his BM in Music Composition at Lawrence University, his MA in Music Composition at the University at Buffalo, and his PhD in Music Composition at the University of Minnesota. His dissertation advisor was the acclaimed Scottish New Complexity composer, James Dillon. He earned his BA in English from Lawrence University, has 12 graduate level creative writing credits at the University of Minnesota, and studied writing in not-for-credit programs at Bennington College and the College of St. Scholastica.
Writing for both acoustic and electronic mediums, the hallmarks of his musical language are explorations of non-traditional tuning systems, use of unorthodox and originally developed techniques as primary resources rather than extended ones, shamanic drumming, and an aphoristic approach to musical forms whereby many semi-autonomous moments populate a larger, fractured cosmology. He was a recipient of the 2013 McKnight Fellowship. He was awarded a 2012 JFund grant for his work, Lisp. His piece, Comma, was a winner of the 2012 Zeitgeist call for scores. His music has also earned him various academic honors and featured spots in festivals, including PureGold, SPARK, Etchings, CASMI, Interlochen Composers Institute, and Oregon Bach.
Emily Koh
Emily Koh (b.1986) is a Singaporean composer and double bassist based in Atlanta, GA. Her music reimagines everyday experiences by sonically expounding tiny oft-forgotten details. In addition to writing acoustic and electronic concert music, she enjoys collaborating with other creatives in projects where sound plays an important role.
Emily is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, University of Georgia in Athens, GA. She has been on faculty at the Alba Music Festival Composition Program (Italy), Dot-The-Line Festival (South Korea), International Composition Institute of Thailand and Asia-Pacific Saxophone Academy (Thailand). Prior to teaching at UGA, she taught at Brandeis and Harvard Universities, MIT, Longy School of Music (Bard College) and Walnut Hill School for the Arts. She graduated from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore (BM Music Composition), the Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University (MM Music Composition and Music Theory Pedagogy), and Brandeis University (Ph.D. graduate in Music Composition and Theory). She is a member of ASCAP, SCI, and the Composers Society of Singapore. Her music is published by Babel Scores and Poco Piu Publishing.
Emily lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband, Jason. Besides composing and performing, Emily is a foodie and enjoys eating, cooking and working in her edible garden.
emilykoh.net
Robert Honstein
Celebrated for his “waves of colorful sounds” (New York Times) and “smart, appealing works” (The New Yorker), Robert Honstein (b. 1980) is a New York based composer of orchestral, chamber, and vocal music. Robert is a founding member of the New York-based composer collective Sleeping Giant, co-founder of Fast Forward Austin and Times Two in Boston. As an educator, he is Program Manager and Composition Faculty at NYU, Steinhardt.
His music has been performed by the Albany Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic, Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble Dal Niente, Mivos Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, Argus Quartet, New Morse Code, Colin Currie, Theo Bleckmann, Doug Perkins, Michael Burritt, Karl Larson, and Ashley Bathgate, among others. Interdisciplinary collaborators include photographer Chris McCaw, projection designer Hannash Wasileski, graphic designer Laura Grey, director Daniel Fish, and the Cincinnati Ballet. His music has been released by New Focus Records, Soundspells Productions, Cedille Records, and New Amsterdam Records.
www.roberthonstein.com
Hong-Da Chin
Originally from Kajang, Malaysia, Hong-Da Chin explores multiculturalism and diversity. He incorporates cultural elements from the Malay, Chinese and Indian cultures from Malaysia into his music. Being a Chinese flutist of the Chinese orchestra at his high school, he was invited to perform with gamelan groups and Indian traditional ensembles at cultural and political events. Exposure to traditional Malaysian musics instilled the importance of diversity in his creative output.
Chin’s music has been performed in the US, Germany, France, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Austria, Poland, Israel, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines and Singapore. The ensembles and performers include the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej (Poland), Bowling Green Philharmonia, Bel Canto Trio, Karr and Mattingly Duo, Altered Sound Duo, Vive Ensemble, Ogni Suono, Patchwork, and Orlando Cela.
