School of Music

Master musicians Kim Won Min (Korea National University of Arts), Kim Dong Hwan “Choori” and Kim So Min will demonstrate Samulnori, Korean folk percussion music, including traditional rhythms as well as new work and experiments.

Samulnori, with roots in Korean farmers’ harvest rituals and shaman ceremonies, is characterized by strong, accented rhythms, vibrant physicality, and energetic spirit. Each instrument - janggu, jing, buk, and kkwaenggwari - are said to respectively embody rain, wind, clouds, and thunder.

Other special guests including Jessika Kenney, Eyvind Kang, Scarlett Choi and Roger Kim will share new hybrid works. Artists from California Institute of the Arts will perform ‘동행’ (Donghaeng), a culminating piece of their week-long residency at the CalArts School of Music.

This event is supported in part by the Nick England Intercultural Arts Project (ICAP) Grant.

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Juanjosé Rivas will be presenting a Winter Session workshop along with Carmina Escobar on circuit bending toys, voice recorders, and instrument building that is aimed to explore identity, syncretism, creativity, and the interpretive capacities of voice embodiment. This space is directed to construct customized artifacts of aleatory sounds. It contains the participants recorded voices to generate new works in the realms of sound art, improvised music, and installation using concepts of philosophy of Voice and Media as a conceptual frame of reference.

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Steuart Liebig grew up in Los Angeles and started playing jazz in high school. At the age of nineteen he started playing rhythm guitar. He became interested in improvised music and composition and formed the group, Quartetto Stig, with instruments violin, trumpet, drum, and a newly self-developed double bass. With this group, his compositions began to come to life. In 2005, he was the named bassist in the DownBeat poll, and in 2008 he was nominated for the Alpert Awards in the Arts.

G. E. Stinson is an American guitarist and founding member of new age/electronic musical group Shadowfax. Inspired by blues masters such as Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters, He remained with the band for six albums and departed Shadowfax after recording The Odd Get Even (1989), entering the Los Angeles underground music community to refine his 'extended technique' and 'frequency manipulation'. G.E. Stinson’s guitar playing through the years has shape-shifted through blues, rock, fusion/hybrid, extended techniques, and unfettered galactic core energy noise-scapes. Stinson is a definitive voice in the improvisational music scene in Los Angeles. 

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Widely considered to be one of the preeminent artists in the field of experimental hip-hop, and described by Rolling Stone magazine as “responsible for the invention of avant-garde rap,” HPrizm is a founding member of the critically acclaimed Antipop Consortium.

In the course of his career, spanning nearly a decade, With over 100,000 records sold, Prizm has shared the stages with a spectrum of artists including Radiohead, Mos Def, The Roots and Wadada Leo Smith. As a composer his pieces have been installed in the Whitney Biennial (NYC) as well as the Mazzoli Gallery (Italy). Prizm’s personal study and appreciation of audio synthesis have also allowed him to provide innovative presets and sound design for several keyboard and software manufacturers such as KORG, Propellerhead and Native Instruments.

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Bobby Lee Bradford is an American jazz trumpeter, cornetist, bandleader, and composer. He was born in Cleveland, MS in 1934 and attended Huston-Tillotson University. In October 2009, Bradford became the second recipient of the Festival of New Trumpet Music's Award of Recognition.

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 "Holding an acoustic mirror up to nature..." Environmental soundartist/composer, Philip Blackburn, will present and discuss some of his site-specific events and installations that are aimed at experiencing an aural sense of place, a "phonographic psychogeography." 

“…typified by an oneiric temperament which belies the painstaking assemblage of constituents that characterizes them ... The result is comparable to a protracted hallucination, distinguishable traces emerging from the indefinite awareness of a somewhat mystical inscrutability." — Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

“…impressive work that blurs the lines between composition, sampling, ambiance, and performance.” — Steve Holtje, The Big Takeover

“apocalyptic collisions of material with intimate vocal refrains and meticulously organized instrumental interludes." — Philip Clark, The Wire

"[A] wild journey through the dreamscape of a hyperimaginative chorister... All of this music confirms Blackburn as a startlingly original voice, one that encompasses all periods of music history in a uniquely engaging vision." — Marc Medwin, Signal to Noise

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Kraft is an award-winning songwriter, film composer, recording artist and record producer. As President of Fox Music from 1994 to 2012, Kraft was the Executive in Charge of Music for more than 300 Fox feature films, as well as dozens of TV shows.

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MEDUSA, aka The Gangsta Goddess, and The High Priestess of Hip Hop,  is widely acknowledged as a legend of the LA Underground Hip Hop scene. 

Beginning as a pop-locker with the Groove-Atrons, she won “Best Female Dancer” in the 1st Hip Hop Dance Awards at The Palladium. She honed her skills as an MC in the Good Life Café and Leimert Park’s “Project Blowed” Workshop, alongside Freestyle Fellowship, Black Eye Peas, Macy Grey, and Xzibit.  With S.I.N., her song Power of the P is regarded as a West Coast Hip Hop classic.

The LA Weekly voted MEDUSA “BEST HIP-HOP ARTIST” for two years in a row; she also received a Grammy for her performance with the band Ozomatli.

She wrote, produced and directed My Momma Raised a G for the HBO film Stranger Inside in which she played the role of Leisha. Her other film and screen credits include Life is a Traffic Jam, featuring the late Tupac Shakur, and the sitcom Moesha where she played Lady Lunatic. 

MEDUSA is also a motivational speaker, being asked to give her knowledge and opinion at colleges and seminars on the effect of hip-hop on children and women, in relations to culture and life, MEDUSA has spoken the 26th Annual Black Conscious Conference and at UCLA for the African American Music Festival.

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Courtney Bryan is a native of New Orleans, La, is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (New York Times). Her music ranges from solo works to large ensembles in the new music and jazz idioms, film scores, and collaborations with dancers, visual artists, writers, and actors, and is in conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and other types of experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. Focusing on bridging the sacred and the secular, Bryan's compositions explore human emotions through sound, confronting the challenge of notating the feeling of improvisation. Bryan has academic degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM), Rutgers University (MM), and a DMA in music composition from Columbia University of New York, with advisor George Lewis. She has been an instructor at Columbia University and Oberlin Conservatory, and a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department for African American Studies at Princeton University. Bryan is currently an Assistant Professor of Music in the Newcomb Department of Music at Tulane University, and the composer-in-residence with the Jacksonville Symphony. She has two independent recordings, “Quest for Freedom” (2007) and "This Little Light of Mine" (2010).

