Jojo Abot is a nomadic interdisciplinary artist exploring evolving themes of spirituality, identity and community with self as the starting point to collective evolution. With an exciting, budding career, Abot has toured with Ms. Lauren Hill, played stages like Afropunk, Roots Picnic, Radio City Music Hall, the Apollo Theater, Kennedy Center and more while being the first unsigned artist to perform live for NYC's Times Square New Year's Eve concert to over a million people. An alumna of NEW INC (the New Museum's Incubator Program) and a former resident at National Sawdust, Abot continues to develop and present her interdisciplinary practice through Power to the God Within and other curatorial projects.

Learn more at JojoAbot.com.

From: Tehran, Iran.

Born in post-revolutionary wartime in Iran, Sahba Aminikia was raised during a newly configured democracy that evolved from mass-executions, war, and violence into a society that—through the use of internet and technology—challenges the current political and social infrastructure. Highly influenced by the poetry of Hafiz, Rumi, and Saadi, as well as traditional, classical and jazz music and the albums of Pink Floyd, Beatles, and Queen, Aminikia cites music to be an immersive, transcendent, yet visceral human experience. He is curious about the duality in existence, and musically explores subjects that confront the pursuit of enlightenment amid the darkness. A conscientious soul, due to his upbringing, he attempts at finding a common understanding of communication and dialogue through music. And, as a result, throughout his career, he has composed pieces that express the inevitability and triumph of hope.

Today, Aminikia collaborates with other artists to create and compose meaningful work. He has been trained in musical composition under Iranian pianists Nikan Milani, Safa Shahidi, and perhaps most influenced by work with his first classical teacher, Mehran Rouhani, a post-graduate of Royal Academy of Music and a former student of Sir Michael Tippett. He later relocated to Russia where he studied at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory under Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko—a post-graduate student of Dimitri Shostakovich. He received his Bachelor of Music and his Master of Music with honors from San Francisco Conservatory of Music under David Garner and David Conte where he was the proud recipient of Phyllis Wattis Foundation scholarship. He has also received individual life and music lessons from David Harrington, Aleksandra Vrebalov, Conrad Susa, Luciano Chessa , John Corigliano, and Oswaldo Golijov as well.

Recently, the San Francisco Chronicle's has referred to Aminikia as “an artist singularly equipped to provide a soundtrack to these unsettling times.” His musical pieces have been widely performed in United States, Canada, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Italy, Poland, China, Greece, Turkey and Israel and at venues such Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Le Poisson Rouge, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF Exploratorium, SFJazz and Saint Anne's Warehouse. Aminikia’s compositions have been commissioned by theatre troops, contemporary classical ensembles, film scores, Persian traditional music groups as well as jazz bands including Kronos Quartet, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Symphony Parnassus, San Francisco Conservatory of Music New Music Ensemble, Mobius Trio, Delphi Trio, and Living Earth Show. His third string quartet

A Threnody for Those Who Remain (2010), commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Kronos Performing Arts Association, was described by Financial Times as “an experience not to be easily forgotten”. And similarly, his widely known Tar o Pood [Warp and Weft]—commissioned by Nasrin Marzban for Kronos Quartet—was the second place recipient of the American Prize 2015 in composition, a professional chamber music category. Aminikia has recently been the artist-in-residence at Kronos Festival 2017, an annual festival held by legendary Kronos Quartet at San Francisco SFJAZZ throughout which ten of his works including four new pieces were performed. His most recent piece for the same festival was a collaboration between Kronos Quartet, San Francisco Girls Chorus and Afghanistan National Institute of Music which resulted in a 20-minute choral piece named Music of Spheres. Aminikia recently wrote the music for Sea Prayer, a VR experience by Guardian based on a story by acclaimed author, Khalid Hosseini which was performed by Kronos Quartet and British multi-instrumentalist, David Coulter.

Sahba is the founder and the artistic director of Flying Carpet Children Music Festival which occurs yearly in the city of Mardin, Turkey, near the border of Syria serving more than 5000 children suffered from the trauma of war of Syrian, Iraqi, Kurdish and Turkish origin.

Learn more at SahbaKia.com.