Chin earned his A.A from Del Mar College in Corpus Christi studying composition with Neil Flory, and flute with Joy Kairies, B.M. from the University of Houston studying composition with Rob Smith and flute with Jennifer Keeney, and M.M. from the University of Louisville studying composition with Steve Rouse and flute with Kathy Karr. He studied composition with Marilyn Shrude and Mikel Kuehn at Bowling Green State University. Chin earned a Doctor of Musical Arts from BGSU in December 2017.
Chin is currently Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Western Illinois University.
hongdachin.com
Adam Roberts
Adam Roberts writes music that takes listeners on compelling sonic journeys while drawing on a vivid array of sonic resources. Roberts’ music has been performed by ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, the JACK Quartet, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Callithumpian Consort, Earplay, andPlay duo, Transient Canvas, Ums ‘n Jip, Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, the Association for the Promotion of New Music, violist Garth Knox, Guerilla Opera, and at festivals such as Wien Modern (Vienna), Tanglewood, the Biennale Musique en Scene (Lyons), and the 2009 ISCM World Music Days (Sweden).
Roberts is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fromm Foundation Commission, the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Bernard Rogers Prize (Eastman), the New York Bohemians Prize (Harvard), the André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud Prize from the Orléans Piano Competition, the Earplay Donald Aird Award, the Christoph and Stefan Kaske Fellowship from the Wellesley Composers Conference, the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center, the Blodgett Prize (Harvard), and other awards. Commissions have come from the Callithumpian Consort, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, pianist Nolan Pearson, the Tanglewood Music Center, Guerilla Opera, and others.
Mathew Rosenblum
With diverse musical elements derived from classical, jazz, rock, and world music traditions, Mathew Rosenblum’s compositions offer “an ear-buzzing flood of sound, rich in unusual overtones” (The Boston Globe). A wide array of groups have commissioned, performed and recorded his music such as the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, FLUX Quartet, Mantra Percussion as well as many others. Using a variety of tuning systems, his work does not live within traditional boundaries, creating a compellingly fresh landscape. His music has been performed throughout the world including at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Prince Mahidol Hall in Bangkok, the China-ASEAN Music Week in Nanning, the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf,Sala Nezahualcóyotl in Mexico City, and at Carnegie Recital Hall, Merkin Hall and Miller Theatre in New York City. Honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Fromm Foundation Commissions, a National Endowment for the Arts Music Fellowship Grant and a Barlow Endowment Commission. He received degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music and Princeton University and is Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh where he also co- directs the Music on the Edge new music series and directs the Beyond: Microtonal Music Festival. His works appear on the MODE, New World Records, Albany, New Focus Recordings, BMOP/ sound, Capstone, Opus One, Blue Griffin, and CRI Emergency Music labels and is published by C.F. Peters Corporation and Plurabelle Music (distributed by Subito Music Corporation). www. mathewrosenblum.com
Amelia Kaplan
Amelia Kaplan is a composer whose music reflects the riotous mix of sounds and cultures cohabiting in our increasingly fragmented world. She seeks to create meaning by juxtaposing, and recontextualizing refined gestures crafted from the myriad musical and non-musical sounds accessible in our wired environment. In recent years her music has mostly responded to the ecological and political crises besetting our warming planet.
Ms. Kaplan has won residences at Copland House, MacDowell, Ucross, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has received commissions from numerous ensembles and soloists, and her work has been performed at festivals around the world, including Mise-En, Thailand New Music Festival, SCI, SICPP, IAWM, Wellesley Composers Conference, Gaudeamus, Darmstadt, and others. Recordings are available on Albany, Ablaze, Centaur, and Navona Records, and several compositions are published by TrevCo Music.
