School of Music

For over 60 years vibraphonist, drummer, pianist, composer and bandleader Terry Gibbs has brought energy, creativity and capriciousness to the world of jazz. Bassist Chubby Jackson captures the tone of Gibbs' art when he says, "He's learned how to put a grin on music."

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A versatile vocalist, Alina Roitstein is known for her “beautiful voice and equally beautiful presence” (El Nuevo Herald). Her career spanning chamber music and contemporary works, opera and art song, jazz and Latin music, and choral music has taken her to venues all over the world. She is also a singer and composer for River Song Quintet, a chamber jazz ensemble and the Trevor Anderies Quintet, an ensemble led by drummer/composer Trevor Anderies, exploring the lines between composition and improvisation, jazz, folk, and West African music.

(Lauren) Elizabeth Baba is a violinist, violist, composer, and improviser living in Los Angeles, California, performing a wide variety of music from original improvisatory music to jazz, classical, folk, avent-guarde, chamber, pop, and experimental styles. Baba is the composer and director of theBABAorchestra, a 17-piece big band performing her original instrumental compositions. She has composed for several short films and co-composed for several movies including BARBIE Mariposa and the Fairy Princess, Waking, and Artificial Sweetner. Baba studied jazz violin/viola and composition at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California where she received her BFA in Jazz Performance. 

Nedra Wheeler is a bassist, composer and bandleader that has been performing in Southern California and touring Internationally for more than 25 years. She is one of the recipients of the 2006 Jazz Legend of Los Angeles Awards from the Dunbar Economic Development Corporation and the City of Los Angeles. Nedra earned her Master of Fine Arts from CalArts and is a performer and teacher with the Jazz Mentorship Program at the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs-Watts Towers Arts Center & Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center.

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Originally from upstate New York, Kirk Brundage is a classically trained percussionist who went on to play in Brazilian carnaval. Kirk received an MFA from CalArts, a Fulbright scholarship to Denmark and played for many years as an ‘extra’ with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. For nearly twenty years, Kirk’s adventurous spirit has taken him to Salvador Bahia, Brazil to explore new musical horizons.  Kirk has played in Brazilian carnival with Olodum, at the Latin Grammys with Daniela Mercury, a show with The Police drummer Stewart Copeland and recorded with Grammy artist Beck. A REMO Artist, Kirk has taught at UCLA and published the book series “Afro-Brazilian Percussion Guide”.

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The music, all original compositions by Grdina but mostly based on classical Arabic and Persian modes (many with quarter-tones, superbly executed by Helias and Roberts), provides a context for creative group interplay and solos that often involve extended tonality. The music is intricate, sometimes delicate, other times high-risk exciting. There are dark, brooding excursions propelled by Middle Eastern vamps as well as more contrapuntally through-composed works (“Wayward”) that relate to the music on Inroads.

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Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, or with Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, Documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, NM.

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Originally known as Microphone Mike, Myka 9 is recognized as one of the most stylistically advanced rappers in the '90s. He emerged as a leading figure of the Good Life and Project Blowed communities and as a founding member of Freestyle Fellowship and Haiku D’Etat.

Freestyle Fellowship first and second albums, Inner City Griots and To Whom It May Concern, are considered the high water mark of West Coast Hip Hop.

"To say that Freestyle Fellowship significantly influenced West Coast Hip Hop is like saying that Jesus was a pivotal figure in Christianity." --Pitchfork

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Panel discussion with cellist, composer, and sound designer Ro Rowan; multimedia artist and curator Chloe Scallion; and a surprise guest electronic musician.

Although RO ROWAN studied classical cello and spent most of their youth in orchestras, they have brought their rich tone and non-traditional techniques to a vast landscape of genres within the Los Angeles, Boston and New York music scene since 2002. Ro has worked with Lorde, deadmau5, Disney, Hans Zimmer, Mike Posner, Toni Braxton, Shirley Manson, Willie Nelson, Annie Lennox, The Boston Pops, Deepak Chopra, Dream Theater, Alan Silvestri, George S. Clinton, Christopher Lennertz, Ron Carter, Terri Lyne Carrington and Lalah Hathaway. Their cello can be heard on over 300 albums, film scores, television shows, documentaries, commercials, trailers, video games and sound libraries. Ro is currently in Los Angeles freelancing as a cellist, composer, songwriter and sound designer. They are a member of two Los Angeles-based ensembles: Queertet and Sonic Open Orchestra. They work with composer, Michael Gatt, as his Scoring Coordinator and occasionally with Output as a preset and content designer. Ro also founded and runs Rowboat Production, a video production company specializing in videography and video editing. Most recently Ro played for Disney’s remake of The Lion King.

CHLOE SCALLION is a Los Angeles-based, Pennsylvania-born multimedia artist and curator. She spent her teens touring the Eastern US in punk and experimental music acts while actively participating in the vibrant DIY music scene of Philadelphia. She carries those experiences into her work now as event organizer, installation artist, speaker manipulator, experimental circuitstress, video artist and musician. Her current video/ performance project, Gay Felony, has been exhibited and performed in Los Angeles and globally in galleries, warehouse parties, punk shows, film festivals and online. Scallion Chloe 8800 creates unique analog synthetic spaces in which her futuristic, techno-inspired spoken and live music performances take place. She additionally collaborates as technician with an array of cutting-edge contemporary artists working in the LA community. She is exploring the quantum workings of obsolescence, glitch, brokenness, identity and communal trauma.

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