From: Hong Kong. LA Opera: Edge of a Dream (2020) for LAO Connects.

“Radiant and transcendent”, the music of Juhi Bansal weaves together themes celebrating musical and cultural diversity, nature and the environment, and strong female role models. Her music draws upon elements as disparate as Hindustani music, the spectralists, progressive metal, musical theatre and choral traditions to create deeply expressive, evocative sound-worlds. As an Indian composer brought up in Hong Kong, her work draws subtly upon both those traditions, entwining them closely and intricately with the gestures of western classical music.

Current projects include Waves of Change, a digital experience on womanhood, identity and clash of cultures inspired by the story of the Bangladesh Girls Surf Club; and Edge of a Dream, an opera about Ada Lovelace, daughter of infamous poet Lord Byron and a 19th-century pioneer in computing commissioned by LA Opera. Recent seasons have included commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Beth Morrison Projects, New York Virtuoso Singers, Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, AIDS Quilt Songbook 20th Anniversary project and more.

Her music is regularly performed throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia and available on the Naxos, Albany and Roven Records labels. Awards received for her work include prizes from the Five Colleges New Music Festival Competition, ASCAP Lotte Lehman Foundation Art song Competition, Boston Metro Opera International Composers Competition, and multiple ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer awards.

A conductor as well as composer, she has been awarded fellowships by the Douglas Moore Fund for American Opera, the Atlantic Music Center, Seasons Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival Composer’s Symposium, and the Pacific Music Festival. She frequently premieres the work of other composers and accompanies singers at the piano. She is currently on the music faculties of the Hartt School at the University of Hartford and Pasadena City College.

Learn more at JuhiBansal.com.

From: Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, Arizona.

Raven Chacon is a composer of chamber music, a performer of experimental noise music, and an installation artist. He performs regularly as a solo artist as well as with numerous ensembles in the Southwest USA, and is also a member of the American Indian arts collective Postcommodity.

As an educator, Chacon has served as composer-in-residence for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP) since 2004, teaching string quartet composition to hundreds of American Indian high school students living on reservations in the Southwest U.S. Under his instruction, this project was awarded the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities in 2011.

Chacon has presented his work in different contexts at Vancouver Art Gallery, ABC No Rio, REDCAT, La Biennale di Venezia – Biennale Musica, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center among other traditional and non-traditional venues.

Learn more at SpiderwebInTheSky.com.

From: Mexico City, Mexico.

Carmina Escobar is an experimental vocalist, improviser, and sound and intermedia artist. Her practice—comprising installation, performance, and multimedia projects—focuses on sound, the voice, and the body, and their interrelations with physical, social, present, and memory spaces.

Escobar has developed a range of vocal techniques that she applies to her creative practice and also to investigations of radical ideas and concepts regarding the voice. Having emigrated from Mexico to live and work in Los Angeles, key to her practice is the exploration of interstitial states of being—suspensions between worlds, between politics, and at borders. In 2019, she received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant to present Mami in the exhibition Cantos Comunes/Common Chants at The Blockhouse in Havana, Cuba. This participatory and process-oriented piece was developed in the days leading up to the performance. Escobar used the idea of Mami Wata—a water deity venerated in West, Central, and Southern Africa—as an expression of diaspora, and to reference ideas of fertility and togetherness.

She has presented her work in Cuba, Europe, Mexico, and the United States including at Borealis Festival, Bergen, Norway; Cuban Art Factory, Havana; CTM Festival, Berlin; and New Music Encounters + International Music Festival, Brno, Czech Republic. Her work FIESTA PERPETUA! a communitas ritual of manifestation (2018) was included in Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, Los Angeles. Her work has also been presented at the MexiCali Biennial, Pasadena; Machine Project, Los Angeles; MATA festival, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles; and World Dada Fair, San Francisco, among others.

In 2016, Escobar received the Young Creators grant from the National Fund for Culture and Arts, Mexico and a grant from the National Center for the Arts, Mexico. Escobar completed an M.F.A. with a specialization in Voice Arts at California Institute of the Arts, where she is a professor.