Ms. Kaplan holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, an AB from Princeton University,
and diplomas from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana and the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau. She is Associate Professor of Composition at Ball State University where she teaches theory and composition and directs the New Music Ensemble. She previously taught at Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Iowa, and Roosevelt University.
ameliaskaplan.com
Jiri Trtík
Jiří Trtík (aka Trtini) is a Czech composer, conductor, and educator. Jiří has earned his Master of Music at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has also studied composition and conducting at the Prague Conservatory. Jiří joined the faculty of the International Conservatory of Prague in 2020 where he teaches composition, music theory, and leads the chorus.
Jiří has received a number of commissions and performances from world-class performers and ensembles, such as members of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Grammy Award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Kühn Mixed Choir, the principal cellist of The Cleveland Orchestra Mark Kosower, and the associate principal bassoonist of The Cleveland Orchestra Barrick Stees. His works have been performed in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Latvia, United States, and Japan. In 2020, Jiří composed music for the movie Wolves on Borders (Martin Páv), which was premiered at the documentary movie festival Vision du Reel in Switzerland. Other movies that Jiří has scored are The Hunch (Nina Mikesková), Zelená Vdova (Luboš Kučera), Jdi dál (Martin Páv).
As a conductor, he has conducted performances of Mozart’s Requiem, B. Martinů’s Opening of the Wells, as well as he premiered choral works by several young Czech composers. Jiří also studied philosophy at Charles University.
Jiří Trtík is a recipient of 2nd prize (1st was not given) and Special Prize for The Best Czech Composition at the International Composition Competition Generace 2019 at the Janáček International Music Festival in Ostrava. He also received first-prize at the Cleveland Composers Guild Fifth Annual Collegiate Composition Competition 2018, and won the WCSMS 2018 Promising Young Composers Competition. In 2018, Jiří Trtík was honored to receive the 2018 Donald Erb Prize in Composition.
Derrik Balogh
Derrik Balogh is an Audio Producer at American Greetings where he creates audio content for greeting cards and eCards. During his time at American Greetings, he has worked on projects with many artists and personalities including Shaquille O’Neal, Dolly Parton, William Shatner, Smokey Robinson, Donny Osmond, Michael Bolton, and Alicia Keys. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Akron and his Master’s degree at Cleveland State University, both in music composition.
Inga Chinilina
As a composer, Inga both explores and questions the spoken and unspoken rules by which Western academic music is organized. Focusing on the hierarchies of musical structure and its resemblance with the organization of society she also works towards evolving Michel Chion’s desire to be done with the concept of noise (“en finir avec la notion de bruit”). Inga wants to rethink the idea of undesirable sonorities by bringing in the musical canvas such sounds as breath or page turns and also to address the structuring principles. All sounds that a performer and instrument produce during performance are destigmatized and freed from the traditional hierarchy. Her goal is to provide a space where all participants can contribute towards the creation of an audible experience, with the hope that new structuring principles in music will introduce an alternative approach to the hierarchical realm we are living in.
The prime areas of Inga’s work are acoustic composition sometimes with an interactive electronic component and multimedia works.
Inga has worked with: The Empyrean Ensemble, Neave Trio, Lydian String Quartet, Loadbang Ensemble, Splice Ensemble, Russia State Academic Russian folk ensemble, Moscow Contemporary Music (MCME) Ensemble, Sound Icon Ensemble. At the current moment premiers by: The Avanti! Chamber Orchestra (Finland), Verdant Vibes (RI, USA), and Talea Ensemble (NY, USA) are postponed until better times come.
Inga had performances at Zeitströme Tage für aktuelle Musik (Darmstadt, Germany), Taproot New Music Festival (UC Davis CA), The International Festival of Contemporary Music Moscow Autumn (Moscow, Russia) Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts (Waltham, USA), and Open Space International Composers Laboratory (Moscow, Russia). In 2019, Inga was a resident composer at the Documentary Choreography Laboratory in Moscow, Russia. Inga also participated in Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, IRCAM’s CataRT Workshop, and Arts, Letters, and Numbers’ program.
