Eme Alfonso
Eme Alfonso is a young singer and composer from Cuba, graduated in Piano and Choral Conducting at the National Arts School of Cuba. She recorded for the first time an album when she was 7, together with Silvio Rodríguez. She started her professional career when she was 14, with the Afro-Cuban rock band Sintesis, from which she was nominated for Latin Grammy 2002. With Sintesis she travelled America and Europe for 10 years, performing at international festivals such as Rock in Rio in Brazil, Jazz á Vienne in Austria and Nice Jazz Festival in France. She collaborated with artists such as Pablo Milanés and Audio Slave.
Works: Trade Winds/Aires de Cambio (2014)
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Lynn Book
Lynn Book has a 25 year history of interdisciplinary artistic practice that traverses boundaries between performance art, dance, theater, writing and new music forms. Critics from the New York Times, Village Voice and Chicago Tribune have called her work “bold”, “inspired” and “unlike anything anyone else is doing“. Her diverse works have received citations, fellowships, and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Franklin Furnace, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation funding for the production of a radio drama based upon her performance theater piece, “Gorgeous Fever.” Book’s recent large scale work “RE:garding Next”, is a collaborative culture project launched in spring 2007 at the SouthEastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC and involves numerous collaborators, most notably, Austrian composer and extended pianist Katharina Klement.
Works: Clearing, Made of Dream (1994); Waltz #3 (with Dave Pavkovic) (1993)
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John Brumbach
John Brumbach, aka Boom, is a Chicago Tenor player with a strong background in blues and jazz. Born in 1950, he started playing at the age of 19 and was working professionally at the age of 20. Initially he worked with Chicago blues and R&B legends like Chaka Khan, Sunnyland Slim, Otis Clay, Renaldo Domino, Hi-Fi White, Simtec Simmons and Wiley Dixon, the T-Box Band (house band at the High Chapperal), Santez, and Sam Lay among others. In 1972 he teamed up with Chaka’s sister TakaTaka Boom, and eventually moved to L.A. While there, he recorded and/or worked on the road with Rufus, the Parliaments (Mothership Connection album w/sax solo on P-Funk), the Gap Band, Bloodstone, Jermaine Jackson, Fred Wesley, Douglas Gibbs, Dennis Coffee, Melissa Penney, and others.
Back in Chicago since 1980, John has led several small groups and played regularly with Chicagoans such as Earma Thompson, Erwin Helfer, Dave Specter, Katherine Davis, Ken Saydak, Robert Shy, Jeff Parker, Ron Dewar, Lenny Lynn, Alan Batts, Jean Caroll, Elaine Hamilton, Wilbur Campbell, George Fludas, John Whitfield, Ari Brown, Tito Carrillo, Steve Berry, Ted Sirota, Dennis Luxion, Jack McDuff, Buddy Guy, Yosef Ben Israel, Bugs Cochran, and many other greats on the Jazz and Blues scenes.
Works: Blues Dances (2005)
Michael J. Caskey
Michael J. Caskey hails from rural Southwestern Michigan. Graduating Magna Cum Laude from Western Michigan University’s School of Music in 1999, Michael has performed with artists as diverse as Chuck Mangione, Koko Taylor, Toni Tenille, Danilo Perez, Marving Hamlisch, and John Sinclair. Michael is a member of the piano-drums duo The Claudettes in Chicago and performs with Eastern Blok, a pan-cultural ensemble that performs and presents master classes throughout the United States. A Downbeat jazz magazine award winner and five-time Detroit Music Award recipient, Michael has performed for auiences through the U.S., Canada, Poland, France, Germany, Denmark, and Belgium.
Works: Dance of Forgotten Steps (2010)
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Ralph Covert
Ralph Covert is the lead singer of children’s music group Ralph’s World and lead singer of the Chicago based indie-rock band The Bad Examples. Ralph was nominated for his Best Musical Album For Children at the 48th Grammy Awards. Ralph Covert has also won acclaims as a playwright. Along with G. Riley Mills, he has written Sawdust And Spangles and Streeterville, both earning Joseph Jefferson Awards for Best New Work. The pair also collaborated on The Flower Thieves and A Nutcracker Christmas. Ralph has also done work as a record producer. His production credits include Framing Caroline by Los Angeles based singer-songwriter Kat Parsons, released in 1999.
Works: To Sleep, To Dream (1999)
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Gary DeMichele
Gary DeMichele is a composer and arranger, songwriter and musician in the Los Angles area.
Works: Seven Women and a Waltz (1991)
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Matthew Ferraro
Matthew Ferraro is a unique artist who has the ability to live between worlds. As a composer for media, his musical skills have been used in everything from BBC Radio 4 productions to video games such as “Medal of Honor”, the acclaimed television series “Futurama” and Acadamy Award winning films “The Insider”, “The Incredibles” and many more. As a commissioned composer, Ferraro’s work focuses on two things, multi-culturalism and the human experience. His commissioned choral hymn A.M.D.G. is published by Boosey & Hawkes and is performed by choirs worldwide. His multi-media work “The Tension of Opposites” was deemed a new art form, “Orchestral Journalism” by the California Arts Council. It opened to standing ovations at the Barbican in London. He is currently setting the prayers of Pope John Paul II to music using contemporary artists from around the world. Ferraro continues to compose, live and work between London, Los Angeles and Rome.