Artist Statement

I seek to convey through my work the emotional, experiential, and relational dimensions of sound. As I investigate sound from my primary source and instrument, the voice, I relate in my practice its multilayered, complex, physical realm and its metaphysical essence in order to create works that explore the body; identities; syncretism; magic realism; myths; and connection between people, spaces, and symbols. I intersect and translate this sonic phenomenon via different mediums such as performance, installation, music, electronic media, site-specific projects, and improvisation. My work is oriented to interject, move, and integrate the audience as an active participant in the pieces to bring about transformation in shared time and space.

From: Los Angeles, California.

Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer of electroacoustic, chamber, and orchestral musics for concert, theater, and installation. Building on her experience as a theatrical sound designer, she blends various forms into her own aesthetic of narrative soundscape composition, radio opera, and improvisation. Her works often draw from history to examine relevant social issues.

Yvette is a recipient of San Francisco's Dean Goodman Choice Award for Sound Design and Theatre Bay Area’s Eric Landisman Fellowship. She was selected by the American Composers Orchestra to participate in the third Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute in conjunction with the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. Yvette studied music at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Music-Integrative Studies from the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on the history of production techniques and aesthetics which link radio drama and electroacoustic musics; multichannel composition; and immersion.

Past projects and collaborations include: ABC News Nightline, Altoids, American Composers Orchestra, Anthony Davis Improvisation Ensemble, Asian American Theater Company, Audiorama (Stockholm), Aura Codec, Aurora Theatre Company, California Audio Arts, Campo Santo, Chariot Videos, Conrad Prebys Music Center, Crowded Fire, Cultural Odyssey, David Molina, Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, Elektronmusikstudion (Stockholm EMS), Ellen Sabastian Chang, Erik Ian Walker, Erika Chong Shuch, Exit Theatre, Fridman Gallery, Golden Thread Productions, Grace Cathedral, Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, Intersection for the Arts, Joe Goode Performance Group, John Luther Adams, Magic Theatre, Mark Dresser Bass Ensemble, Marlo Thomas, Oakland Public Theater, Pagliacci's Fools, Phillip Kan Gotanda, Qualcomm Institute (Calit2) Recombinant Media Lab, Ray's Vast Basement, Salida Circus, San Diego Art Institute, Solano College Theatre, Space 4 Art, Strange Lights, Stuart Collection, Su-Chen Hung, Tiffany Ng, A Traveling Jewish Theatre, W. Kamau Bell, Wackoworld Music, Wa/So Collective with Ava Porter, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Youth Speaks and Zellerbach Hall.

Learn more at YvetteJackson.com.

From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Composer and performer Molly Joyce’s music has been described as “serene power” (New York Times), written to “superb effect” (The Wire), and “impassioned” (The Washington Post). Her work is concerned with disability as a creative source. She has an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, and the primary vehicle in her pursuit is her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay which suits her body and engages her disability on a compositional and performative level. Her debut full-length album, Breaking and Entering, featuring toy organ, voice, and electronic sampling of both sources was released in June 2020 on New Amsterdam Records, and has been praised by New Sounds as “a powerful response to something (namely, physical disability of any kind) that is still too often stigmatized, but that Joyce has used as a creative prompt.”

Molly’s creative projects have been presented at TEDxMidAtlantic, Bang on a Can Marathon, Danspace Project, Americans for the Arts, National Sawdust, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, National Gallery of Art, Classical:NEXT, VisionIntoArt’s FERUS Festival, and featured in outlets such as Pitchfork, Red Bull Radio, WNYC’s New Sounds, I Care If You Listen, and National Sawdust Log. Her compositional works have been commissioned and performed by ensembles including the New World, New York Youth, Pittsburgh, Albany, and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras, as well as the New Juilliard, Decoda, and Contemporaneous ensembles. Additionally, she has written for publications 21CM and Disability Arts Online.

Her debut EP, Lean Back and Release, was released in January 2017 on New Amsterdam Records to much acclaim. Featuring violinists Monica Germino and Adrianna Mateo, the EP was praised as “energetic, heady and blisteringly emotive” by Paste Magazine and “arresting” by Textura. Additionally, Molly’s music has been included on solo albums from pianist Vicky Chow, cellist Nick Photinos, and vocalist Bec Plexus, all on New Amsterdam Records, Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble on Innova Recordings, and on releases from percussionist Evan Chapman, pianist Brianna Matzke and violinist Hajnal Pivnick’s duo album On Behalf.

