Miguel Angel Bezanilla Naranjo
Miguel Angel Bezanilla Naranjo is a composer and violist born in Seville, Spain. With a Bachelor's degree in viola from the Conservatorio Superior de Música in Seville and a fourth-year student at CSM in Cordoba, he has worked throughout his musical education in professional orchestras and string quartets.
In February 2013, winning a composition contest, he professionally debuted his work Automatos with the Cordoba Orchestra, working closely with them. He has also premiered other works, conducting the majority of them, such as his wind quintet Permutaciones and piano pieces like La Gruta de Hielo, always receiving excellent reviews. He has been in contact with the likes of contemporary composers such as J.M. Sánchez-Verdú, J.M. López López and César Camarero in courses such as “Creación Injuve 2011”. He has also attended many various courses on film scoring, among them the “Hollywood Music Workshop” with Conrad Pope and an other with Óscar Navarro, recording his works both with an ensemble and a symphonic orchestra.
He has earned himself a deep understanding of orchestration through his experience as a violist, playing frequently with the Seville Royal Symphony Orchestra as means of paying for his studies and two summers spent with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim with whom he would give concerts in the BBC Proms Festival in London and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, among others. His main mentors have been Francisco Martín Quintero in composition and Álvaro Arrans and Jacek Policinski on the viola.
David Biedenbender
A musical omnivore and a passionate collaborator, David Biedenbender is inspired by a diverse array of interests and experiences, and he seeks to fuse the energy and clarity of those influences with his own musical language. His present creative interests include working with everyone from classically trained musicians to improvisers, acoustic chamber music to large ensembles, and interactive electronic interfaces to live brain data. He has had the privilege of collaborating with many talented performers and ensembles, including Alarm Will Sound, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Stenhammar String Quartet, United States Navy Band, Philharmonie Baden-Baden, VocalEssence, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, bass trombonist Randy Hawes, and the Atlantic Chamber Ensemble. Recent recognition for David’s work includes two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (2011, 2012), the 2012 Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composers Award. He recently completed a doctorate in music composition at the University of Michigan and has also studied at the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, and carnatic music in Mysore, India. His musical mentors include Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng, Evan Chambers, Stephen Rush, Kristin Kuster, Christopher Lees, David R. Gillingham, José Luis-Maurtúa, and Mark Cox.
Nikolet Burzyńska
Expressiveness and dynamism juxtaposed with micropolyphonic oscillating textures, passion for discovering new combinations of timbres, the need to find kind of contemporary meaning of beauty are the current compositional interests of Nikolet Burzyńska whose music is described as full of energy and fire and who has been appreciated by famous violinist Hilary Hann in her call for scores.
She was born at 29th July of 1989 in Katowice in Poland. Despite young age, she wrote over 40 pieces of contemporary music. During her studies in The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, Strasbourg Conservatory and additional courses she studied composition with such composers as: Louis Andriessen, Mark André, Martijn Padding, Richard Ayres, Tadeusz Wielecki, Jung Hee Choi, Macin Błażewicz and Stanisław Moryto. Her music was performed by Orkest de ereprijs and Rob Vermeulen, Voix de Strass and Catherine Bolzinger, Choir and Orchestra of the Silesian Philharmonic and Massimiliano Caldi, New Music Orchestra and Krzysztof and Aleksander Lasoń, to name a few. She took part in music festivals such as “Young composers meeting” in Holland, “La semaine du son” in France, “Druskomanija” in Lithuania, “Biennale of art for children” in Poland. She got into final round of call for scores of MATA 2013 in New York.
She received numerous prizes, among which are: the 1st prize in 1st International
Composition Competition “Patri Patriae for “Flamma” for choir and orchestra and Honorable mention in “In 27 pieces : the Hilary Hahn Encores” contest in 2012.