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For over a decade, John Storie has been an active contributor to the jazz scene throughout Los Angeles, CA. As a founding member of the New West Guitar Group, John has performed across the country and gained recognition as a well-respected jazz guitarist.

In 2012, John joined actor Jeff Goldblum's "Mildred Snitzer Orchestra" and has since performed in Goldblum's weekly show at Rockwell Table and Stage. His performances in the MSO have been featured on NBC/Universal television, Comedy Central, and CBS television and reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, GQ Magazine, Vice Magazine, and Los Angeles Magazine. 

John attended both the University of Southern California (B.M. '06) and the California Institute of the Arts (M.F.A. '12). He currently teaches privately throughout Los Angeles and is an adjunct applied music teacher at Pierce College in Winnetka, CA

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Ms. Kim will give a presentation of her work, with an emphasis on the more recent projects.  Then  open it up to discussion about sound/image, multimedia collaboration, site-specificity, analog meets digital, improvisation, structured improvisation, performative contexts,...plus any burning topics that are in the minds of the students.

Carole Kim is a media artist with a focus on video projection for multi-media installation, performance and photography. She has a very hands-on, tactile approach to the materials she works with, pushing the moving image to take on optical, spatial and dimensional form. She is interested in the integration of disciplines where all media are on a level playing field working in tandem towards creating the entirety of an experience.

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Tina Raymond’s highly praised debut CD Left Right Left is a musical journey through the American Progressive movement. Raymond conceived of the project in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. The frustration that she felt in the days that followed quickly turned into a desire to act, using her music as an expression of resistance. 

Since moving to Los Angeles in 2008, Tina Raymond has been steadily building a reputation as an inventive, first-call drummer. She’s shared the stage with many jazz luminaries including Bobby Bradford, Bennie Maupin, Emil Richards, Art Lande, and Vinny Golia. She can be heard on several albums, including Cathlene Pineda’s “A Week’s Time," Jon Armstrong’s “Burnt Hibiscus," and “The Harold Trio,” also featuring Amy K Bormet and Biggi Vinkeloe. 

She is currently a full-time professor of music at Los Angeles City College in Hollywood, CA, one of just a few women throughout the country who have a full-time faculty position in jazz. Besides being a mainstay on the Southern California jazz scene, she performs, adjudicates, and presents workshops worldwide at a variety of venues, festivals, and conventions. Raymond attended California Institute of the Arts, studying African ewe music with Ghanaian chief Alfred Ladzekpo, and jazz drum set with Joe LaBarbera, Jeff Hamilton, and John Von Ohlen. Raymond is endorsed by Sabian, Regal Tip, and Remo.

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Kiran, who performs as Madame Gandhi, is a Los Angeles-based musician, activist and music industry thinker, listed as Forbes 30 Under 30 music class of 2019. She has toured professionally drumming for M.I.A and Thievery Corporation and currently DJs, drums and produces music under her own name. Her song “The Future is Female” climbed to #8 on the Viral US Top 50 Spotify Charts following the 2017 Women’s March and her solo EP Voices has received critical acclaim from outlets like The New York Times, Vogue, FADER, Billboard and Paper Mag. Her 2018 TED talk about diversity and inclusion has been seen over 150,000 times. Kiran holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics, Political Science and Women’s Studies from Georgetown (COL ’11) and an MBA from Harvard Business School (2015). Between 2011-2013, Kiran worked at Interscope Records for two years as their first ever digital analyst, studying patterns in Spotify and YouTube consumption behavior. In 2015, she ran the London Marathon free-bleeding to combat period stigma around the world, sparking a global viral conversation about how we treat menstruation in various cultures. She now travels often to perform and speak about modern gender equality, and is also working on her full-length album. Madame Gandhi’s mission is to elevate and celebrate the female voice.

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Did you know that Latin America is the land of the harp? Did you know that the official national dances” of Venezuela, Paraguay, and Chile are harp music? Did you know that ‘La Bamba’ is harp music from 18th century Veracruz, Mexico? The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts, in collaboration with CalArts LatinFest, is proud to present renowned harpist Alfredo Rolando Ortiz for the free LatinFest Harp Day. Ortiz will be presenting a harp composition workshop, masterclass, injury prevention workshop, and performance. All events are open to the public and harpists of any skill level, and there is no need to bring an instrument.

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Reas' software, prints, and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His work ranges from small works on paper to urban-scale installations and he balances solo work in the studio with collaborations with architects and musicians. Reas' work is in a range of private and public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Reas is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a masters degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Sciences and a bachelor's degree from the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. With Ben Fry, Reas initiated Processing in 2001; Processing is an open-source programming language and environment for the visual arts.

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Composer Chris Paul Harman will discuss two very different recent works involving the human voice. 

"This Is Not America" (2012), written to commemorate the centenary of John Cage's birth, models the hymn tune "Old North (Morning Hymn)" by the 18th-century American choral composer William Billings, a tune likewise used by Cage in his "Apartment House 1776" (1976). "

...with silver bells and cockle shells..." (2018), a song cycle for soprano and orchestra, supports and subverts conventional expectations of dominant-tonic tonal relationships outlined by the twenty-one children's nursery rhyme songs upon which the work is based.

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Thomas Buckner’s presentation is based on works that were written for and dedicated to him by the major American pioneers of electronic music. He analyzes their compositions, giving insights into their creative processes and methods of work which one can only gain through direct professional collaboration and friendship. Thomas Buckner has worked with such artists as Pauline Oliveros, David Wessel, Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, Annea Lockwood and more.

Thomas Buckner, recipient of the American Music Center’s Letter of Distinction, has for decades championed music of the avant-garde in America and throughout the world as a performer, producer, and advocate. A former student of the legendary Metropolitan Opera baritone, Martial Singher, Buckner has continued throughout his career to broaden the scope of his vocal styles, specializing in a wide range of experimental music and collaborating with a host of “new music” composers including Christian Wolff, Robert Ashley, Noah Creshevsky, Earl Howard, Matthias Kaul, Leroy Jenkins, Bun Ching Lam, Annea Lockwood, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, Wadada Leo Smith, Chinary Ung, and many others.

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Whether he's leading his own group or singing with the Pharoah Sanders Quartet or acting as the vocal director for the Horace Tapscott Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra or collaborating with the likes of Bobby Hutcherson, Kamasi Washington, Jr., Charles Lloyd, or Oscar Brown, Jr., Dwight Trible is a jazz singer who prizes a sense of adventure, musicians, and modernity. In addition to singing with experimental jazz musicians, he sang contemporary R&B with L.A. Reid and Patrice Rushen, and seized the opportunity to record with electronica and hip-hop outfits, such as his 2005 collaboration with Carlos Nino, a distinction that distinguishes him from many of his jazz peers.