As a collaborator, Molly has worked across disciplines including collaborations with visual artists Lex Brown, Leo Castaneda, Alteronce Gumby, Maya Smira, Julianne Swartz, choreographers Melissa Barak, Kelsey Connolly, Carlye Eckert, Jerron Herman, director Austin Regan, and writers Marco Grosse, James Kennedy, Christopher Oscar Peña, and Jacqueline Suskin. She has also assisted Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond, including orchestral arrangements for American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, as well as Glenn Kotche of Wilco.

Past seasons have seen commissions and collaborations with Avi Avital, Barak Ballet, Present Music, The Riot Ensemble, Mike Truesdell, and VONK Ensemble, among others. Additionally, Molly is a recipient of ASCAP’s Leo Kaplan Award, as part of the Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, grants from New Music USA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Jerome Fund / American Composers Forum, Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council and residencies at AIR Krems an Der Donau, ArtCenter/ South Florida, De Link Tilburg, Embassy of Foreign Artists, Grace Farms, Headlands Center for the Arts, Villa Sträuli, Titanik, Swatch Art Peace Hotel, The Watermill Center, and Willapa Bay AiR.

Molly is a graduate of The Juilliard School (graduating with scholastic distinction), Royal Conservatory in The Hague (recipient of the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund Grant), Yale School of Music, and alumnus of the National YoungArts Foundation. She has studied with Samuel Adler, Martin Bresnick, Guus Janssen, David Lang, Hannah Lash, Missy Mazzoli, Martijn Padding, Christopher Theofanidis, and currently serves on the composition faculty at New York University Steinhardt.

Learn more at MollyJoyce.com.

From: Lima, Peru.

Award-winning composer Jimmy López Bellido (born in 1978) is considered "one of the most interesting young composers anywhere today" (Chicago Sun-Times), and an “expert in orchestration” (New York Times) with a distinct voice that is “adventurous and winning” (Denver Post). His works have been performed by leading orchestras around the world including the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the National Symphony Orchestras of Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Spain, among others, and his music has been heard in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Kennedy Center, Vienna’s Musikverein, Konzerthaus Berlin, and during the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. His music has been featured in numerous festivals, including Tanglewood, Aspen, Grant Park, Darmstadt, Donaueschingen and the Nordic Music Days.

As part of the Renée Fleming initiative, the Lyric Opera of Chicago commissioned him a full-length opera based on the bestselling novel Bel Canto which premiered on December 7, 2015 to wide critical acclaim. Bel Canto became the bestselling opera of Lyric’s 2015/16 season, and it went on to earn a nomination to the 2016 International Opera Awards. In 2017 it was broadcast all throughout the U.S. on PBS' Great Performances. His work Fiesta! has been performed over 90 times worldwide, ranging from Australia to Siberia, thus making it one of the most performed contemporary orchestral works. Dreams, an oratorio which he wrote in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz, received its world premiere by soprano Ana María Martínez, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London in Berkeley, California in March of 2019. Mr. López has just completed a three-year tenure as the Houston Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence.

He has been awarded numerous prizes, among them: a 2017 Hewlett50 Arts Commissions from the Hewlett Foundation, TUMI USA Award 2016, Musician of the Year 2015 by Opera Peru and "El Comercio"; Honorable Mention at the 2015 Barlow Prize Competition; Special Mention at the 2015 Casa de las Américas Composition Prize; 2014 Antara Prize in recognition for his outstanding career; 2013 Prince Prize from the Prince Charitable Trusts; First Prize at the 2012 and 2011 Nicola de Lorenzo Music Composition Contest; 2009 Georges Ladd Prix de Paris, Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at the 2008 Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music; 2008 Morton Gould Young Composer Award from ASCAP; Honorable Mention at the 2005 Irino Composition Prize in Japan; First Prize at the ALEA III 2003 International Composition Competition; and Orchestra Prize at the 2002 CCA International Composition Competition in Taiwan.