Inga was born in Moscow, USSR and currently resides in Providence, RI where she is pursuing her PhD in “Music and Multimedia Composition” at Brown University. Inga also holds a BM in Composition and Performance from Berklee College of Music and an MFA in Theory and Composition from Brandeis University.
Buck McDaniel
Born in Columbia, Mississippi in 1994, Buck McDaniel is a composer based in New York City. His works have been performed both internationally in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Ireland and nationally in Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, Washington (DC), Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Seattle. His arrangement of Nico Muhly’s Bright Mass with Canons premiered at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute under Ann Jones, and his work Detroit Cycles premiered as part of the nationally syndicated radio program The Moth with violinist Natalie Frakes. His work has been workshopped by ensembles including the JACK Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, and the Genkin Philharmonic. Following Todd Wilson’s premiere of his work Three Voices at the 2014 Belfast Pipeworks Festival, organist James McVinnie toured the work in the United Kingdom with performances at both Lincoln Cathedral and Hereford Cathedral. His Psalm Preludes for organ have entered the regular repertoire of Saint Thomas Church, 5th Avenue in New York City.
Featured in The New York Times, Time Out New York, WNYC, and Spectrum News One, his 2021 chamber work Memory Ground was commissioned by The Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Performed by saxophonist Noa Even and the Desdemona Ensemble, his saxophone concerto for Even, So Love was crown’d, but music won the cause, was commissioned by the Rowan University Wind Ensemble and premiered in 2022 under Joseph Higgins.
An active and willing collaborator, McDaniel has worked with ensembles Zeitgeist and the No Exit New Music Ensemble on multiple projects. He has composed several works for No Exit including Light Down, an extended take on an early American murder ballad, and Zeitgeist who subsequently toured his work Scherzo in Four Movements throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio. In his artistic partnership with producer Jacob Kirkwood, he has created multiple concert and studio works, including the sound installation Landscape Piece which debuted at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2019, and Patterns on Dufy, which premiered in Cleveland, Ohio in 2022. In 2021, his organ cycle compiled in collaboration with Rev. Timothy Weisman, Five Meditations on the Nativity, received its first performance at the landmark National City Christian Church in Washington, DC with Derrick Ian Meador, organ.
Douglas Knehans
With a gift for extravagant color, beautiful melodic style, clear musical form and engaging, soulfully dramatic work, the music of award winning composer Douglas Knehans has gained the attention and warm appreciation of audiences and performers around the world. Knehans’ two-piano work cascade has been performed in Steinway Hall, New York; UIC Recital Hall, Chicago; Tokyo, Japan; Kiev, Ukraine and recorded for worldwide CD release on Ablaze Records by the virtuoso piano duo The Pridonoff Duo.
After completing music studies at ANU, Queens and Yale, Knehans had a professorship at the University of Alabama; was Director and Head of School at the University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music in Australia and then was appointed the Dean of the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. He is currently the Norman Dinerstein Professor of Composition Scholar at CCM.
He currently lives and work in Cincinnati Ohio with my wife Josephine and two children Katarina and Joshua as well as the director of their household, their small dog Honey. He is a political junky interested in cooking, wine, natural and organic food; and a vegan and committed animal rights advocate who enjoys travel, art, architecture and music.
Jeremy Rapaport-Stein
Jeremy Rapaport-Stein is a composer based in Philadelphia. His work explores improvisation, vocality, memory, euphoria, and obsolete modes of audio communication through concert music and installations. Jeremy’s music has been performed by Departure Duo, Yarn/Wire, line upon line percussion, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Megalopolis Saxophone Orchestra, ~Nois, Iktus Percussion, Cisum Percussion, loadbang, Sound Icon, Guerilla Opera, New Opera West, Lydian String Quartet, Ludovico Ensemble, Quatuor Bozzini, Duo Cortona, Boston New Music Initiative, and Sō Percussion. Recent projects include new works for Odds and Ends Trio, No Exit New Music Ensemble and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
Jeremy holds a BA from Swarthmore College and an MFA in music theory and composition at Brandeis University, where he has taught courses in musicianship, sound studies, and writing. He has held residencies at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Crosstown Arts in Memphis. In addition to his musical interests, he is passionate about language education and specializes in working with young adult English language learners. For more information or to hear his music, visit jeremyrapaportstein.com.