Released on Passinthevibe, Living Water was his breakthrough in 2004, earning a nomination from BBC Radio One as Worldwide Album of the Year and a designation from LA Weekly for Artist of the Year. He was featured on Venus of Harlem, a 2008 album by Paul Zauner's Blue Brass, and he released a pair of albums called Cosmic and Duality, the latter being a duet album with John Beasley. Trible's profile increased considerably when he sang lead vocals on Kamasai Washington's 2015 record The Epic, the rare jazz album to find a crossover audience. In its wake, Gondwana Records signed the singer. His first album for the label was Inspirations, a 2017 collaborative album with Matthew Halsall.

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Nicholas Semrad is going to give a talk broadly based on touring. He’ll touch on topics such as "how to get a touring gig", "how to KEEP a touring gig", things you can do to maximize your presence even if you're not in a scene while touring, and what to prepare for once you land a touring gig.

Mr. Semrad is a keyboardist/producer based out of Los Angeles. He currently tours with Cory Henry and the Funk Apostles, Mark Giuliana's Beat Music, Donny McCaslin, and Knower, and has previously toured with Ms. Lauryn Hill, Bootsy Collins, Liv Warfield (of Prince's New Power Generation), Australian pop star Meg Mac and Terrace Martin. He also takes part in a beta-testing and a patch design role for both Yamaha and Dave Smith Instruments and has previously released 2 well-received patch sets for Nord Keyboards. Nicholas teaches and gives master classes both while touring and while at home and has taken more than 100 private students in the past year. He recently released a "beat-tape" entitled Ratio in a collaborative effort with young San Antonio production duo, Expansions of Q that is available on all major platforms.

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Neal Acree is an award-winning composer for film, television and video game. He has scored over 30 feature films, contributed music to the massively popular Blizzard Entertainment video game franchise World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Overwatch, as well as the Chinese MMO Revelation Online. His television work include Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Witchblade and the first season of Sanctuary.  A versatile and prolific composer with roots in classical, rock and electronic music, Acree's music has been recorded and performed by orchestras and choirs around the world, including the hit concert tour Video Games Live.

In addition to winning three Hollywood Music In Media Awards, a Golden Reel Award, six Game Audio Network Guild Awards and four Global Music Awards, he was also nominated for a BAFTA, four Academy Of Interactive Arts and Sciences Awards, two ASCAP Composer's Choice Awards as well as numerous critic awards.

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Considered by many to be one of the finest bassists in the world, Jennifer Leitham has been a career jazz musician for over 45 years. Known for playing with many music world masters, including Mel Tormé, Peggy Lee, George Shearing, Doc Severinsen, Woody Herman, Benny Carter, Louis Bellson, Take 6 and k.d. lang, along with countless other greats in many genres. 

She is a bassist, vocalist, composer, arranger, lyricist and producer.  Her bass lines have graced numerous movies and TV shows. Currently, Jennifer leads her trio and plays in clubs and concerts around the world. Jennifer is also a member of the Stan Kenton Legacy Orchestra and the acclaimed Left Coast Uke.

Jennifer has played on over 130 albums, including 10 albums of her own. Her latest release, MOOD(S)WINGS, was the #1 Crossover Jazz top seller on CD Baby for over 8 weeks and was voted one of the top three Jazz CDs of 2015 by the readers of JazzEd Magazine. She was featured as one of the top 20 pioneers in Vanity Fair’s“Trans America” '15 Edition. In 2016, L.A. Weekly named her as one of the “50 Most Interesting Angelenos.”

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Sean will discuss the use of the harp in his chamber music, film scores and in theater with analysis and recordings. He will share his scores and also talk about the instrument in relationship to improvisation.

For decades, Sean Griffin has been a pivotal figure in contemporary music, new opera, performance and art communities of Los Angeles and abroad. Griffin has composed, directed, conducted and produced new intermedia works bringing to life dazzling, challenging interpretations to the stage and the gallery with his opera design and performance consortium called Opera Povera. Their productions, recordings, live performances, and designs have been featured at MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, RedCat, LACMA, Schindler House, 56th Venice Biennial, Chicago’s MCA, Ostrava Days Festival, 2017 Ojai Festival, The Broad Museum, LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series at the Disney Hall, MaerzMusik - Berliner Festspiele, and Performance Space New York.

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113 Composers Collective will work with Michael Pisaro’s Experimental Music Workshop on a realization of Hans-Joachim Hespos’ “– Z … ( )” in open rehearsal.

113 (One Thirteen), a collection of composers and performers of new music based in the Twin Cities, curates concerts, seminars, and master classes throughout the United States and Europe. Through ambitious programming, community building, educational outreach, and emphasis on extensive interaction between composers and performers, 113 provides a platform for musicians pursuing bold, personalized artistic visions, and helps them to transmit those visions as directly and honestly as possible to a receptive audience, unfettered by university politics, market pressures, or established conventions.

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Gerry Hemingway has led a number of quartet & quintets since the mid 80’s as well as being a member of a wide array of collaborative groups including BassDrumBone (whom celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2017), Brew w/Reggie Workman & Miya Masaoka, a trio with Georg Graewe & Ernst Reijseger, the Swiss based WHO trio with Michel Wintsch and Baenz Oester, Tree Ear with Sebastian Strinning and Manuel Troller, as well as numerous duo projects with Marilyn Crispell, Samuel Blaser, Thomas Lehn, John Butcher, Ellery Eskelin, Jin-Hi Kim, a o. Mr. Hemingway is a Guggenheim fellow and has received numerous commissions for chamber and orchestral works. He is well known for his eleven years in the Anthony Braxton Quartet along with his collaborations with some of the world’s most outstanding improvisers and composers including Evan Parker, Cecil Taylor, Mark Dresser, Anthony Davis, Derek Bailey, Leo Smith, Frank Gratkowski, Simon Nabatov and many others. He currently lives in Switzerland having joined the faculty of the Hochschule Luzern in 2009.