Works: ASCENDance (2013)
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Carol Genetti
Carol Genetti is a vocalist, composer and installation artist. Her work is focused on the interplay between the voice as an expressive musical instrument and its extension into the sound-making realm. She has studied a variety of techniques including Western singing, Hindustani classical voice and Bulgarian folk music. Through these studies and her own explorations, she has developed a personal yet universal palette that is an abstraction of “extended” voice sounds — breaths, overtones, and disconnected textual bits, squeaks, growls, non-verbal tones — sounds that evoke unconscious emotions and human physicality.
Works: Night Blooming Jasmine (2007); Arch of Repose (2009)
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Kathleen Ginther
Described as “music of ethereal delicacy” and “otherworldly rapture”, Kathleen Ginther’s colorful, vibrant and immediate music is attracting increasing national and international audiences. Recent performances of her works have taken her to Italy, England, Scotland, Holland, China, Japan and Brazil, as well as New York, Boston, Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago. In Chicago her work has been widely performed for many years, in concerts at the Ravinia Festival, The Art Institute of Chicago, Symphony Center, Northwestern and DePaul Universities, the Chicago Cultural Center, and a recent showcase concert at The Music Institute of Chicago. She has been featured live on the WFMT programs Music in Chicago, Live from Studio One and the The Studs Terkel Show as well as on the WBEZ program Metropolis.
Works: A Room of Wishes 1988)
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Erwin Helfer
Erwin Helfer was introduced to piano blues as a young teenager growing up in Chicago in the early ’50s, the heyday of the city’s blues clubs and the fortunes of labels such as Chess Records. A native of Chicago’s south side, he haunted the clubs as a boy, but he also took the time to attend school and completed college with a degree in music, which he followed by spending three years in New Orleans in the late ’50s, where he played jazz. Among the musicians who influenced him most were Jimmy Yancey, Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Speckled Red, and Helfer counted himself a good friend of guitarist Big Joe Williams. Helfer became a performer and teacher, touring Europe as a blues pianist and also training college students in Chicago throughout the 1970s. His style is equally adaptable to blues and jazz.
Works: Blues Dances (2004)
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Chris Johnson
Works: Ache of the Arch
Matt Kozlowski and John Ridenour
Matt Kozlowski is a professional film and stage actor. John Ridenour is a member of the mult-instumentalist group SPOOL.
Works: Falling Into the Sky (1996)
Dave Pavkovic
David Pavkovic is a composer and drummer. He recently left Chicago and relocated to Austin Texas. He was most active in rock and jazz music in Chicago from 1992 – 2004. David Pavkovic has composed a considerable amount of music for theater and dance. He was awarded the 2008 Jeff Award (Chicago professional theater award) for best original music, for the production Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day, which was presented by the Lookingglass Theater Company at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. He was also awarded the 2001 Jeff Citation for best original music for the production Rachel’s Love presented by Red Moon theater.
Works: Waltz #3 (1993); Autumn/Familiarity
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Chris Salter
Chris Salter is Concordia University Research Chair in New Media, Technology and the Senses, Co-Director of the Hexagram network, Director of the Hexagram Concordia Centre for Research and Creation in Media Art and Technology and Associate Professor, Computation Arts in the Department of Design and Computation Art at Concordia University, Montreal. Salter studied economics and philosophy at Emory University and received his Ph.D. in theater directing and criticism with a second concentration in computer-generated sound at Stanford University where he worked with former Brecht assistant Carl Weber as well as pioneers of digital synthesis John Chowning, Max Matthews and Chris Chafe at the Center for Research in Computer Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He was visiting professor in music, graduate studies and digital media at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) before joining Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in 2005. He was also Guest Professor at the KhM in Cologne in 2010 and Guest Faculty at the Masters program in Media Arts History. Institute für Bildwissenschaften. Donau University. Krems, Austria. October 2011. He was appointed Director of Hexagram-Concordia in 2011.
Works: VIVA!