He is a member of Suomen Säveltäjät (Society of Finnish Composers), ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), Circomper (Circle of Composers of Peru) and the San Francisco Chapter of the Recording Academy (Grammy). Symphony Canvis, a new album exclusively dedicated to his orchestral works, was released in August of 2019. All works were recorded by Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.

He studied with Enrique Iturriaga from 1998-2000 at the National Conservatory of Music in Lima, and with Veli-Matti Puumala and Eero Hämeenniemi from 2000-2007 at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, from where he obtained his Master of Music Degree. He completed his PhD in Music at the University of California-Berkeley in May of 2012 with Edmund Campion. He is published by Filarmonika Music Publishing.

Learn more at JimmyLopez.com.

From: San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys and electronics as well as chamber ensembles and orchestras. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2) and “mesmerizing and affecting” (Feast of Music) while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise” and her “quirky approach to scoring.”

Angélica has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, loadbang, MATA Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the American Composers Orchestra, and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. Her music has been performed at the Kennedy Center, the Ecstatic Music Festival, EMPAC, Bang on a Can Marathon and the 2016 New York Philharmonic Biennial and her film scores have been heard numerous times at the Tribeca Film Festival. She has collaborated with artists like Sō Percussion, The Knights, Face the Music, and NOVUS NY, among others and is a founding member of the tropical electronic band Balún.

Angélica holds a Master’s degree in music composition from New York University and pursued doctoral studies at the Graduate Center (CUNY) under the guidance of Tania León. She is a teaching artist for New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers Program working with young learners on creative composition projects. Upcoming premieres include works for the LA Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Girls Chorus, and NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative. Negrón continues to perform and compose for film.

Learn more at AngelicaNegron.com.

From: Queens, New York.

Composer Paul Pinto creates, performs and produces experimental music and theatrical works, primarily focused innovative and engaging new form of opera-theater that fuse the musicality of American speech, poetry, classical music, extended vocal techniques and electronic sound art. He is a founding member of the acclaimed collectives Varispeed and thingNY, and his music has been performed across the U.S. and internationally with and by ensembles, performers and presenters around the world, including Joan La Barbara, Pauline Oliveros, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ne(x)tworks, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, loadbang, wildUP!, The Industry in LA, The Royal Scottish Academy Chamber Chorus, the Carnegie Mellon Concert Chorus, New Thread Saxophone Quartet, Iktus Percussion, BRIC Arts, The Whitney Biennial, The Kitchen, Roulette, Experiments in Opera, the Panoply Performance Laboratory and Performa.

His recent work as a composer, collaborator, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist has been praised in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, NewMusicBox, and Time Out New York. His opera Thomas Paine in Violence was hailed as "expressive, impressive and engaging" by the New York Times, and "thrilling and rare, and must be experienced" by Schmopera. With his performance collective, Varispeed, Paul created a new site-specific arrangement of Robert Ashley's seminal opera for television, Perfect Lives, which made Time Out New York's "Best of 2011" list and was praised by the New York Times as one of the "standout operas of recent decades."

For years, Paul has been an advocate of underrepresented experimentalists in the classical music concert halls, particularly Julius Eastman and Robert Ashley, and has worked to diversify modern opera and experimental music theatre both in casting, and in form and style. Paul has chosen to work equally with traditional instruments and vocalists, lo-fi electronics, unconventional sound-makers and amateur musicians, creating one-minute opera, concert length chamber music, and durational performance art. At the helm of thingNY, Paul has premiered hundreds of works from emerging and established composers including Pauline Oliveros, Vinko Globokar, Art Jarvinen, Gelsey Bell, John King, Kyle Gann, Rick Burkhardt, and Gerard Grisey. With thingNY, he co-created and performed the operas ADDDDDDDDD (2008), TIME: A Complete Explanation in Three Parts (2011), Jeff Young and Paul Pinto, Patriots, Run for Public Office on a Platform of Swift and Righteous Immigration Reform, Lots of Jobs, and a Healthy Environment (2013), and This Takes Place Close By (2015). Of their latest work, the new music journal I Care If You Listen writes "rarely, if ever, [have I] seen an encyclopedic array of experimental effects so intimately linked with their expressive potential."