Kai-Young Chan
Kai-Young Chan is drawn to assimilating elements from various Asian musical traditions as well as classical Chinese folklores, language, and literature into the his versatile output from concert works to film scores, from conventional western forms to modern Chinese instrument ensembles. He has worked closely with professional ensembles across the continents including the Daedalus Quartet(US), the International Ensemble Modern Academy(DE), Ensemble XXI(BE), Chinese Music Virtuosi(HK), and musicians from the Julliard School and the Curtis Institute. His recent works le vent de la nuit was premiered in May 2013 by the Dolce Suono Ensemble(US) as a winning piece of their composition competition, and his chamber work Tinkles in the Rain received its European premiere by XXI in ISCM World Music Days 2012 (Belgium). He has received champion in New Generation 2012, the David Gwilt Composition Prize, the Audience Choice Award of the Young Musicians Performance Platform, and the CASH Music Scholarship. He also won the Speech Choir Young Composer Award for his speech choral work “East-Rail says...”, which is made a set piece in the 2012/13 Speech Choir Showcase.
Chan is a Benjamin Franklin Doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies composition under the tutelage of Jay Reise, James Primosch, and Anna Weesner. He completed his Master of Music in composition as a student of Victor Chan at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he received his Bachelor of Arts with first class honours.
Melody Eötvös
Melody Eötvös is an Australian composer currently in the final year of her DM at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she also serves as an Associate Instructor in Composition and as the Music Coordinator for the Composition Department. She has studied with a variety of composers across the globe, including Dr. Gerardo Dirié, Simon Bainbridge and David Dzubay, and has been the recipient of various awards including the 3MBS National Composers Award (2009), an APRA PDA (2009), & the Soundstream National Composer Award (2012). She has had her music performed by ensembles/orchestras such as the London Sinfonietta, BBC Singers, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and the Australian String Quartet. Previous education includes BMus(hon) at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Australia (2006); MMus & LRAM at the Royal Academy of Music, London (2008); MA(phil) at the University of Queensland (2009).
J.M. Gerraughty
Jason Michael Gerraughty is a composer of vibrant, dramatic, and bold music. His musical influences are diverse, ranging from the small-town New England municipal bands he performed with in his youth, to the orchestral, chamber, and gamelan ensembles he has performed with as an adult. He has worked with such talented musicians such as Lucy Shelton, So Percussion, Beta Collide, and Fireworks New Music Ensemble. Gerraughty’s music has been performed recently at the National Flute Association Conference 2012, the International Horn Society Symposium 2011, and at the North American Saxophone Alliance Region 8 Conference at West Point NY.
Gerraughty earned his B. M. at the Hartt School (www.hartford.edu/hartt), and his M.M. at the University of Oregon (music.uoregon.edu); he has studied privately with
Ingram Marshall, Robert Carl, Stephen Gryc, Robert Kyr, and David Crumb. His music has been recognized by his colleagues: recent awards include the 2012-2013 Manhattan Beach Music Frank Ticheli Composition Competition (Honorable Mention), American Composers Forum Finale® National Composition Competition (Honorable Mention), and The ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (Finalist). Gerraughty currently lives in Sydney, Australia, while completing his PhD dissertation at Stony Brook University (www.stonybrook.edu.commcms/music).
Anthony Green
Composer and pianist Anthony Green (USA, 1984) has received numerous commissions, readings, and performances by ALEA III (USA), Ossia New Music Ensemble (USA), Grupo Instrumental Siglo XX (Spain), Décadanse (France), Lukasz Klusek (contrabass) and Art-Oliver Simon (piano, Germany), the Playground Ensemble (USA), Guido Arbonelli (clarinet, Italy), the Zukofsky String Quartet (USA), the Providence String Quartet (USA), Ensemble Transmission (Canada), and Alarm Will Sound (USA), among others. He has participated in numerous festivals as a composer and pianist, including the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (Boston), ic[cm] (Spain), the International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival (Cyprus), and the Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition (the Netherlands). He has received grants for composing, lecturing, and giving masterclasses from the Argosy Foundation, the Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation, and Meet the Composer. His works with electronics have been diffused in festivals and concerts in the United States, Spain, and Venezuela. He has studied at Boston University (Bachelors), New England Conservatory (Masters), and the University of Colorado at Boulder (DMA, ABD), where he was the first recipient of the ATLAS Fellowship, which funded his first multimedia work based on the Book of Job.
Joel Love
The music of Joel Love explores an eclectic mix of genres and has been performed by ensembles, screened at theaters, and exhibited at art galleries throughout the US, Canada, and UK.