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Fernando Sardo
Works: 2/Rumi
Fred Simon
Fred Simon has been making music for more than forty years, composing for records, live performance, film, dance, and television with instrumentation ranging from solo piano to symphonic orchestra. Since childhood he has been convinced that he is a singer/songwriter trapped in the body of someone who can’t sing. His recorded work includes seven albums of original music under his name: Short Story and Time and the River (Quaver), Usually/Always (Windham Hill), Open Book (Columbia), Dreamhouse (The Naim Label), Remember the River ( The Naim Label), and, most recently, Since Forever ( The Naim Label); three albums (as principle composer) with the Simon and Bard Group: Musaic, Tear It Up, and The Enormous Radio (Flying Fish); as well as Twilight (NorthSound Music Group), a collaboration with reed player Paul McCandless and guitarist Teja Bell; The Music of the Beach Boys (NorthSound Music Group), an album of solo piano arrangements of Brian Wilson sons; and numerous appearances on compilations released by Windham Hill, Columbia, Narada, Private Music, Imaginary Road, NorthSound Music Group, Jazziz Magazine, and currently, The Naim Label. Fred has recorded and/or performed with Ralph Towner (founding member of Oregon), Paul McCandless (founding member of Oregon), Larry Coryell, Lyle Mays, Iain Matthews (founding member of Fairport Convention), Jerry Goodman (Mahavishnu Orchestra violinist), Steve Rodby and Paul Wertico (both with Pat Metheny Group), Bonnie Herman (Singers Unlimited), Kurt Elling, Fareed Haque, Tributosaurus, Liza Day, David Onderdonk, The Stan Kenton Orchestra, and many others.
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Sheldon B. Smith
Sheldon B. Smith has been making dances, music and video art for over 25 years in both the Midwest and California. Originally trained in ballet and french horn his interests have since shifted. A lot. He likes creating things that cross disciplines but movement is usually at the core. He has been interested in technology for many years and with Lisa, regularly makes performance work that skillfully integrates technology and dance in ways that try to allow both elements to speak to common human experience. His current creative interests are focused on developing workable strategies for integrating technology into improvisational performance. For the last five years he has been a full-time Visiting Assistant Professor in the Mills College Dance Department. There he teaches various composition, music, technology and theory related courses. He has a BA in Dance from Colorado College and an MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and has fond memories of both institutions.
Works: Season to Ripen (2008)
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Stone (Winston Damon)
Stone (aka Winston Damon) began composing music for dance and theatre at age 16. Since then he has toured internationally (Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa, Istanbul) with a wide assortment of musical and performing arts ensembles. After years of performing his originals as a one-man-band (playing drums, percussions, bass keys, tuba, trombone, flute, didgeridoo and electric cello strapped on like a guitar), he started his group “Ulele” in 1994 as an extension of his solo work. Ulele’s first release “Seed” was on the top 10 independent releases on numerous DJ’s lists in 1996. Ulele continues to play in Chicago. Stone has also performed with Nicholas Tremulis’s Orchestra and Mucca Pazza.
Works: Earthly Tongues (2008); After the Fall, Desire (1999); Of Love and Shadows (1989)
Richard Woodbury
Richard Woodbury is a composer and sound designer working in theater, dance and media arts. Richard has composed numerous scores for dance including Short Stories for Hedwig Dances, Stupormarket, Monument and Overflow for The Seldoms, and Pentimento for The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. He has also performed live with The Merce Cunningham and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Companies. His work for theater includes music and/or sound design for Tony Award winning Broadway productions of August: Osage County, A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Death of a Salesman, and The Young Man from Atlanta as well as numerous productions for Chicago’s renowned Goodman (where he is Resident Sound Designer) and Steppenwolf Theaters and theatres across the United States, Canada and Europe. Richard has received Joseph Jefferson, Helen Hayes, Ovation, IRNE, and NAACP Awards for outstanding sound design, and the Ruth Page award for Outstanding Collaborative Artist, as well as nominations for New York Drama Desk awards. From 1980 through 2014 Richard served as Music Director at the Dance Center of Columbia College where he was an Associate Professor and “Distinguished Faculty Artist”. He now pursues his creative work exclusively.
Works: Short Stories (2006); Arch of Repose (2014)
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Michael Zerang
Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois, and is a first-generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a professional musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms. Michael has collaborated with contemporary theater, dance, and other multidisciplinary forms and has received three Joseph Jefferson Awards for Original Music Composition in Theater, in collaboration with Redmoon Theater, in 1996, 1998, and 2000. As a percussionist and composer, Michael has over eighty titles in his discography and has toured nationally and internationally to 34 countries since 1981, and works with and ever-widening pool of collaborators. Michael founded and was the artistic director of the Link’s Hall Performance Series in Chicago from 1985-1989 where he produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music. Michael has been a Board Member of Links Hall Since 1989. He continued to produce concerts at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and at his own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood, from 2001 – 2005. Michael has taught as a guest artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in performance technique, sound design, and sound/music as it relates to puppetry; rhythmic analysis for dancers at The Dance Center of Columbia College, Northwestern University, and MoMing Dance and Arts Center; courses in Composer/Choreographer Collaborations at Northwestern University; music to children at The Jane Adams Hull House. Michael currently tours and holds workshops in improvisational music, and teaches private lessons in rhythmic analysis, music composition, and percussion technique.
Works: Slask (2003); Amma (2000); Flight Distance (1986); Shadowed Ground (1999); Fever Tales (1991); In Search of a Common Language
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