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, Jewish music, hardcore, classical, contemporary, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, and world music. 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".
Evan Ziporyn is an American composer of post-minimalist music with a cross-cultural orientation, drawing equally from classical music, avant-garde, various world music traditions, and jazz. Ziporyn has composed for a wide range of ensembles, including symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, many types of chamber groups, and solo works, sometimes involving electronics. Balinese gamelan, for which he has composed numerous works, has compositions. He is known for his solo performances on clarinet and bass clarinet; additionally, Ziporyn plays gender wayang and other Balinese instruments, saxophones, piano & keyboards, EWI, and Shona mbira.
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 an American 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.
Alex Shapiro is an American composer and creator advocate. Her acoustic and electroacoustic music concert works are characterized by their genre eclecticism incorporating influences including minimalism, 12-tone serialism, pop, jazz, electronic dance music, and cinematically inspired sound worlds.
Douglas J. Cuomo is an American composer of contemporary classical music and music for television.
Uri Caine is an American classical and jazz pianist and composer from Philadelphia.
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. Nally has been nominated for 10 Grammy Awards, of which he has won 4. He is the current director of Choral studies at Westminster Choir College, and conductor of the professional new-music choir, The Crossing, based in Philadelphia.
Michael Jeffrey Shapiro is an American composer, conductor, and author.
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.
Will Todd is an English musician and composer. He is a pianist, who performs regularly with others in his own works.
Tzadik 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.
Cynthia Johnston Turner is a conductor and clinician in the United States, Latin America, Asia, Europe and Canada. She was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University in July 2021. Previously, she served as Director of Bands on the faculty of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia where she oversaw the entire UGA Band program, including the 440-member Redcoat Marching Band, Masters and Doctoral students in conducting, was chair of the conducting area, and artistic director of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. She formerly served on the faculty of Cornell University, where she directed the Wind Ensemble, Wind Symphony, Ensemble X, and chamber winds. She was appointed Artistic Director and Conductor of the Wellington Wind Symphony in 2023. Turner is active as a guest conductor, speaker, educator, and clinician in Canada, United States, and abroad.
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.
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.
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 Berlin, Germany 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/artists such as the Grammy-winning Third Coast Percussion, Elevate Ensemble, and violinist Carla Kihlstedt, and music for dance, most notably with choreographer Loni Landon and LEVYdance on Meet Me Normal (2014) and the murmur of yearning for Kinetech Arts.