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A virtuoso violinist, violist, pianist, conductor, and composer, Mark Menzies enjoys an active international career in several capacities as a performer, facilitator, and educator. Averse to being called a specialist, Menzies has embraced many periods and styles of music, from medieval to contemporary works, including various crossover projects. Menzies made his debut in 1988 at the International Festival of the Arts in Wellington, New Zealand, performing Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor on television with Maxim Shostakovich conducting the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Since the late 1990s, Menzies has played less of the standard repertoire, devoting his energies instead to performing chamber music with the Formalist Quartet as violinist and violist, and playing challenging contemporary works by Rand Steiger, Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Finissy, Sofia Gubaidulina, Sylvano Bussotti, Helmut Lachenmann, Peter Maxwell Davies, Elliott Carter, and Roger Reynolds, among others. From 1999 to 2016, Menzies was professor of violin and viola, and the coordinator of conducting studies and ensembles at the California Institute of the Arts. He became a professor of music at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand in 2016. Honored as an associate of the Royal Academy of Music in London in 2014, Menzies divides his time between New Zealand and the United States.

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Jérôme Nika is a researcher and computer music designer. He graduated from the French Grandes Écoles Télécom ParisTech and ENSTA ParisTech. In addition, he studied acoustics, signal processing and computer science applied to music (multidisciplinary Master’s degree ATIAM in sciences and technologies for music, Sorbonne Université, Télécom ParisTech, Ircam), and composition. His PhD work Guiding Human-Computer music improvisation (Young Researcher Prize in Science and Music, 2015; Young Researcher Prize awarded by the French Association of Computer Music, 2016) focused on the introduction of authoring, composition, and control in human-computer music co-improvisation. Through the development of the software instruments ImproteK and DYCI2 in collaboration with Ircam (Paris, France), his research focuses on the integration of scenarios in music generation processes, and on the dialectic between reactivity and planning in interactive human-computer music improvisation. These projects led to more than 50 performances in collaboration with composers or improvisers in the past three years (Annenberg Center, Philadelphia, USA; Centre Pompidou, Collège de France, Le Centquatre, Paris, France; Montreux Jazz festival, Switzerland).

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Stephanie Cheng Smith is a composer, performer and programmer who creates interactive pieces, installations, improvisations and through-composed works. She often uses electronics, violin and light, and her explorations with motor arrays have been featured in the latest issue of Experimental Music Yearbook. Smith frequently performs electronic music under the name Stephie’s Castle, is a member of networked music ensemble bitpanic, and has composed for and performed as a member of the Dog Star Orchestra. Serving on the wulf.’s Artistic Advisory Board, she also curates and produces experimental music concerts in the Los Angeles area. She has studied composition at the University of Chicago with Kotoka Suzuki and earned an MFA in Experimental Sound Practices and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts. In addition to her creative work, she currently teaches interactive programming at CalArts and works as a web developer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Ms. Pitan will lead a group study/open rehearsal of "Big Job," a big map. With Pisaro's experimental music workshop.

Sarah Pitan is from Boston, now in LA and is interested in score-making and the construction of flat objects.

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Presentation of two projects in the field of artistic research: "Transcoding" and "GAPPP."

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Natalie Robehmed is a Los Angeles-based producer and DJ, making music as Ghorba. She throws a party series, FM+, for womxn and nonbinary people, and helps run a workshop program, FeM Synth Lab, that fosters music production among femmes. Her debut album, Zero Threat to the Rave, was released on Jacktone Records in November; it was included in Fact Mag's best house and techno of 2018. She has also released as half of ecstatic rave duo DIVORCE (Fatt Grabbers, Sweat Equity). She records all of her tracks using hardware in single takes with no editing and applies the same freewheeling style to her live and DJ sets. She holds a degree in music and English literature from Columbia University; during the day, she works as a journalist.

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Ken Filiano performs throughout the world, playing and recording with leading artists in jazz, spontaneous improvisation, classical, world/ethnic, and interdisciplinary performance, fusing the rich traditions of the double bass with his own seemingly limitless inventiveness. Ken’s solo bass CD, subvenire (NineWinds), received widespread critical praise. For this and numerous other recordings, Ken has been called “a creative virtuoso, a master of technique . . . a paradigm of that type of artist. . . who can play anything in any context and make it work, simply because he puts the music first and leaves peripheral considerations behind.”

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Los Angeles Philharmonic pianist Joanne Pearce Martin in Piano Workshop - all welcome to attend! Composers don’t miss this chance to ask questions about writing for keyboards in the orchestra!

Pianist Joanne Pearce Martin was appointed to the Los Angeles Philharmonic by Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2001. She holds the Katharine Bixby Hotchkis chair as the LA Phil's Principal Keyboardist. A native of Allentown, PA and a graduate of Philadelphia's Curtis Institute, she balances a busy career as soloist, chamber musician, & recording artist.  She has been featured with the LA Phil on multiple occasions at both the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall.  In 2016 she was the piano soloist in a sold-out and critically-acclaimed performance of Messiaen's epic 100-minute work “Des canyons aux étoiles” at London's Barbican Centre with the LA Phil & Gustavo Dudamel.  

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Music and Poetry of Atahualpa Yupanqui Protest Music in Latin America Guitar and Lecture by Julius Reder Carlson

Julius Reder Carlson, Assistant Professor of Music at Mount Saint Mary’s University, is an (ethno)musicologist specializing in musical activism in 20th-century Argentina and Chile. In addition to his academic work, he is the co-founder of the Santa Monica Youth Orchestra, a nonprofit organization for low-income and underrepresented youth, and the creator of MSMU’s Women in Music Festival, a celebration of music as a vehicle for positive social change. Julius holds degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, the Universidad de Chile, and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He has received Fulbright-Hays and DAAD grants for his research.

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Algorithmic Composition, illustrated by his own work: a review of the period 1971-2019
Since 1971, marking Barlow’s first departure from 14 years of spontaneous composition, his work has been mainly algorithmic in nature. Some of it was generated by algorithms developed for multiple use. In other cases, the algorithms were used once only, generating a single work each time. The algorithms ranged from verbal instructions to complex computer programs.

In this talk Barlow will refer to TXMS, Autobusk and Synthrumentator as well as a series of compositions generated by once-used software.

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Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer based in Ithaca, N.Y. whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer & trans identity, love, intimacy, psychoacoustics, and percussion. She is primarily a composer of solo and chamber works, but is also active in improvisation, film, performance art, and dance.

In late 2017 she premiered the groundbreaking work, Contralto at Issue Project Room (NYC), a film exploring transfeminine identity that uses aspects of “voice feminization” therapy as artistic material. The piece features a cast of transgender women accompanied by a dense and varied live score for string quartet and three percussionists. The work received widespread acclaim and has since been performed and screened all over the world at a variety of venues and festivals.

