School of Music

Andreas Levisianos is a Performer-Composer from Samos Island, Greece. Having a background in classical music and focusing on contemporary practices he is interested in the interrelation of analysis, synthesis, and performance through a conceptual and systemic approach. He has performed music from different periods of the western music history and from various styles, including orchestral, chamber, solo and electroacoustic works as a conductor and pianist. He has served as the music director and conductor of the annual Open Days festival in Athens, for the Kinono festival in Tinos and as the artistic director of the online performance platform aejaa. Currently residing in London, he is working with the Universal Music Group on Creative Metadata. He holds a DMA Performer-Composer from the California Institute of the Arts, a Double Master’s degree in Composition and Conducting from the University of Oklahoma, a Bachelor’s degree in Musicology from the University of Athens, Greece and a Piano Diploma from the National Conservatory of Greece.

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Todd Sickafoose is a Tony and Grammy award-winning composer, producer, arranger, orchestrator, bandleader, and double bassist. He's known for his versatile musicality and has performed worldwide at renowned venues and festivals. Sickafoose has collaborated with Ani DiFranco for nearly two decades, resulting in seven albums and over 1000 shows together. He played a pivotal role in the success of Anaïs Mitchell's folk opera, Hadestown, winning eight Tony Awards including Best Orchestrations. Sickafoose's band, Tiny Resistors, has been featured at prestigious festivals and lauded by critics. He recently composed "Bear Proof," a chamber jazz piece commissioned by the Doris Duke Foundation.

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NY-based composer inti figgis-vizueta (b.1993) braids a childhood of overlapping immigrant communities and Black-founded Freedom schools—in Chocolate City (DC)—with direct Andean & Irish heritage and a deep connection to the land. “Her music feels sprouted between structures, liberated from certainty and wrought from a language we’d do well to learn” writes The Washington Post. inti's work explores the transformative power of group improvisation and play, working to reconcile historical aesthetics and experimental practices with trans & Indigenous futures. 

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 A trombone player, composer, improviser, and workshop-facilitator, David Dove has given performances and workshops across the US and internationally. As Founding Director of Nameless Sound (a non-profit organization in Houston, Texas), he curates/presents a concert series of international contemporary experimental music, and has developed a philosophy and practice for music workshops. Nameless Sound’s pedagogy identifies collaborative improvisation for its potential towards goals of knowledge exchange, creative work, healing, community building, and play. Nameless Sound serves hundreds of youth annually in Houston homeless shelters, community centers, public schools, and refugee communities. Dove has written on music pedagogy, including a chapter titled “The Music is the Pedagogy” that has been published in the collection “Beyond the Classroom” (Routledge).

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As a DJ and music producer of Underground Resistance, DJ Dex aka Nomadico rose through the ranks as a member of live bands Timeline and Los Hermanos and released his own solo releases on UR as Nomadico. He has performed all over the U.S., Latin America, Europe, and Asia throwing down eclectic sets of gritty, moody, funk fueled and hard-hitting electronic music. He now runs his own L.A. based Yaxteq label as an outlet for like-minded artists.

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Ben Wendel, a Grammy-nominated saxophonist originally from Canada and now based in Brooklyn, NY, has built a versatile career as a performer, composer, and producer. His collaborations include notable artists like Snoop Dogg and Prince, and he's a founding member of the Grammy-nominated group Kneebody. He has curated diverse performance series and spearheaded initiatives to bolster Jazz and Blues in Los Angeles, earning recognition and support from luminaries like Quincy Jones and Herb Alpert. Wendel's commitment to education is evident through over 300 masterclasses and involvement with programs like the LA Philharmonic Artist Program and his work as an adjunct professor of Jazz Studies at USC and the New School in NYC.

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CHRIS BROWN, composer, pianist, and electronic musician, makes music with self- designed sonic systems that include acoustic and electroacoustic instruments, interactive software, computer networks, microtonal tunings, and improvisation. His compositions are designs for performances in which people bring to life the musical structures embedded in scores, instruments, and machines.
 

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