John Zorn is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". His avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, contemporary, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, and world music. In 2013, Down Beat described Zorn as "one of our most important composers" and in 2020 Rolling Stone noted that "[alt]hough Zorn has operated almost entirely outside the mainstream, he's gradually asserted himself as one of the most influential musicians of our time".
Annie Gosfield is a New-York-based composer who works on the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise. She composes for others and performs with her own group, taking her music to festivals, factories, clubs, art spaces and concert halls. Much of her work combines acoustic instruments with electronic sounds, incorporating unusual sources such as satellite sounds, machine sounds, detuned or out-of-tune samples and industrial noises. Her work often contains improvisation and frequently uses extended techniques and/or altered musical instruments. She won a 2012 Berlin Prize.
Susie Ibarra is a contemporary composer and percussionist who has worked and recorded with jazz, classical, world, and indigenous musicians. One of SPIN's "100 Greatest Drummers of Alternative Music," she is known for her work as a performer in avant-garde, jazz, world, and new music. As a composer, Ibarra incorporates diverse styles and the influences of Philippine Kulintang, jazz, classical, poetry, musical theater, opera, and electronic music. Ibarra remains active as a composer, performer, educator, and documentary filmmaker in the U.S., Philippines, and internationally. She is interested and involved in works that blend folkloric and indigenous tradition with avant-garde. In 2004, Ibarra began field recording indigenous Philippine music, and in 2009 she co-founded Song of the Bird King, an organization focusing on the preservation of Indigenous music and ecology.
Meriwether Lewis Spratlan Jr. was an American music academic and composer of contemporary classical music.
Relâche is an American chamber ensemble dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music.
Ethel is a New York based string quartet that was co-founded in 1998 by Ralph Farris, viola; Dorothy Lawson, cello; Todd Reynolds, violin; and Mary Rowell, violin. Unlike most string quartets, Ethel plays with amplification and integrates improvisation into its performances. The group's current membership includes violinists Kip Jones and Corin Lee.
Tina Davidson is an American composer.
Donald Nally is an American conductor, chorus master, and professor of conducting, specializing in chamber choirs, opera, and new music. He is conductor of the professional new-music choir, The Crossing, based in Philadelphia. He teaches graduate students at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music.
Morris Palter is a Canadian drummer/percussionist who specializes in contemporary/classical chamber and solo percussion music. He also plays novelty ragtime xylophone and drum kit, and is also a composer, and university professor who was a founding member of the band Treble Charger.
Anthony Coleman is an avant-garde jazz pianist. During the 1980s and 1990s he worked with John Zorn on Cobra, Kristallnacht, The Big Gundown, Archery, and Spillane and helped push modern Jewish music into the 21st century.
Virgil Moorefield is a composer and intermedia artist based in Rüschlikon, Switzerland.
Wu Fei is a virtuoso Chinese American composer, performer, and improviser from Beijing, China. She performs on the Chinese guzheng, an ancient zither with twenty-one strings, as well as sings. She currently resides in Nashville. Wu Fei has composed for a variety of musical genres, including choir, string quartet, chamber ensemble, Balinese gamelan, orchestral, film, and modern dance.
Tzadik Records is a record label in New York City that specializes in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995. He is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases. Tzadik is a not-for-profit, cooperative record label.
Lisa Carol Bielawa is a composer and vocalist. She is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition and spent a year composing as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
Mark Applebaum is an American composer and full professor of music composition and theory at Stanford University.
Kenji Bunch is an American composer and violist. Bunch currently serves as the artistic director of Fear No Music and teaches at Portland State University, Reed College, and for the Portland Youth Philharmonic. He is also the director of MYSfits, the most advanced string ensemble of the Metropolitan Youth Symphony.
Gene Pritsker is a Russian-born composer, guitarist, rapper and record producer living in New York City. He moved to the United States with his family in 1978 and lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. He attended the Manhattan School of Music from 1990 to 1994 where he studied composition with Giampaolo Bracali.
Musica Orbis was an American electric chamber music quintet based in Philadelphia, performing between 1972 and 1979. Instrumentation included voices, harp, flute, cello, acoustic and electric bass, drums, marimba, vibes, synthesizer, organ, pump organ, knee harp, wooden recorder, bells, hand percussion, Fender Rhodes, and piano.
Kathleen Supové is an American pianist specializing in modern classical music. She has premiered the works of dozens of composers on her Exploding Piano series. Her recitals involve recitation, costume, theatrical elements such as lighting, and sets. Kathleen's intention is to augment and extend the piano recital, and to borrow from contemporary theater, film and dance to create a new context for modern classical music. She also performs works that extend the sonic world of the piano recital, by using electronics both live and pre-recorded, preparation of the piano, and playing inside the piano on the strings themselves.
George Hurd is an American composer whose work focuses primarily on electroacoustic music combining classical instrumentation and electronics. He has also written a substantial amount of music for solo electronics and classical chamber ensemble. He is based in San Francisco, CA and heads The Hurd Ensemble, a chamber group dedicated to performing his pieces. A large portion of his work is concert music for The Hurd Ensemble and other groups, and music for dance, most notably having collaborated with choreographer Loni Landon and LEVYdance on Meet Me Normal (2014) and the murmur of yearning for Kinetech Arts.
