Artists

Thomas Cabaniss (b. Charleston SC, 1962) is a composer for dance, theater, film, and the concert stage. Cabaniss helped to create the Lullaby Project at Carnegie Hall, serving young parents in shelters, hospitals, and prisons with collaboratively created songs for their children. He has been teaching at Juilliard in the Dance Division since 1998 and in the Music Division since 2007. He served as education director for the New York Philharmonic and Music Animateur at the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has written articles for Chamber Music Magazine and the Teaching Artist Journal. His music is published by Boosey & Hawkes, European American Music, G. Schirmer, and musiCreate publiCations. He is a member of ASCAP and an associated artist of Target Margin Theater.

Gustav Hoyer was born in Denver CO in 1972. His musical pursuits began in high school following a life-changing encounter with the music of Beethoven and Mozart. He subsequently studied music theory, piano, and violin and pursued collegiate degrees in composition. He has written music for a wide variety of ensembles, media, and settings. His recorded music has been heard in film, on radio, and in performance around the world. He continues to create new orchestral music that draws on the tools of classical vocabulary while fully modern in their contemplations. 

Emily Mantone, a cellist from Mount Sinai NY, recently completed her Master of Music degree at The Juilliard School. She previously completed her Bachelor of Music degree at The Juilliard School, under the tutelage of Timothy Eddy. Currently, Mantone is pursuing a postgraduate degree at the Yale School of Music, studying with Paul Watkins, former cellist of the esteemed Emerson String Quartet.  Mantone has served as principal cellist of both The Juilliard Orchestra and the Yale Philharmonia under the baton of such conductors as Tan Dun, Alan Gilbert, Barbara Hannigan, Peter Oundjian, David Robertson, and Gerard Schwarz. She has also been a member of the Axiom contemporary ensemble, the New Juilliard Ensemble, and participated in Juilliard Chamberfest. She has previously served as principal cellist of the Handel Festival Orchestra, based in New York City, and was a Fellow of the Apex Ensemble, based in Montclair, New Jersey, under the baton of Music Director David Chan.

Umi Garrett is a highly accomplished solo, collaborative, and chamber pianist based in New York City. She has performed numerous solo and collaborative recitals in the United States and internationally, most recently through presenters such as the Chopin Foundation of the United States, the Grace Goudy Distinguished Artists Series, the Dame Myra Hess Recital Series, and the Clark Art Institute. Garrett has performed and toured with orchestras such as the Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony and Pops, Symphony Boca Raton, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Wuhan Symphony Orchestra, and the New Mexico Philharmonic. Garrett is also a passionate performer of new music, collaborating with and performing pieces by acclaimed composers such as Samuel Adler, inti figgis-vizueta, and Gabriela Smith. 

American quintet Calliope Brass collaborates with the world’s most prominent creatives to build evocative, story-driven concert experiences for a variety of audiences. Inspired by the eponymous storytelling muse in Greek mythology, Calliope Brass (pronounced “Kuh-LIE-uh-pea”) is most known for its innovative approach to creating interactive concert experiences. As a registered nonprofit, Calliope has been awarded grant funding for performance and educational programming since its founding in 2015.

The Brno Contemporary Orchestra (BCO) was founded in 2011 with the aim of performing the world’s contemporary music and selected 20th-century works in Czechia and Czech music throughout the world. The ensemble includes top-level professional musicians employed in the leading Czech orchestras. It draws on a large pool of permanent collaborators who perform in various lineups according to the needs of each project.

The Janáček Philharmonic is a world-class symphony orchestra based in Ostrava, Czech Republic and an emerging figure on the international performance scene. With over 100 top-level musicians, the orchestra aims to introduce unique, quality repertoire while showcasing their own recognizable sound.

Sarah Wallin Huff is a music lecturer at California Polytechnic University of Pomona, teaching “History of Technology in Music,” for which she published an original textbook with Great River Learning in 2019. She received her M.A. in Music Composition at Claremont Graduate University in 2008, and was the Professor of Composition and Advanced Theory — as well as conductor of the Chamber Ensemble — at The Master’s University in Santa Clarita from 2012-2016.

Phillip Rhodes was born in Forest City, North Carolina in 1940 and received degrees from Duke University and the Yale University School of Music. His principal teachers have been William Klenz, Iain Hamilton, Donald Martino, and Mel Powell.

“Full of charm and shapely allure” (Opera News) and “a tapestry of immense grace” (Textura) are some of the praises Christopher J. Hoh has received for his music. He grew up in Reading PA and was influenced as a young singer and accompanist by great works under conductors in Pennsylvania, New York, and Washington. He has been in Alice Parker’s composer seminar as well as workshops with Jean Berger, Daniel Moe, Robert Page, and Craig Jessop. 

Jiří Petrdlík (b. 1977) is appreciated as one of the most respectable conductors of his generation. He studied piano, trombone, and conducting — 1995–2000 at Prague Conservatory, and 2000–2005 at Academy of Performing Arts Prague — with Hynek Farkač, Miroslav Košler, Miriam Němcová, Radomil Eliška, and Tomáš Koutník, and took part in the masterclasses of the New York Philharmonic Principal Conductor Kurt Masur and the BBC Philharmonic Principal Conductor Jiří Bělohlávek. Petrdlík also successfully took part in several competitions, including the Donatella Flick Conductor Competition in London.