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A presentation and discussion on a number of recent works related to the topic of language desemanticization. Together these compositions explore how technology can utilize the human body as an acoustical space, with live performers modifying the playback environment while philosophizing on the most profound tenets of humanism.

Andrew Watts’ works, from chamber and symphonic to multimedia and electro-acoustic, are actively performed throughout the US and Europe. He researches the compositional applications of language desemanticization, focusing on the ability to convey expression through the voice even when specific meaning is lost, augmented, or otherwise unintelligible. His writing also actively explores musical extremes through gradients of freedom and restriction, ambiguity and detail, purity and distortion, along with sound and noise. Often he includes invented instruments to broaden the palette of what a performer can do. 

In the past few years Mr. Watts has written for top musicians and ensembles including Ekmeles, Proton Bern, Distractfold, RAGE Thormbones, Splinter Reeds, Quince, Line Upon Line, Tony Arnold, Séverine Ballon, and LAPQ. In 2018-2019 he will be writing a new chamber orchestra with dual soprano soloist piece for Dal Niente.

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Christine Tavolacci  is a Los Angeles based flutist, composer and educator specializing in contemporary and experimental music. Christine is active as a soloist, improviser, curator and chamber musician both in California and internationally. She is co-founder and co-director of Southland Ensemble, as well as a member of the Dog Star Orchestra and Gurrisonic. In 2006, Christine received her BFA in flute performance from California Institute of the Arts. Christine completed her Doctorate (DMA) in Contemporary Music Performance at the University of California San Diego in the spring of 2017.

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Kassandra Kocoshis has been playing percussion since she was eleven years old. She received her BM in Percussion Performance from DePaul University and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, where she studied with Randy Gloss. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, where she specializes in Pop, R&B, Soul, New Music, Rock, and Flamenco.

Since moving to Los Angeles, Kassandra has performed with Carlos Vives, Young the Giant, Vahagni, Mickey Hart, Shaherah White, Adam del Monte, Hamed Nikpay, and many more. She is a member of California soul band Beat Mosaic and the salsa band Las Chikas.

Kassandra has recorded with artists from a diverse array of genres, including Meghan Trainor, Vahagni, Soul Scratch, Beat Mosaic, and many others. She has recently contributed percussion to the Grammy nominated album Love Language by South African flutist, Wouter Kellerman and can be seen in Postmodern Jukebox's video "The Prayer" featuring American Idol stars Pia Toscano and Stefano Langone. Kassandra is a Latin Percussion (LP) and Amplified Timber artist.  

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Argenta Walther is a singer of music from the sacred medieval to the modern experimental, living and working in Los Angeles. She performs on a regular basis at some of the city's best-loved venues, including the blue whale, REDCAT, Automata, Saint John's Cathedral and the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Argenta is a frequent guest artist with modern classical, jazz, traditional classical and early music groups including Bach Collegium San Diego, People Inside Electronics, The Alexander Noice Sextet and Southland Ensemble.  She is a founder of the contemporary vocal group Accordant Commons, and is one of the directing members of Ensemble Vocatrix, a group dedicated to the music of Hildegard von Bingen. Argenta is a student of somatic movement and expression and integrates this embodied approach with her work as a music educator and performing artist. Argenta received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Voice Performance.

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Austin Antoine is a performance artist that blends music, poetry, and theatrics. His commitment to mixing all of his passions span from singing soulful solos to conquering an opposing rapper in a battle of wit. After graduating California Institute of the Arts with a BFA in acting, Austin has sustained artistic success through touring performances, rap battles, musical collaborations, and hosting creative workshops. In addition to performance he also contributes as a teaching artist and performance coach with Get Lit Words Ignite. His work can be seen with Sofar Sounds, The Guinness Book of World Records, TeamBackPack, ThatLowd, Joomanji, and TheyGotTime.

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The tuba player and composer Robin Hayward was born in Brighton, England in 1969. He studied classical music at the University of Manchester and tuba at the Royal Northern College of Music, where he graduated in 1991. In following years he was active in the improvised and experimental music scenes in Manchester and London. Since 1998 he has been based in Berlin.

He has introduced radical playing techniques to brass instruments, initially through the discovery of the 'noise-valve' in 1996, and later through the development of the first fully microtonal tuba in 2009. In 2012 he invented the Hayward Tuning Vine, partly out of a desire to visualise the harmonic space implicit within the microtonal tuba. In 2005 he founded the ensemble Zinc & Copper to explore brass chamber music from an experimental music perspective.

In 2012 the International Tuba and Euphonium Association (ITEA)presented him with the Clifford Bevan Award for Excellence in Research for his 2011 article on the history and development of the microtonal tuba. In 2016 he received the ITEA's Jim and Jamie Self Creative Award for his work with the microtonal tuba and Hayward Tuning Vine.

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Christopher Williams (1981, San Diego) is a wayfarer on the body-mind continuum. His medium is music. PhD, Leiden Univesity; BA, University of California, San Diego. As a composer and contrabassist, Williams's work runs the gamut from chamber music, improvisation, and radio art to collaborations with dancers, sound artists, and visual artists. Williams’ artistic research on improvisation, notation, and his body-mind continuum takes the form of both conventional academic publications and practice-based multimedia projects. He also curates the Berlin concert series KONTRAKLANG and works with immersive sound experience makers Charles Morrow Productions.

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Fidelia Lam is an experimental designer, artist, and researcher examining the intersections of everyday performance in physical and digital spaces, digital technologies, and Asian/North American identity, experimenting across mediums and forms to synthesize theoretical work with creative practice. Her work often attends to the overlooked, intimate, and mundane spaces and moments that are shared collectively yet experienced singularly. 

Lam is an Annenberg Fellow and PhD student in Media Arts + Practice at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA.

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Eric "King Cre8" Walker is a legendary Graffiti Artist, muralist, illustrator, graphic designer and art instructor from South Central, Los Angeles who is heavily influenced by all elements of Hip Hop, King Cre8 is best known for his ability to produce original characters. An accomplished artist, King Cre8 has exhibited his painted in many prominent galleries and museum exhibitions. As a commercial artist, he has worked for clients including General Motors,, Mars candy and Dodge. King Cre8 canvases and murals have appeared in music videos for Mya and Guniwine and films such as Friday after next and Anchorman.