Max Friedman
Max Friedman is is a composer, trumpet player, Yiddishist, translator, and educator based in Memphis, TN. His music and scholarship explore the multitudes of ways Yiddish speakers have and continue to express their identities through music. His composition “Butter-Lider,” for Yiddish poetry recordings and sextet, was commissioned and premiered (Dec. 2022) by Cleveland’s No Exit New Music Ensemble. Other compositions have been performed by Yarn/Wire, Hub New Music, the Lydian String Quartet, Ekmeles, Ensemble Dal Niente, the Brown University Orchestra, and the Boston-based Horizon Ensemble. Max holds degrees from Brown University (AB ‘20) and Brandeis University (MFA ‘22), and his mentors have included Eric Nathan, Wang Lu, Shawn Jaeger, David Rakowski, Yu-Hui Chang, Erin Gee, Taylor Ackley, and Ellen Kellman. An advanced Yiddish student and translator, Max was a 2021 Steiner Program Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center, and in 2022 attended the YIVO-Bard Uriel Weinreich Yiddish Summer Program. He has also presented at conferences hosted at Indiana University, Brandeis University, and the University of Toronto.
As an active trumpet player in orchestral, contemporary classical, klezmer, and improvised settings, Max has performed as part of the New England Philharmonic, the Brown University Orchestra, Yarmulkazi (Brown’s klezmer band), and various student-organized recitals and theatrical productions. He often performs his own solo work and collaborates with other artists; one current project is a family “klezzical” band, Moyshele’s Merry Mishpokhe.
When not intentionally making sounds happen, Max enjoys consuming sci-fi and fantasy books and podcasts, getting lost in forests, and riding public transportation.
Chris Neiner
Chris Neiner (b. 1994) is a Cleveland-based composer of contemporary classical music with colorful harmony, diverse influences, and engaging energy. His recent commissions include Time Machine Hyperboles for NO EXIT New Music Ensemble; Red Riding Pictures Proudly Presents for Stars in the Classics; Aurora Fanfare & Dance for the Aurora School of Music; and Playtime for a consortium of collegiate horn professors across the United States. Neiner’s work has been praised by Cleveland Classical for “incorporating the zazzy colors of the current new music dialect,” and “pleasant shocks and melting cadences.” Currently, Neiner is the composition faculty for the Aurora School of Music and artist-in-residence for Solich Piano, the largest Yamaha piano retailer across the Midwest.
Beyond his collaborative work as a composer, Neiner is a producer and coordinator for several music events. In 2019, he served as the associate director, composer-in-residence, and conductor for Music in the Circle, a summer concert series facilitating collaboration between international artists and students, faculty, and alumni of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Other projects include Leora’s Reverie, a concert to benefit the One Voice Foundation by American-Israeli songwriter Katia Bolotin, and New Music for Horn, a multidisciplinary project that facilitated music making between hornists, composers, conductors, and recording artists studying at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
Philip Blackburn
Philip Blackburn was born in Cambridge, England, and studied music there as a Choral Scholar at Clare College (BA, MA). He earned his Ph.D. in Composition from the University of Iowa where he studied with Kenneth Gaburo and began work on publishing the Harry Partch archives. Blackburn’s book, Enclosure Three: Harry Partch, won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. He worked at the American Composers Forum from 1991 until 2020, running the innova Recordings label (which has been called “the nation’s premiere label for American new music”) – producing over 650 albums and garnering two Grammy Awards – while developing re-granting programs. In 2020 he became President of the Neuma Records label.
