Ryan Carter

Ryan Carter composes for instruments, voices, and computers. Carter's work often explores new musical possibilities presented by emerging technologies, while remaining critical of the assumptions and unintended side effects embedded in them. Alternately playful, quirky, visceral, and intense, his music has been described by The New York Times as "imaginative ... like, say, a Martian dance party." Carter has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the National Flute Association, the MATA Festival, the Metropolis Ensemble, Present Music, The Milwaukee Children's Choir, and the Calder Quartet, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and the American Composers Forum. Carter has collaborated with the Berkeley Symphony, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Nieuw Ensemble, the JACK Quartet, the Mivos Quartet, Quartetto Maurice, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, Yarn/Wire, and many others. In addition to composing acoustic music, Carter is an avid computer musician and programmer. His iMonkeypants app (available for download on the App Store) is an album of algorithmically generated, listener-interactive electronica. Carter holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BMus), Stony Brook University (MA), and New York University (PhD). He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Hamilton College.

Wendy Wan-Ki Lee

Wendy Wan-Ki Lee is an Associate Professor of Music Composition and currently the Head of Graduate Division at the Music Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. in Composition and Theory from the University of Michigan. Prior to CUHK, she held teaching positions at Oberlin College and SUNY Binghamton.

Lee  is the recipient of composition commissions and honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Aspen Music Festival, Banff School of Arts, Chicago Ensemble, Contemporary Record Society, Fifth New Ariel Piano Composition Competition, Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Hong Kong Composers’ Guild, Orford Arts Centre, Renée B. Fisher Composer Award, TEMPO, and many others. Her music is published by Potenza Music (United States) and appears on several album labels. Recently, her double bass solo—Black Lacquer—was the prescribed piece for the First Maggini Double Bass Competition in Zhongshan, China.

Lee is an avid advocate of contemporary works with diverse musical interests. At CUHK, she was awarded a Humanities Fellowship to work on a project that involves music, science, and dance. The highlights of this collaboration were featured in Detroit Performs on Detroit Public Television. Lee is interested in interdisciplinary research, and her work on music by Chinese-American composers has appeared in several journal articles. She had served on the Committee on Diversity, and the Committee on the Status of Women of the Society for Music Theory.

Chi-hin Leung

Dr. Chi-hin Leung’s compositions mix elements of East and West, and in the process reveal the composer’s diverse cultural background and his particular interest in timbral and textural explorations. He was awarded the Gold Medal from International Invention Innovation Competition in Canada, the Special Prize from the Romanian Inventors Forum, the champion from Hong Kong Handbell Festival Composition Contest, first runner-up at New Generation, and won Hong Kong Composers’ Guild Audience Choice Award. Leung’s compositions and recordings are published by Schott Music (Germany), MOECK (Germany), Donemus (Netherlands), Edition HH (U.K.), PARMA Recordings (United States), From the Top Music (United States), Oxford University Press (China), and the Hong Kong Composers’ Guild. His works have been featured by ISCM World New Music Days, UNESCO International “Arts for Peace” Festival, International Rostrum of Composers, International Electronic Music Week, World Choir Games, International Handbell Symposium, ISME World Conference on Music Education, Asian Composers League Festival, Asian Recorder Festival, Asian Saxophone Congress, Singapore Saxophone Symposium, Summa Cum Laude International Youth Music Festival Vienna, Taipei Traditional Arts Festival, Musicarama, Hong Kong Schools Music Festival, and many more.

Leung received his Doctor of Music (Composition), Master of Philosophy (Composition), Bachelor of Education (Music), and Professional Diploma (Electronic Music) from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Institute of Education, and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts respectively. Leung holds FTCL in Music Composition and LMusTCL in Music Theory, Criticism, and Literature. He is the President of the Hong Kong Association for Music Educators (HAME), Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Composers’ Guild (HKCG), and Commissioner of the Music in School and Teacher Education Commission (MISTEC) of the International Society of Music Education (ISME). He is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts at the Education University of Hong Kong.