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Wilfrido Terrazas (Camargo, 1974) is a Mexican flutist active since the early 1990s, whose career spans performance, commissioning, collaboration, improvisation, composition and pedagogy. His recent work has been focused on finding points of convergence between notated and improvised music, and in exploring innovative approaches to collaboration and collective creation. He is a founding member and Herald of the Mexico City-based improvisation collective Generación Espontánea since 2006. As an interpreter, Wilfrido has performed over 340 world premieres, and has been a member of Liminar ensemble since 2012. As a composer, his main interest is the exploration of dialogues between composition, improvisation and performance. As such, he has written over 40 works for diverse instrumental forces. In 2017 he was appointed Assistant Professor in Contemporary Music Performance (Flute) at the University of California, San Diego.

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The Discovery Project is an ongoing collaboration between jazz composer and pianist Josh Nelson, live improvisational video mixer Travis Flournoy, architect Jesse Ottinger and artist Claudia Carballada. The artistic goal for each presentation is to create an immersive experience of music and moving images projected onto sculptural forms, transforming a space into a fusion of sound and image.

The initial idea behind this collaboration was born from Josh Nelson's album Discoveries. He was seeking to meld early sci-fi film video montages with original jazz compositions performed by a chamber jazz ensemble in a uniquely curated experience. The result has been an exciting integration, where the video becomes light, sculpture becomes the backdrop, and the music takes center stage, enveloped by the projected art.

The Discovery Project aims to deconstruct and play with the familiar relationship of performer, audience, and space.

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Jie Ma will introduce and demonstrate traditional pipa music and culture, as well as modern pipa music. She will also talk about traditional instruments and music education in China. Jie will share her artistic journey: improv, world music, collaborations and current projects

Jie Ma is a Los Angeles-based educator, composer, concert producer, and classically trained musician on the traditional Chinese stringed instruments known as pipa and ruan. She is also the founder of One World Music Concerts, a non-profit organization aimed at promoting world music and musicians to diverse and enrich our communities.

Jie has been performing on traditional instruments both as a soloist as well as with numerous ensembles, including performing symphonic works in the Chinese and Western Classical traditions.  In recent years, she has been experimenting with the fusion of traditional Chinese instrumentation with non-traditional musical forms, blending the classics with the avant-garde, the structured with the impromptu, and the old sound with new techniques. As well as collaborating with musicians from around the world, performed and recorded for numerous film scores, video games, and plays.

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Daniel will be doing a Tech Forum Talk on creative producing and technology development for themed entertainment.

Daniel Baker is a Producer at Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), the creative force that imagines, designs and builds all Disney theme parks, resorts, attractions and cruise ships worldwide. Daniel is currently the Producer for the "Play Disney Parks" app, which turns wait time into play time with interactive in-park adventures, attraction-themed fun, Disney trivia, achievements and unique experiences that bring surrounding environments to life. Most recently, Daniel was a Producer on the WDI Marvel Global Portfolio, where he led the creative development of a new Marvel-themed land as well as an unannounced interactive attraction. Prior to that, Daniel helped manage the WDI Creative Technology Studio managing several teams of technologists, artists, programmers and innovators working on projects spanning Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), PreVisualization, Digital Media Pipeline and Multimedia Projection. Daniel graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater Design and Production and a minor in Cognitive Science.

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George Colligan is a New York based pianist, organist, drummer, trumpeter, teacher, and bandleader, who is one of the most original and compelling jazz artists of his generation. An award-winning composer (Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation grant recipient) and player (winner, Jazzconnect.com Jazz Competition), Colligan is highly in demand as a sideman, having worked with players like Cassandra Wilson, Don Byron, Buster Williams, and Lonnie Plaxico, both on the bandstand and in recording sessions (appearing on over 100 CDs). He has released 24 recordings full of his intelligent writing and impressive technique. His latest CD on the Origin Label is called ”The Endless Mysteries” and features Larry Grenadier and Jack DeJohnette. Colligan’s musical style incorporates everything from show tunes to funk, from free improvisation to 20th century classical music. His performances include dazzling technique as well as mature restraint. Colligan was on the faculty of the Juilliard School for two years and is currently an Assistant Professor at Portland State University. He is currently a member of Jack DeJohnette’s New Quintet. Recently, Colligan started playing the Hammond 44 Melodion (melodica).

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"Up in the Bronx where the people are fresh..."

Kurtis Blow has been instrumental in raising a generation of MC’s, and continues to carry the torch for hip-hop music into new arenas.

In 1979, at the age of twenty, Kurtis Blow became the first Rapper to be signed by a major label.  Mercury released “Christmas Rappin,” and it sold over 400,000 copies and it became an annual classic.  Its gold follow‑up “The Breaks” helped ignite a still‑spreading international “Rap Attack.” He released 10 Albums over 11 years -- The first entitled “Kurtis Blow”, his full length debut and his second, a Top 50 Pop Album “Deuce,” a big hit across Europe; “Party Time” which featured a pioneering fusion of Rap and Go‑Go; “Ego Trip,” which includes the hits “8 Million Stories”, “AJ”, and “Basketball” and in 1985, “America.”  “America’s video innovation received a MTV Monitor Award.  From this album, the song “If I Ruled the World” became a top 5 hit on Billboard’s R & B chart.  Columbia/Sony recording artist Nas debuted at # 1 on the Billboard’s Pop Album chart with a cover of the song in 1997.

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Robert Schwarz works in the intersection of fine art, music and architecture in various artistic and experimental settings. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from Vienna University of Technology, and a Master of Arts from Berlin University of the Arts and studied computer music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. His compositions have been released under different aliases by the labels Gruenrekorder, AVA, Laton, Vienna Wildstyle and Sonic Terrain. His solo debut ''The Scale Of Things'' in the Sound Art Series of Gruenrekorder received international commendatory reviews, has been honored in 2015 top lists by A Closer Listen, A-Musik and Espaces Sonores and was featured on The Wire Tapper 38 (The Wire Magazine 2015).

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Massimo Cusato will show the versatility of sound that the tamburello is able to produce combined with a drum set. The result of this fusion was brought to life by two important related popular music realities. One being the rhythm of Calabrian Tarantella played by the tamburello and the other being the rhythm of the San Rocco drum section played by bass and snare drums plus hi-hat.

Cusato pioneered the use of the tamburello in combination with drum set. He has developed an unique style using his multi-hybrid drumset  and combining it with other percussion instruments. His sound has become reference point for many percussionists in the Italian/Ethnic folk music genre. Massimo is Remo artist since 2015, and he designed and launched the Tamburello Calabriaand a hybrid instrument the Pandurello.

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Emily Lacy is a folk and electronic sound artist generating works in music, film, and other media. Her work investigates confrontations between economics, politics, language, and power, and is increasingly concerned with the rights and lives of women and children around the world. Her performances and recordings have been included in various exhibitions at PS1 MOMA, MCA Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hammer Museum, the Walker Art Center, and LACMA, in addition to various DIY spaces all throughout America.