He is also a public artist specializing in sound — a composer/environmental sound-artist — and has served as teaching artist for school residencies connected with the Flint Hills International Children’s Festival, creating multi-media performances using home-made instruments. He composed the soundtrack for the Wild Music: Sounds and Songs of Life exhibition initiated by the Science Museum of Minnesota now traveling the nation. His Car Horn Fanfare for 8 ArtCars opened the Northern Spark Festival, and his Duluth Harbor Serenade was heard by thousands of people during Duluth Superior Pride. His concert work, Sonata Homophobia, for Flute and Brainwave-Triggered Right Wing Hate Speech was also premiered in Duluth. Blackburn’s works have been heard in ships’ harbors, state fairs, forests, and coming out of storm sewers, as well as in galleries and on concert stages. He has incorporated brainwave sensors and dowsing rods in performance as well as balloon flutes, car horns, smart phones, and wind-powered harps. He created a multi-media hyperopera about Cragmor Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Colorado Springs. That work, The Sun Palace became a 60-minute indie film that premiered at the New York’s Anthology Film Archives. His Prairie Pavilion for three Virtual Rhythmicons translated architectural proportions of a building at the Walker Art Center into sonic relationships.
Adonai Henderson
Adonai Henderson is a Cleveland-native, composer and trumpet player. He received his Masters of Music in Composition at Cleveland State University, and studied trumpet performance with a focus on jazz studies at Bowling Green State University. He. directs and composes for the Brass Ensemble at Messiah Lutheran Church, and directs youth brass programs at various schools in the Cleveland area. Adonai enjoys spending most of his spare time showing his two daughters the joys of music.
Gleb Kanasevich
Gleb Kanasevich is a clarinetist and composer based between New York City and Detroit. As of July, 2022, he is a permanent member of Detroit-based Hub New Music, with whom he tours regularly and performed at many of the country’s most renowned concert series, venues and festivals. He is an active soloist and session musician, having recently worked with John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, Cleveland-based death metal band Noxis, and on soundtracks for Netflix and A24 films. He has been closely working with the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in New York City since 2021, frequently covering the festival’s electronic and live sound needs, concert production, and clarinet duties.
As a composer he is interested exploring expressive possibilities in very simple electronic processing, stark sonic landscapes, and extremely fine microtonality. Most recently, he was commissioned by Ensemble Intercontemporain, Callithumpian Consort, Ah Young Hong, Musique 21 at Michigan State University, Hub New Music, and No Exit New Music Ensemble. His newest solo record “We Only Have But A Moment” is set to be released in the spring of 2026 on Flag Day Recordings.
From 2013 until shutting its doors in 2023, he has been a core member of Ensemble Cantata Profana – a group based in New York City. After four years of co-directing Cantata Profana with Jacob Ashworth, he became the ensemble’s Acting Artistic Director in 2022. From 2016 until Spring, 2019, Kanasevich also worked as a curator/video maker for the online new music database and audio/video/score resource ScoreFollower/Incipitsify.
Luis Daniel Jiménez
Luis Daniel Jiménez is from Mexico City and started guitar lessons when was 10 years old, and at 15 years of age he started to play piano and wrote his first compositions, principally for piano solo. At 18 he began to study composition at the Faculty of Music from the Autonomous University of Mexico, where he first studied with Leonardo Coral, and then with Gabriela Ortiz.
In 2020 he won second prize with his piece Jicarazo, in the Matices A. E. First Competition.In 2021 he received a scholarship to study with Arturo Marquez, where he composed his works Cinco Poemas for chamber orchestra, and Difrasismo for Symphonic Orchestra.In 2022 attended the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine, where he composed his works, Cachivaches and Árboles. At Bowdoin he studied with Derek Bermel and Andreia Pinto Correia.
In 2023 Luis was part of an orchestration room, in which he worked together with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Mexico. In 2024 the Symphonic Orchestra of Mexico played his piece Difrasismo as part of an open rehearsal, with the intention of preparing a concert of young composers in 2025, which will be realized in the Palace of Fine Arts.