Pavel Šnajdr is a Czech conductor and composer. He is a graduate of the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts (JAMU), Brno in composition (which he studied with Alois Piňos) and conducting (with Emil Skoták). Beyond working with symphony orchestras, he has been engaged by music theatres including the J.K. Tyl Theatre in Pilsen, the Prague State Opera and the Moravian Theatre in Olomouc, and currently conducts opera at the National Theatre in Brno.

Drawing upon a Fine Arts focus which began at a young age that included extensive Choral, Drama, Theory/Composition, Music Appreciation and more, Michael Roush continued his passion for music while attending The University of Colorado at Boulder. After successful stints behind the scenes in the concert industry, Roush's broad array of high profile, live performance production experience would later give way to independent film and, eventually, creative writing. His love of narrative filmmaking brought him to Southern California, where he continues to shepherd numerous projects through creative development as a Producer, Director, and Writer.

Emily Mitchell has earned critical acclaim as “a marvelous harpist” (The New York Times) who captivates her audiences with “playing of the utmost delicacy, beauty and subtlety” (Records and Recording). In the words of The Washington Post, “Mitchell commands a vivid palette of colors and uses them with imagination.”  An Eastman School of Music degree along with an Associate from the Royal College of Music precluded Mitchell’s stunning first prize win at the seventh (1979) International Harp Contest in Jerusalem. She was immediately engaged by Columbia Artists Management and Community Concerts. Propelled onto the concert stage in all 50 United States, Mitchell offered a performance dynamic of standard harp repertoire coupled with Celtic harp and vocals giving her recitals charm and versatility. Mitchell’s three top-selling RCA Victor CDs Irish Harp Songs, A Celtic Christmas and Flying Dreams are testament to the popularity that has served her for over 30 years.

One of the finest flutists of his generation, Gary Schocker is also a pianist and harpist, a prolific composer, and a compassionate teacher. Born into a musical family in Easton PA, he began to play the piano before he was 3 years old. His father, Paul Schocker, was a multi-talented instrumentalist and composer as well. Schocker’s nursery shared a wall with his father’s studio, so music was heard around the clock. As a result, music has always felt as much a part of him as breathing.

With a deep love for music new and old, Chinese culture and music, and exploring crossroads between music and language, Boston native Julia Glenn savors finding and contributing to unique artistic voices as an international performer of modern and baroque violins. Called “remarkable,” “gripping,” and “a brilliant soloist” by the New York Times, she recently joined the Naumburg-winning Lydian String Quartet and the faculty of Brandeis University after teaching for three years at the Tianjin Juilliard School, where she served as violin and theory faculty and was a member of the Tianjin Juilliard Ensemble.

Composer Dalibor Bukvić (b. 1968) graduated from the Department of Composition at the Academy of Music in Zagreb under the mentorship of Stanko Horvat in 1995. He received the French government’s scholarship for the Paris Conservatory (Department of Electro-Acoustics, class of Laurent Cuniot, 1996–1997). He attended the National Conservatory of Boulogne, in the class of Michel Zbar (1996–1998), and the IRCAM’s Summer Academy in Paris in 1997. He perfected his skills on the summer course in Darmstadt with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luca Lombardi in 1996. From 2002 to 2008, he worked in Paris as a professor of music theory, piano, and improvisation and as an accompanist at several conservatories in Paris and at the Conservatories in Ivry-sur-Seine and Fontenay-aux-Roses. Since 2008, he has been living in Zagreb and working as a professor at the Academy of Music in Zagreb, lecturing theoretical and musical courses.

Arthur Gottschalk is Professor of Music Composition at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where he founded and directed the school’s electronic music laboratories until 2002, and chaired the composition and theory department for 15 years. His early work as a studio musician led to his co-founding of Modern Music Ventures, Inc., a company which held a recording studio complex, a record production division, four publishing firms, and an artist management division, and for whom he produced records for the PolyGram and Capitol labels, among others.

A small Gulf Coast Texas town was not a likely place for a future jazz musician and composer to grow up, but Paul English’s father was an accomplished jazz trombonist and a respected music educator and band director. Early on he introduced his son to Dave Brubeck, J. J. Johnson, and Count Basie (in that order) as well as Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky. This magical world fascinated Paul, and almost before he could speak, he was banging out sounds on the piano that must have been painful to others but glorious in his own mind.

Chris Brubeck is a GRAMMY®-nominated composer who continues to distinguish himself as a multi-faceted performer. A talented bassist and trombonist as well as an award-winning writer, Brubeck is tuned into the pulse of contemporary music. The respected music critic for The Chicago Tribune, John von Rhein, calls Brubeck: “a composer with a real flair for lyrical melody — a 21st Century Lenny Bernstein.” Brubeck has created an impressive body of symphonic work while maintaining a demanding touring and recording schedule with his various groups. He was a member of the Dave Brubeck Quartet for 16 years, and a frequent guest artist with the Quartet before and after that time period.