As a vocalist, Paul has performed in the U.S. and Asia in untraditional chamber music works and experimental and improvisatory creations, including the five-octave lead role in Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King, in John Sanborn and Dorian Wallace's video opera, Temptation of St. Anthony, and originating the Broadway role of Balaga in Dave Malloy and Rachel Chavkin's hit musical, Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.

Scenes from his ballet Miseke are available on DVD and CD through the educational UK label, Learning and Teaching Scotland. In addition to thingNY's comic book opera release ADDDDDDDDD and their latest album minis/Trajectories, Paul has self-released four albums: The Gentlemen (2009), a suite for vocals and electronics, Every Note on the Piano (2010), NUDES: Live at the Mary Benson Gallery (2010), and For Stefanos Tsigrimanis (2011) an elegy for turntables, voice, guitar and electronics. His scores have been published by Deep Listening Publications.

Paul is a recipient of several awards and grants from the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, New Music USA, Chamber Music America, The Puffin Foundation, and a three-year residency at the HERE Arts Center, where he developed Thomas Paine in Violence. He was born and raised in Queens, a child of immigrants, studied at Carnegie Mellon with Nancy Galbraith, Leonardo Balada and with Robert Page, and then at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with John Maxwell Geddes, before moving back to New York. He now lives in Jersey City with his wife, Amanda, and their dog, Lady.

Learn more at pfpinto.com.

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) is a prolific and endlessly collaborative composer, performer, educator, and social entrepreneur. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (New York Times), DBR has worked with artists from Philip Glass to Bill T. Jones to Lady Gaga; appeared on NPR, American Idol, and ESPN; and has collaborated with the Sydney Opera House and the City of Burlington, Vermont. Acclaimed as a violinist and activist, DBR’s career spans more than two decades, earning commissions by venerable artists and institutions worldwide.

Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic, urban, and African-American music influences, DBR takes his genre-bending music beyond the proscenium. He is a composer of chamber, orchestral, and operatic works; has won an Emmy for Outstanding Musical Composition for his collaborations with ESPN; featured as keynote performer at technology conferences; and created large scale, site-specific musical events for public spaces.

DBR earned his doctorate in Music Composition from the University of Michigan and is currently Institute Professor and Professor of Practice at Arizona State University.

An avid arts industry leader, DBR serves on the board of directors of the League of American Orchestras, Association of Performing Arts Presenters and Creative Capital, the advisory committee of the Sphinx Organization, and was co-chair of 2015 and 2016 APAP Conferences.

Learn more at DanielRoumain.com.

From: Atlanta, Georgia. LA Opera: He has been commissioned to compose an evening-length work for tenor Russell Thomas, which will premiere in the 2022/23 season.

Emmy Award-winning composer, Joel Thompson (born in 1988) is a composer, pianist, conductor, and educator from Atlanta.

He was one of the composers commissioned to write a new musical piece for the interactive digital performance Modulation, co-presented by LA Opera in early 2021.

His largest work to date, Seven Last Words of the Unarmed for TTBB chorus, strings and piano, was premiered in November 2015 by the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club under the direction of Dr. Eugene Rogers.

Recently, Thompson was a composition fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School where he worked with composers Stephen Hartke and Christopher Theofanidis. Thompson taught at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School in Atlanta 2015-2017, and also served as Director of Choral Studies and Assistant Professor of Music at Andrew College 2013-2015. Thompson is a proud Emory alum, graduating with a B.A. in Music in 2010, and an M.M. in Choral Conducting in 2013. His teachers include Eric Nelson, William Ransom, Laura Gordy, Richard Prior, John Anthony Lennon, Kevin Puts, Robert Aldridge, and Scott Stewart. Thompson is currently pursuing his D.M.A. in composition at the Yale School of Music.

From: Chicago, Illinois.

Korean-American composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Bora Yoon is an interdisciplinary artist who conjures audiovisual soundscapes using digital devices, voice and found objects and instruments from a variety of cultures and historical centuries – to formulate an audiovisual storytelling through music, movement and sound.