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A panel discussion with Tina Raymond, Kathleen Grace, Alina Roitstein, and Cathlene Pineda

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Acclaimed as a considerable and highly individual compositional talent, saxophonist David Binney is one of the most prolific jazz musicians on the scene today. Winning praise from critics and colleagues alike, David was  singled out by JazzTimes as one of a handful of “players who have created an alternative jazz scene… all of whom are playing adventurous, original music.”

David’s distinctive saxophone sound and innovative compositions have been heard from basement clubs in New York to jazz festivals in Europe and the world. In addition to his extensive work as a leader, he has been sought after as a sideman, appearing on record with Medeski, Martin & Wood, Uri Caine’s Mahler Project, and hundreds of others. David has also appeared on stage with Aretha Franklin, at Carnegie Hall, and with Maceo Parker, to name a few. He has produced all of his own 22 albums, and many others including two of the Lost Tribe releases, Scott Colley’s The Architect of the Silent Moment, and 8 Donny McCaslin releases, including the highly acclaimed Casting For Gravity, Fast Future, and Beyond Now.

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Inigo Wilkins is the author of the pioneering critical work Irreversible Noise (Urbanomic, 2018). He took his masters in Sonic Culture at the University of East London, and completed his doctorate in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2016. He is a co director of Glass Bead, a research platform and journal concerned with transfers of knowledge across art, science and philosophy, as well as with their practical and political dimensions. His other publications include “Interfacey McInterface Face’, Litteraria Pragensia 2017; “The Sharpest Point of Sensation is Pointless” in a booklet accompanying an LP by musician Eric Frye entitled ‘On Small Differences in Sensation’, 2016; Destructive Destruction: An Ecological Study of High Frequency Trading’ first published in Mute magazine, 2013. An extended version of Destructive Destruction” was published in HFT Review, February 2013, in the Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment in 2014, and in ‘Plants, Androids and Operators: A Post Media Handbook’ published by PL Books, 2014. 

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Kyttenjanae will be talking about how to survive as an artist and the compromise of creativity vs capitol.

Kyttenjanae is a media artist based in Los Angeles. She runs a production studio with her longtime partner. They create art, animation, and immersive experiences.

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Wolfgang Amadeuz is a producer, Hip Hop historian, Hip Hop technophile and writer. He is a member of the Universal Hip Hop Museum, a docent for the California African American Museum and Compton’s 125 Historical Society. Born and raised in Los Angeles, and graduate of Compton High School and Los Angeles Southwest College. Wolfgang Amadaeuz produced and directed the documentary Set in the West: the Genesis of L.A. Hip Hop (2017) and he has been featured in the the documentary Beyond Gangster Blackface. 

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Filmmaker Emma Frantz's salute to guitarist Bill Frisell provides an immersion into the creative world of the prolific composer and bandleader, Grammy Award winner, and Downbeat Guitarist of the Year for 10 consecutive years.

A character portrait of anti-archetype guitar hero, Bill Frisell, this nuanced film traces the ideas and processes that shaped Frisell’s music, and provides rare insight into the mind and personality of one of the significant musicians of recent decades. Full of live music, revealing stories, and intimate access to the normally reclusive Frisell, various collaborations are followed from development to fruition, including the last ever performance of the Paul Motian Trio with Frisell and Joe Lovano. Also featuring Bonnie Raitt, Hal Willner, Paul Simon, Nels Cline, Joey Baron, Jim Hall, Jason Moran, Mike Gibbs, John Zorn, Jack DeJohnette, Ron Carter and John Abercrombie. 

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Kirk Brundage  is a REMO Artist, author of the "AFRO-BRAZILIAN PERCUSSION GUIDE" book series and has self-released two percussion CDs.  He has performing and recording with different styles of groups including the Latin Grammys with Brazilian pop-star Daniela Mercury, a show with The Police drummer Stewart Copeland, and a recording for Lincoln with Grammy-artist Beck.

In this hands-on workshop participants will learn various Brazilian carnaval rhythms including: maracatu, batucada, samba reggae & frevo baiano—as played by some of the most prominent groups of those styles (Estrela Brilhante, Salgueiro, Olodum and Timbalada). Attendees will also discover connections between the carnaval rhythms and the sacred music of candomble, plus understand the historical and cultural significance of the music through songs. Ideas for getting the right sound and feel will also be discussed.

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Jose Jimenez will be facilitating a workshop on throat singing during Experimental Voice Workshop.

José Pablo Jiménez began his career specialized in the interpretation of old music and different stringed instruments of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Jose has performed in different forums in Mexico and abroad, among which stand out Manuel M. Ponce Hall of the Palace of Fine Arts, in Gothenburg Cathedral, during the Gothenburg Baroque old music festival in 2013 in Sweden, and in the Aarhus Festuge in the Bispetorvet square in Denmark. He has received scholarships on three occasions from the cultural promotion of the  State of Mexico with which he has made two recordings, he is founder and director of the projects, Sonidos de Cuerda y Crin, Evolution of the String Rubbed Instruments in the year 2011, Abgal project, original music with early instruments year 2015, and the solo project La voz ancestral de los Instrumentos de Arco, being the most recent for the period 2017-2018. Jose Pablo  has been teaching courses of old vertical stringed instruments and throat singing for 15 years.

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Praised for her "clear, bright voice" (New York Times) and "artistry that belies her young years" (Kansas City Metropolis), soprano Estelí Gomez is quickly gaining recognition as a stylish interpreter of early and contemporary repertoires. In January 2014 she was awarded a Grammy with contemporary octet Roomful of Teeth, for best chamber music/small ensemble performance; in November 2011 she received first prize in the Canticum Gaudium International Early Music Vocal Competition in Poznan, Poland. Estelí can be heard on the Seattle Symphony’s 2017 recording of Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3, as well as Roomful of Teeth's self-titled debut album, for which composer Caroline Shaw's Partita was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. Originally from Watsonville, California, Estelí received her Bachelor of Arts with honors in music from Yale College, and Master of Music from McGill University, studying with Sanford Sylvan. She currently travels and performs full-time.

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The talk will with start with Jerónimo García Naranjo´s gigantic instrument Huey Mecatl (ten string harp placed inside shipping containers) and move to his recent collaboration with Carlos Chinchillas (experimental luthier) in creating the Suspended Piano. They will discuss themes related to instrument functionality, new tunings, playing techniques, and composition.