Igor Karača

Dr. Igor Karača is a Bosnian-American composer and pianist of classical and jazz music. Most of Karača's work has been for chamber ensembles and electronic media. He employs a wide variety of techniques, ranging from controlled aleatoric, free-jazz inspired textures, to more traditional, neoclassical style; he usually aims to make his work accessible to a relatively large audience.  After taking private music lessons, Karača studied music at the Academy of Music in Sarajevo under Josip Magdić and Andjelka Bego-Simunić. He graduated in 1996 with a BM in music composition, and has since been a guest at different masterclasses in Europe, working with Boguslaw Schaeffer, Klaus Huber, Helmut Lachenmann, Marc-André Dalbavie, and Marco Stroppa, among others. In 1999 Karača came to United States to study composition with Dr. Thomas Wells at the Ohio State University, from which he received his DMA in 2005.

Karača has written three symphonies, a suite for wind ensemble, concertante works for clarinet and piano, 30 electro-acoustic compositions, over 70 chamber compositions, including the award-winning Wind Trio Between Walls for violin, clarinet and piano, Filigree for saxophone, accordion, vibraphone and piano, and Handful of Dust for bass clarinet and piano. Karača composed dramatic scores for three motion pictures—A House Over the Rainbow, Sarajevo War Diary, and Tell Me Your Name Again—and four theater plays: Twelfth Night, Fate of a Cockroach, As You Like It, and Requiem for 'Bird' Parker Recent performances include premieres in the United States, Croatia, Ireland, Serbia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and other performances in Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden.  He was a member of Sarajevo Jazz Quartet, jazz quintet Happy End, and Bosnian pop-rock band Punkt, for which he played piano, Hammond organ and electronic keyboards. Karača teaches courses on music composition, counterpoint, jazz improvisation, orchestration, technology, and theory at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater. He is a Visiting Full Professor of Music at Sarajevo Music Academy, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Ingrid Stölzel

Ingrid Stölzel has been hailed “as a composer of considerable gifts” who is “musically confident and bold” by National Public Radio’s classical music critic. Her music has been described as “tender and beautiful” (American Record Guide) and as creating a “haunting feeling of lyrical reflection and suspension in time and memory” (Classical-Modern Review). At the heart of her compositions is a belief that music can create a profound emotional connection with the listener.

Stölzel’s compositions are performed in concert halls and festivals worldwide, including the Seoul Arts Center, Merkin Concert Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Thailand International Composition Festival, Festival Osmose (Belgium), Vox Feminae Festival (Israel), Festival of New Music at Florida State (United States), Beijing Modern Music Festival (China), Festival of New American Music (United States), and SoundOn Festival of Modern Music (United States). Her music has won awards in numerous competitions, among them recently the Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer's Award, Red Note Composition Competition, the Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers, and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra Competition. Her solo album THE GORGEOUS NOTHINGS was released by Navona Records in July 2018.  Stölzel is on the composition faculty at the University of Kansas. www.ingridstolzel.com

Jonah Elrod

Jonah Elrod is a composer who researches cycles and signals from the Earth and incorporates them into his music. His works are inspired by and engage with issues surrounding sustainability and human perception of the natural world. His compositions have been performed at numerous new music concerts and festivals including the John Donald Robb Composers Symposium, the Midwest Composers Symposium, the Exchange of Midwest Composers Conference, the Iowa Composers Forum Winter Festival, the Baltimore Composers Forum Spring Concert, the Wisconsin Alliance for Composers Festival, the New Music on the Bayou Festival, the New Music Gathering, the iHearIC concert series, and the New Gallery Series. He currently serves as a board member of the Iowa Composers Forum and is a member of the Society of Composers, Inc., the International Alliance for Women in Music, SEAMUS, The Society of Music Theory, the Baltimore Composers Forum, the American Composers Forum, and the College Music Society. He is a Ph.D. graduate in music composition from the University of Iowa where he served as an Associate Director of the Electronic Music Studios and was a performer in the University of Iowa Laptop Orchestra. As an educator, Elrod has taught music composition, music theory, and aural skills as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Luther College in Decorah IA and as an Associate Lecturer of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He also worked as an instructor of music composition and music theory at Camp COFAC, a summer music program for high school students at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. For more information, please visit www.jonahelrod.com.