Spiros Mazis
Dr Spiros Mazis is a composer, professor and director of the Conservatory of Classic and Contemporary Music, based in Athens, Greece.
His works have been performed across Europe, U.S.A., Australia, Japan, by prestigious players, ensembles and orchestras.
Most of his works are based upon extramusical ideas that derive from contemporary views of Physics and Mathematics, which are transferred with as much fidelity as possible, to the musical structure.
Creative and critical thinking has always been the starting point of his compositional activity. His research is based on exploring the harmonic series and the relations of the intervals among their partials with a way that he names Multiharmonic or Multispectral Mode.
Jerome Begin
Called a “fabulous composer-pianist” and an “unimpeachable” choice of collaborator by the New York Times, Jerome Begin has composed many scores for dance, theater, concert works, installation and film. Equally at home in the classical, experimental, theatrical and pop worlds, he has always been drawn to collaboration. Begin takes from classical music concepts of form, process and compositional rigor. From experimental electronic and acoustic music he draws on ideas of sonic expansion and innovation in ways for musicians to connect in time and texture. In popular music, he is strongly attracted to the power of rhythm and sound over the body and the ability of the “hook” to resonate within the consciousness of individuals and masses. His vast experience composing in the dance and theater realms has lent to his music a deep understanding of the dynamics of live performance. He writes with a keen consciousness of the inherent theater present in the making of music.
Stephen Haluska
Through his idiosyncratic approaches to the harp, Cleveland-based harpist, improviser, and composer, Stephan Haluska draws from the instrument’s unique textural, percussive, physical, and kinetic qualities. Viewing the harp as a frequently misunderstood and underrepresented instrument in contemporary music, he often rejects conventional modes of playing in favor of finding new ways to expand his sound palette.
Stephan plays with an advanced vocabulary of extended techniques and preparations, which include the use of various tools, materials, and gadgetry. He incorporates interdisciplinary elements of found object, collage, poetry, sound art, and performance art into his artistic practices. Since July, 2021, Stephan leads Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project (CUSP) as managing director. CUSP is dedicated to strengthening the artistic engagement of the Northeast Ohio community by championing the creation and performance of new and experimental music through concert programming and other events.
Stephan is on faculty at Case Western Reserve University as Part-Time Lecturer in the music department, where he teaches Digital Music Composition and Production. Stephan holds an MFA in Harp Performance with a Concentration in Improvisation from Mills College in Oakland, California and a BA in Music Composition and Theory from Bowling Green State University.
Luke Haaksma
LUKE HAAKSMA is a composer, filmmaker, and hammered dulcimerist currently based in New Haven, CT and originally from Asheville, NC. His work often focuses on non-human states of consciousness, finding influences in themes of anthropomorphization, murder ballads, old-time music, and folk-horror. Luke has received awards and recognition from the Wortham Center for performing arts, Ione M. Allen foundation, the Young Concert Artists, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. While an undergraduate at Bard College and Conservatory, Luke studied composition with Joan Tower, George Tsontakis, and Lera Auerbach, piano with Blair McMillen, and dulcimer with David Degge. He was the Conservatory’s Joan Tower Composition Scholar. For his work with film, Luke has won the Sidney Peterson prize in experimental film, “Best Original Score” by the Dreamachine international film festival, and Official Selections from other Montreal and Los Angeles based festivals. In 2021, Luke was honored as the National Hammered Dulcimer Championship finalist at the Walnut Valley music festival in Winfield, Kansas. After a fellowship at the Fromm foundation Composers Conference in 2022, Luke began pursuing a Master of Music in composition at the Yale School of Music, studying with David Lang , Martin Bresnick, and Aaron Kernis. Recent projects include breathing room, a stop-motion short with live music/sound commissioned and premiered by No Exit New Music and Endling Song, a piece for full orchestra premiered by the Yale Philharmonia.