Johnny Gandelsman
Grammy award-winning violinist and producer Johnny Gandelsman's musical voice reflects the artistic collaborations he has been a part of since moving to the United States in 1995. The New Yorker has called Johnny "revelatory," placing him in the company of "radically transformative" performers like Maurizio Pollini, Peter Serkin and Christian Zacharias. As a founding member of Brooklyn Rider and a former member of the Silkroad Ensemble, Johnny has closely worked with such luminaries as Bela Fleck, Martin Hayes, Kayhan Kalhor, Yo-Yo Ma and Mark Morris. Gandelsman integrates a wide range of creative sensibilities into a unique style amongst today's violinists. Johnny's recording of the complete Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, which reached #1 on the Billboard Classical Chart, and made it onto NY Magazine and NY Times Best of the Year lists. A passionate advocate for new music, Johnny has premiered dozens of new works and has been producing records since starting his label, In a Circle Records in 2008. Recent credits include the Silkroad Ensemble's critically-acclaimed recording of Osvaldo Golijov tone poem in voices Falling out of Time (In a Circle Records); Brooklyn Rider's Healing Modes and The Wanderer (In a Circle Records); and Sing Me Home , a Grammy-award winner for Best World Music album (Sony). Johnny also produced music for Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Bottstein's film The US and the Holocaust . Johnny was born in Moscow into a family of musicians. His father Yuri is a violist, his mother Janna is a pianist, and his sister Natasha is a violinist as well. He lives in New York.

Clarice Assad 
A powerful communicator renowned for her musical scope and versatility, Brazilian American Clarice Assad is a significant artistic voice in the classical, world music, pop and jazz genres. A Grammy-nominated composer, celebrated pianist, inventive vocalist, and educator, she is renowned for her evocative colors, rich textures, and diverse stylistic range. As an innovator, her award-winning education program, Voxploration, has been presented throughout the United States, Brazil, Europe and Qatar. With her talent sought-after by artists and organizations worldwide, the multi-talented musician continues to attract new audiences both onstage and off. clariceassad.com

Nick Dunston 
Nick Dunston is a Berlin-based acoustic and electroacoustic composer, improviser and bassist. An "indispensable player on the New York avant-garde" ( New York Times ), his performances have also spanned a variety of venues and festivals across North America and Europe. He's performed, toured and recorded professionally with bands led by artists such as Marc Ribot, Ches Smith, Imani Uzuri, Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Webber, Amirtha Kidambi and Vijay Iyer. In addition to three studio albums released under his name, he has also been commissioned by artists such as Bang on a Can, Ex-Aequo, T R O M P O, Joanna Mattrey and Clifton Joey Guidry III. nickdunston.org

Adeliia Faizullina
Uzbekistan-born Tatar composer Adeliia Faizullina (b.1988) is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and Tatar quray player. As a composer, she explores cutting-edge vocal colors and paints delicate and vibrant atmospheres inspired by the music and poetry of Tatar folklore. Adeliia received her BM in Voice in Kazan, Russia, and BM in Music Composition in Gnessins Russian Academy of Music. She has an MM in Music Composition from the University of Texas at Austin, studying with Yevgeniy Sharlat, and in 2019 started her DMA at the University of Southern California, studying with Nina C. Young. Adeliia is a composer fellow at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. In 2019, she won the Seattle Symphony Celebrate Asia Competition and performed with the Seattle Symphony in 2020. Her music has been performed at the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Chamber Music Society of the Carolinas, and National Sawdust. www.adeliiacomposer.com

Justin Messina
Southern California native, Justin Messina (b. 1980) works with both acoustic and electronic means to create works that explore the expressive nature of sound. These works range from large orchestral compositions to electronically created sound installations. He is currently scoring a documentary for director Anne Aghion. His works have been performed at major concert halls in the US and Europe, including Carnegie Hall, Cité de la Musique, Concertgebouw and Wiener Musikverein. Through installations like Island , recorded at Channel Islands National Park, he explores the relationship between music and sound by recording acoustic instruments in unusual acoustic spaces like sea caves and forests. Island is on display at the Chrisman California Island Center. His album Shortwave Artifacts investigates the mysterious nature of radio. In addition to his own compositions, he has worked as an arranger, copyist and electronic musician with acts including Yo-Yo Ma, the Silk Road Ensemble, Bela Fleck, Oswaldo Golijov, Adam Schoenberg, Brooklyn Rider and Francesco Tristano. Justin received his doctorate from The Juilliard School in 2009.

Maya Miro Johnson
Maya Miro Johnson is a conductor, composer and interdisciplinary artist who considers her work philosophy not constrained to logic and reason. In no particular order, it focuses on exorcising hereditary ghosts, corroding the capitalist continuum, satirizing supremacy paradigms, affirming the intellectual and aesthetic value of the proletariat by recontextualizing the quotidian, manipulating the duality of the familiar and the strange, and invoking the universe. Equally at home on the stage, at the gallery and in the concert hall, Maya blends a unique background in theater, film, dance performance, concept art, literature, philosophy and classical music into her praxis. https://mayamirojohnson.com/

Angelica Negrón
Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys and electronics as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras, choir and film. Her music has been described as "wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative" (WQXR/Q2) while The New York Times noted her "capacity to surprise." Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Kronos Quartet, loadbang, MATA Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the American Composers Orchestra and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. She has composed numerous film scores, including Landfall (2020) and Memories of a Penitent Heart (2016), in collaboration with filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo. Upcoming premieres include works for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, LA Philharmonic and NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative. www.angelicanegron.com/

Matana Roberts 
Roberts has been called "a major talent" ( The Wire ) and "the spokeswoman for a new, politically conscious and refractory Jazz scene" ( Jazzthetik ). Since the release of her last record, she has been traveling extensively, and her voyages have allowed her to build on a personal archive of experience which has inspired much of her work to date, with a thematic focus on migration, memory, sound and the place of history in uncertain times. Roberts is also a 2019 DAAD fellow in music composition. Of her work, Matana says the following: "At my artistic core, I am firmly dedicated to creating a unique and very personal body of sound work that speaks to, and reminds people of all walks of life to reach, stand up, give voice, regardless of difference, created from mere labels of intellectual classification. In my ideal world the idea of 'difference,' is an illusion designed only for modern economic division and elitist intellectual hierarchy. Through my life's work, I stand creatively in defiance." https://www.matanaroberts.com/

Kojiro Umezaki (梅崎 康二郎)
Kojiro Umezaki is a performer of the shakuhachi and composer, often developing and employing media-technology systems for live performance. Noted by The New York Times as a "virtuosic, deeply expressive shakuhachi player and composer" and the LA Times as one of the "better kept secrets of Southern California music," he has performed regularly with the Silkroad Ensemble since 2001 with whom he appears on multiple recordings including the Grammy Award-winning Sing Me Home, A Playlist Without Borders, Off the Map , and the Grammy-nominated 2015 documentary film, The Music of Strangers , directed by Morgan Neville. Other notable recordings as performer, composer and/or producer include Brooklyn Rider's Dominant Curve , Yo-Yo Ma's Appassionato , Nicole Mitchell's Mandorla Awakening II , Kei Akagi's Aqua Puzzle , The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan (Smithsonian Folkways), and Huun Huur Tu's Ancestors Call . A developer of real-time music/media systems, his interest in hybrid forms of creative activity draws from tradition and technology, with a particular focus on intercultural musical practices across the historic Silk Road regions. He holds a degree in Electro-acoustic Music from Dartmouth College. kojiroumezaki.com