Leah Reid

Leah Reid is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. Her primary research interests involve the perception, modeling, and compositional applications of timbre. In her works, timbre acts as a catalyst for exploring new soundscapes, time, space, perception, and color.

 
In recent reviews, Reid’s works have been described as “immersive,” “haunting,” and “shimmering.” She has won numerous awards, including the International Alliance for Women in Music's Pauline Oliveros Prize for her piece Pressure, the Film Score Award for her piece Ring, Resonate, Resound in Frame Dance Productions’ Music Composition Competition, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her works are frequently performed throughout Europe and North America, with notable premieres by Accordant Commons, Ensemble Móbile, the JACK Quartet, McGill’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, Neave Trio, Sound Gear, Talea, and Yarn/Wire. Her compositions have been presented at festivals and conferences throughout the world, including Aveiro_Síntese (Portugal), BEAST FEaST (England), EviMus (Germany), Forgotten Spaces: EuroMicrofest (Germany), the International Computer Music Conference (United States), IRCAM’s ManiFeste (France), the San Francisco Tape Music Festival (United States), Série de Música de Câmara (Brazil), the Sound and Music Computing Conference (Germany), the Tilde New Music Festival (Australia), and the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium (Canada), among many others.

 
Reid received her D.M.A. and M.A. in music composition from Stanford University and her B.Mus from McGill University. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, where she teaches courses in music composition and technology. Additional information may be found at www.leahreidmusic.com.

Matthew Heap

Matthew Heap, born in 1981, is an internationally performed composer. Allan Kozinn of the New York Times called his music “engagingly noisy…[and] rhythmically sharp-edged.” He has had major performances by the Talea Ensemble, Alia Musica Pittsburgh, TEMPO, Duo Scordatura, and the SIGNAL ensemble. His teachers include Eric Moe, Nancy Galbraith, Leonardo Balada, Amy Williams, and Mathew Rosenblum. He is currently working on a full-length opera about the intersection of gender and power in politics. His compositions range dramatically from completely atonal concert music to musical theatre.  He believes in using the techniques and materials that best express the idea that he is hoping to represent, whether they be microtones, multiphonics, 12-tone practices, or triadic harmony. He teaches composition and theory at West Virginia University.

Nathaniel Haering

Nathaniel Haering is deeply interested in the use of live electronics to expand the artistic capabilities of traditional instruments and augment their timbral horizons while enriching their expressive and improvisational possibilities. This perspective is also highly influential and represented in the gestural power and extended sound worlds of his purely acoustic work. He has collaborated with and had works performed by Grammy Award-winning Vietnamese performer and composer Vân Ánh Võ, Trio Accanto, Ensemble Mise-En, Mivos string quartet, and members of WasteLAnd and Ensemble Dal Niente. Winner of the 2018 mixed media Award of Distinction from Matera Intermedia Festival in Matera, Italy and official runner up for the Tribeca New Music Award, Haering’s work can also be found on Volume 27 of Music from SEAMUS. Haering’s pieces have recently been featured at the International Computer Music Conference in Shanghai, China, and Seoul, South Korea, the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium in Toronto, Canada, Noisefloor Festival at Staffordshire University UK, VIPA in Valencia, Spain, WOCMAT in Taiwan, CMSS Festival in Seoul, South Korea, and SEAMUS 2018 Conference at the University of Oregon. Haering is pursuing a PhD in Music Composition at the University of California San Diego and recently completed his Master’s degree at Bowling Green State University where he studied with Dr. Elainie Lillios and Dr. Mikel Kuehn. Previously, he received his undergraduate degree in composition from Western Michigan University where he studied with Dr. Christopher Biggs and Dr. Lisa R. Coons.