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The quartet will give a session concerning their original music and the business process of building a new ensemble. 

The Kraken Quartet (Chris Demetriou, Andrew Dobos, Taylor Eddinger, and Sean Harvey) is a genre-crossing group known for its highly energetic and engaging performances. Since their formation in 2012, the Austin-based group has been heralded for merging elements of math rock, minimalism, indie, post-rock, electronica, and the avant-garde. The Kraken Quartet has been featured on festivals and broadcasts including South by Southwest, Fast Forward Austin, Audiotree Live, Austin Instrumental Music Festival, WNYC, KUTX, SoundSpace, and more. Their debut full-length album, Separate | Migrate, is available now. 

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Stephanie Cheng Smith is a composer, performer and programmer who creates interactive pieces, installations, improvisations and through-composed works. She often uses electronics, violin and light, and her explorations with motor arrays have been featured in the latest issue of Experimental Music Yearbook. Smith frequently performs electronic music under the name Stephie’s Castle, is a member of networked music ensemble bitpanic, and has composed for and performed as a member of the Dog Star Orchestra. Serving on the wulf.’s Artistic Advisory Board, she also curates and produces experimental music concerts in the Los Angeles area. She has studied composition at the University of Chicago with Kotoka Suzuki and earned an MFA in Experimental Sound Practices and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts. In addition to her creative work, she currently teaches interactive programming at CalArts and works as a web developer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Michael Demps (b. 1976 in Detroit, MI) is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and DJ. A graduate of Calarts, and the Yale School of Art, he now serves on the sculpture faculty at VCUarts, and was recently included in “Fictions”, an exhibition of emerging artists at The Studio Museum in Harlem. His sculptures have incorporated candle wax, magnetic marbles, rock salt, and low frequency sounds. His upcoming performance as part of Rashid Johnson’s “Monument” at the ICA at VCU In Richmond, VA, will draw on his experiences as a hip hop practitioner / vinyl collector, with a collection that numbers over 5,000 records.

Douglas Kearney has published six books, most recently, Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016) winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and silver medalist for the California Book Award (Poetry). BOMB says: “[Buck Studies] remaps the 20th century in a project that is both lyrical and epic, personal and historical.”  He earned an MFA in Writing at CalArts (2004) where he taught until May 2017. He now teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.

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Pianist-composer, five-time Grammy® Award-winner and 14-time nominee Billy Childs remains one of the most diversely prolific and acclaimed artists working in music today. Childs' canon of original compositions and performances have also garnered him the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Billy Childs has developed into one of the most distinctive and distinguished composers of our time. He has also amassed a career's worth of jazz originals that can swing hard, dazzle with intricacy, touch you with direct simplicity, or mesmerize with lyricism. 

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Rajib Karmakar is undoubtedly one of the finest young sitar players today. He is currently residing in Los Angeles, California as a performer, educator and digital artist. His open mind has led to an extension of his musical horizon to incorporate imaginative experiments in world music styles that delight the young and the old, creating some fusion projects like Wahh (USA), Fuzorhythm (India), Loop Science (Germany), Nada Naissance (France) etc. He is also the creator of the world’s first double-necked electric Sitar “Mayur Tantri”. Rajib is performing frequently in India and abroad including USA, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland to name just a few. 

Andy Cheng is a multi-percussionist from Taiwan who has a double master’s degree in World percussion and North Indian Music at California Institute of the Arts. He is a performer, educator and composer who is currently teaching at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. His world music training includes North and South Indian, Brazilian, Ewe African, Latin, Balkan, Arabic and Persian music. He has performed in the U.S, Japan, Holland, Indonesia, China, and Taiwan. Andy also performs with world music groups such as Hands On’Semble, Lian Ensemble, Go organic orchestra and the Salaamuna Near East Ensemble.

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AUDREY CHEN is a Chinese-American musician who was born into a family of material scientists, doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. Parting ways with the family convention, she turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and conservatory training in both instruments, with a resulting specialization in early and new music, she parted ways again in 2003 to begin new negotiations with sound in order to discover a more individually honest aesthetic.

Since then, using the cello, voice and occasional analog electronics, Chen’s work delves deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is extremely personal and visceral. Her playing explores the combination and layering of the homemade analog synthesizer, preparations and traditional and extended techniques in both the voice and cello. She works to join these elements into a singular ecstatic personal language.

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Jason Harnell is a world-renowned jazz drummer, educator, composer and bandleader whos unmistakable sound and style, as well as boundless creativity and enthusiasm made him a major contributor to the Southern California jazz scene for over twenty-five years. In 2017 Jason launched his most ambitious and creative endeavor to date, the Jason Harnell Solo Drum Experience. Jason’s solo drum concerts are consistently sold out.  Jason is also one of the most in demand drum set educators in his field and is on faculty at University of California Irvine and at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood.

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While studying in England Composer/Electronic Percussionist Tobias Hunke began to develop an interest in performing electronic music within the Ableton Live/Max for Live Platform. He has developed an online presence through his self-created online community AbletonDrummer.comwhich has gained recognition around the globe. Tobias Hunke developed online educational resources as well as providing and programming plug-ins for drummers to combine and translate (physical) drumming into the digital world.

All are welcome to attend

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Panelists Include:

SNIPE YOUNG Writer/Producer under Universal Music Publishing Group/Ahhhaa, 2017 Grammy Award-winning Sound Design Engineer for Beyoncé’s “Lemonade”

EMONI MATTHEWS Manager of Sync & Libraries at Rostrum Records

SAK PAS 8-time Grammy-nominated Producer

The Music Industry Panel will help students at CalArts to understand the various types of job opportunities available to them in the music industry, especially in L.A. The panel will expose the students to some prominent people in the music industry who can educate them on how to get into the various job fields within the music industry, and succeed once they have gotten there. 

This panel is open to the Institute and is sponsored by The Herb Alpert School of Music, Student Affairs, Film Services, Student Activities, Student Union and the Center for Life and Work. It is produced by Lauren Pratt and Dewayne Cowles.

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Matt McBane is a composer whose music ranges from visceral rhythms and complex grooves to delicate melodies and rich textures, freely and intuitively incorporating a wide array of influences including: minimalism, experimentalism, European classical music, art rock, jazz, film music, fiddle music and electronic music. He has been described as “a natural composer, a fresh voice and, from the evidence of his festival, a first-rate organizer with a broad range of musical interests” by Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times and as having “a fantastic intuitive sense that is backed up by a serious amount of compositional craft” by Sequenza21.

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