Artists

I'lana Cotton is a composer, improviser, and pianist who has created works for a broad range of genres, from solo piano and small chamber groups to large choral and instrumental ensembles. Her concert music has been performed in the United States, the UK, Europe, and China.

Pianist and composer Vytautas Smetona was born in Cleveland OH. His parents, Birute and Julius, and paternal grandparents narrowly escaped the 1940 Soviet invasion and subsequent occupation of Lithuania. Smetona’s grandfather, Antanas Smetona, was the last President of independent Lithuania. The family arrived and settled in the United States in 1941 via a route through Germany, Portugal, and Brazil. Vytautas’ father, Julius, was an attorney, and his mother was a musician.

Formed in 2012, the Pangaea Chamber Players strives to expand the boundaries of traditional chamber music through innovative programming and community involvement. Comprised of flute, cello, and piano, the ensemble performs both traditional and contemporary works. Most recently, they have recorded a CD, Three Perspectives, which will be released with Parma Records.

John Winzenburg is a professor of music at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he conducts the Cantoría Hong Kong. He and the Cantoría have actively promoted Chinese choral music in dialogue with international repertoire since they first earned a Gold Medal at the Czech 2010 Festival of Songs Olomouc and they presented a Weekend Concert at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Beijing in 2012. Winzenburg performed as Choral Director of the premiere of Hong Kong Odyssey at the 2017 Hong Kong Arts Festival and served as Chorus Master of The Suppliant Women in collaboration with the Actors Touring Company (UK) and the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh at the 2018 Hong Kong Arts Festival.

Alicia Terzian is an internationally renowned contemporary music figure who is known for her accomplishments as a composer, conductor, and musicologist. In musicology, she specialized in Latin American and 4th thru 10th-century ancient religious Armenian music.

Svjetlana Bukvich first came to the attention of the European music world following her appearances as featured soloist with the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra, performing Beethoven’s 1st Piano Concerto at the age of 16, and the following year with Edinburgh George Heriot’s Symphony Orchestra with the 2nd Concerto. Driven by a need to express beyond interpretation, Bukvich studied at the Music Academy - University of Sarajevo, where she earned degrees in Composition and Musicology.

Zephyr Quartet are Australia’s leading genre-defying explorers of dynamic cross-artform, music-focused collaborations. They are an award-winning string ensemble whose musicians compose, arrange, and improvise. This unique skill set, together with Zephyr’s open-minded approach, allows them to skillfully traverse musical worlds and gives them their own distinct voice.

The Chicago Arts Orchestra was established by a group of musicians and creative artists to perform great music and to make music accessible and affordable. Comprised of professional musicians with active performance schedules in Chicago, the CAO aims to achieve its mission by providing educational opportunities for the community through the performance of historic and new orchestral music. The CAO seeks to be innovative in its programming and presentation of concerts.

Audun G. Vassdal is a Norwegian composer currently located in Los Angeles. Vassdal started playing instruments at an early age, and his obsession with understanding how music and instruments works led him to pursue music further. He is primarily a pianist, and attended a high school with a music education. This is where he discovered his passion for composition, and decided that being a composer would be his life goal. Being fascinated by many forms of music, he has pursued an education in both classical music and film music, as well as other genres.

Raisa Orshansky commenced her formal musical training at Vitebsk College of Music, where she specialized in folk instruments. She went on to graduate studies at Minsk Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts, where she studied orchestra conducting.

Composer Noam Faingold’s music has been described as "...lyrical…," "...exhilarating…," and "...a tour-de-force of Jazz melded with Classical..." by sources as varied as The New York Times, The BBC, Downbeat Magazine, and The Tulsa World among others. His crossover ensemble Burning City Orchestra’s debut album was described as "21st century acoustic electric art music” (Rich Fisher, Public Radio Tulsa).

Honolulu-born violinist Patrick T.S. Yim has performed throughout the world at venues including Carnegie Hall and David Geffen Hall (New York), Seoul Arts Center, Harpa Concert Hall (Reykjavík), Hong Kong City Hall, Severance Hall (Cleveland), Orchestra Hall (Chicago), Teatro alla Scala (Milan), and the Musikverein (Vienna). Yim made his solo debut with the Honolulu Symphony and in recent years has performed concerti of Bach, Brahms, Bruch, Lalo, Mozart, and Vivaldi.

John McGuire has a vast array of performance and teaching experiences. He has performed with many orchestras around the country, most notably the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Opera, the Fort Worth Symphony, the New World Symphony in Miami FL, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, and the Florida West Coast Symphony. McGuire has also toured internationally with the acclaimed Fortress Brass Quintet, of which he is a founding member.

Houston native Dr. Chad Robinson is the Artistic Director and founder of Texas New Music Ensemble, a Houston-based mixed chamber ensemble focused solely on the work of Texas composers. As a composer, he has worked with many other prestigious ensembles and soloists, such as Ethel, Lontano, The Jack Quartet, The Parker Quartet, Musiqa, George Vosburgh, Mary Dullea, and Emma Steele.

Clive Muncaster was born on January 24, 1936. At the young age of 15, he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Music where he studied violin, piano, composition, and conducting, and earned his Royal Academy of Music Licentiate Diploma (LRAM). In the 1960s Chandos Music published some of his compositions, which received many broadcasts in England and Germany.

Edna Alejandra Longoria is a Mexican-American composer born in Mcallen TX and raised in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, México. Longoria obtained a master’s degree in Music Composition at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University in Long Beach, and a bachelor’s degree in Music Composition from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Eliane Aberdam was born in Nancy, France. She studied piano and theory at the Conservatoire National de Region in Grenoble (1972-1981). She completed her undergraduate studies in composition at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, Israel, where she studied with Mark Kopytman. In 1989, she entered the graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania where she studied with George Crumb, and obtained her master’s degree in 1992. She completed her Ph.D. in Composition at U.C. Berkeley.

Jason Taurins (b. 1991) is a music educator, composer/arranger, and clinician. He has lived in Arizona since 2015. He holds a Bachelor of Music in Education from Western Michigan University, where he studied composition with Lisa Coons and Richard Adams. He also has a Master of Music from the University of Florida. His musical interests include writing for wind bands, arranging for marching band, and writing marching band drill, as well as writing chamber music. His influences are diverse, including the great Classical composers, the 20th-century avant garde, jazz, classic rock, and metal. He is an active advocate of music by living composers and diversity in musical programming.

Electronisist Josh Oxford, born in 1985, is a composer, arranger, and performer of myriad styles of music. He has performed throughout the world, especially in his native central New York, on piano, percussion, and Moog synthesizer. After suffering a debilitating car crash in 2010, Oxford has devoted his energy to composing.

Mara Helmuth was composes music and sonic spaces often involving the computer, focusing recently on environmental issues and wildlife. Her recordings include Irresistible Flux on Esther Lamneck’s Tarogato Constructions, from O on Open Space CD 33 Benjamin Boretz 9x9, Lifting the Mask on Sounding Out! (Everglade), Sound Collaborations, (CDCM v.36, Centaur CRC 2903), Implements of Actuation (Electronic Music Foundation EMF 023), and works included on Open Space CD 16 and the 50th Anniversary University of Illinois EMS collection. Scores are published in Open Space Magazine Issues 19-20 (from O), and Notations 21 (String Paths), edited by Theresa Sauer.