PARMA Recordings selected Lux and Synchronicity in Purple Minor for publication in their 2013 and 2012 Anthology. In May of 2013, Aurora Borealis was selected as a finalist in the 3rd International Frank Ticheli Composition Contest. In 2010, Real Fiction received a Compositional Excellence Citation by the New York Youth Symphony.
Joel's first work for wind ensemble, Aurora Borealis, was recently selected for performance at the 2013 SCI National Conference. In a recent review of 2013 SXSW events, Capital Public Radio's Nick Brunner commented that "The Peace of Wild Things" was a "gorgeous piece of music, wafting along into the ether."
His film scores include the documentary film Stitched, official selection at the 2011 Carmel Art and Film Festival, as well as a short film Kidfellas, “Best Musical Score” at Houston’s 2011 48-Hour Film Project. Other notable collaborations with artists from other disciplines feature a city-wide public art exhibit with artist Karyn Olivier, Inboud: Houston, and a 3-month installation by Prince V. Thomas, On Joy, On Sorrow at the Houston Center for Photography, praised by the Houston Chronicle as ”a beautiful piece that feels cleansing to watch”.
Joel is currently pursuing a DMA from the University of Texas at Austin and holds degrees from The University of Houston’s Moores School of Music and Lamar University’s Mary Morgan Department of Music. You can hear his music and keep up-to-date with his goings on at www.joellove.com
Tina Tallon
Tina Tallon (b. 1990) is a San Diego-based composer, soprano, and music theorist about to begin her doctoral studies in composition at the University of California, San Diego. Her music has been performed in the US, Australia, and Europe by ensembles and performers such as the Calder Quartet, the Lydian String Quartet, members of the JACK Quartet, the Genkin Philharmonic, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Beattie, soprano Tony Arnold, and clarinetist Greg Oakes, among others. Tina has held fellowships and residencies at the 2012 New Music on the Point Contemporary Chamber Music Program, the 2012 Cortona Sessions for New Music, the 2013 Art of Migration Festival at UC Davis, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Academically, her research interests include the relationship between somaesthetics and music cognition, computational modeling of relationships between pitch and duration based upon Newtonian mechanics, development of software for spectral analysis and composition, algorithmic composition, and computational approaches to musicological inquiry. In addition to grants from Brandeis University, Tina won one of five inaugural Katzin Prize Fellowships to fund her research at UCSD. Tina holds S. B. degrees in Biological Engineering and Music from MIT, and an M.F.A in Composition and Music Theory from Brandeis University. Her primary teachers include Peter Child, David Rakowski, and Yu-Hui Chang.
Zackery Wilson
The music of composer and pianist Zackery Wilson (b. 1986) includes a wide range of works of both classical (orchestral, chamber, solo, and electronic) and of popular (film, television, and video game) musical traditions.
Raised in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, Wilson began his composition studies in 2004 at West Virginia University, received his Master’s degree at the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently a third-year doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. Wilson has studied piano with Christine Kefferstan and composition with Dan Welcher, Russell Pinkston, Yevgeniy Sharlat, David Taddie, and John Beall.
Wilson's works have been presented by many ensembles and festivals around the world, including the Miró Quartet, the Zenith Quintet, the Sarasvati Trio, the UT New Music Ensemble under the direction of Dan Welcher, the WVU Graduate String Quartet, Electric LaTex (2008, 2010, 2011), Electronic Music Midwest (2010), GAMMA-UT (2009, 2011), ICMC (2011), and the SEAMUS National Conference (2011).
Major awards in composition include the 2009 Templeton Symposium Competition award, an ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition Finalist (2011), ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award Finalist (2010, 2011, 2012), and 1st Place in the College/University division of the 2013 DSO/VOC Texas Young Composers Project.
In addition to his ties to academia, Wilson is also associated with the video game music scene, having written various original video game soundtracks and having released music through Ubiktune, a chiptune and video game inspired music netlabel.
Miguel Angel Bezanilla Naranjo
David Biedenbender
Nikolet Burzyñska
Kai-Young Chan
Melody Eötvös
J.M. Gerraughty
Anthony Green
Joel Love
Tina Tallon
Zackery Wilson