Featured on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal and in the National Endowment for the Arts podcast for her musical innovations, Yoon’s music has been presented at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Singapore Arts Festival, the Nam Jun Paik Art Center (South Korea), the TED stage, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Banff Centre for Art and Creativity, MADE Festival (Sweden), Festival of World Cultures (Poland), Walker Art Center, Park Avenue Armory, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and universities and performing arts centers worldwide.

Equally comfortable performing solo on the TED stage as writing for a full orchestra, from advertising and corporate collaborations, to music for dance, theater, film, multimedia performance, site-specific works with architecture, choir, and new media, Yoon’s work resonates with a wide and diverse range of genres, industries, communities, and collaborators including DJ Spooky, Samsung Telecommunications America, Samsung Anycall (Korea), Harlem-born poet Sekou Sundiata (The 51st (dream) state), Iceland-based electronic producer Ben Frost, French-Canadian director/choreographer Noémie Lafrance, Chinese choreographer Yin Mei Dance, SYMPHO directed by Paul Haas, Bang On A Can composer Michael Gordon, indie-guitarist Kaki King, live graphics artist Joshue Ott, wax phonograph artist Aleks Kolkowski, visual artist Ann Hamilton (event of a thread), South Korean kinetic sculptor U-Ram Choe, filmmaker Adam Larsen, and NPR / WNYC's Jad Abumrad (Radiolab).

Yoon composed the original score to Haruki Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicle directed by Stephen Earnhart (presented at the Edinburgh International Festival, Singapore Arts Festival; commissioned by Asia Society); created the music for the podcast Migration Watch [Wire magazine, UK], and the docufilm Faces of Seoul by Gina Kim.

Yoon has composed new works for Sympho, Metropolis Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Sō Percussion, the NJ Symphony Orchestra, Musica Viva, Voices of Ascension Chorus & Orchestra, Young People’s Chorus of New York, Modern Medieval, and the SAYAKA Ladies Consort of Tokyo. Recordings are available through INNOVA Recordings, Journal of Popular Noise, MIT Press, (gr)Albums, and Naxos — with select scores available through Boosey & Hawkes.

As a composer/performer, she created and performed in the two-person opera Sunken Cathedral (produced by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE Art Center, PROTOTYPE Festival) with Korean traditional dance and drumming artist Vong Pak; and collaborates with data artist R. Luke DuBois (bitforms Gallery) in continually evolving explorations of technology and art. Forthcoming segments include new interactive gesture performance with Mi.Mu gloves, in partnership with Princeton University Music and the PU Council for Science & Technology.

Bora Yoon has been awarded a Music/Sound fellowship with the New York Foundation for the Arts, United Artists Initiative, Asian American Arts Alliance, a recording grant from the Sorel Organization for Women Composers, and most recently received a 2020 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and New Music USA project grant -- and been a resident artist at institutions including Park Avenue Armory, Ringling Museum, the Hermitage, HERE Arts / PROTOTYPE, LEMUR, and Harvestworks Digital Media, and Virginia Tech. Classically trained and steeped in a first love of choral music, Yoon is fascinated by the intersection of space and sound, maps, human Venn diagrams, handsome sounding kitchenware, sonorities, and the pulleys and strings that hold everything together. In all endeavors, she seeks to foster innovation of form in the arts, and its larger resonance in society.

Upcoming projects include new work with An Films for PROTOTYPE 2021, flute+electronics solo for 23-year commissioning series DENSITY 2036 by flutist Claire Chase, solo for percussionist Steve Schick, percussionist Ji Hye Jung, So Percussion, and multi-year wavefield synthesis residency at EMPAC - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Instruments used in performance: voice, violin, Tibetan singing bowls, cellphones, radios, water, bike bells, synthesizers, walkie-talkies, wind tubes, metronomes, Bible pages, spoons, found objects, viola through an octave pedal to become a bass, piano, tin cans, field recordings, electronics, and particular acoustic / architectural features of the venue itself. i.e. “things that make sound, and make sense together” -- which weave a larger sensory storytelling through music, sound, and scale.

Learn more at BoraYoon.com.

Artist Statement

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