Miya Masaoka is an American composer, musician, and sound artist active in the field of contemporary classical music and experimental music. Her work encompasses contemporary classical composition, improvisation, electroacoustic music, inter-disciplinary sound art, sound installation, traditional Japanese instruments, and performance art. She is based in New York City.
Pauline Oliveros was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music.
Myra Melford is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as an "explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for."
Marilyn Crispell is an American jazz pianist and composer. Scott Yanow described her as "a powerful player... who has her own way of using space... She is near the top of her field." Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote: "Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano... She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz." In addition to her own extensive work as a soloist or bandleader, Crispell is also known as a longtime member of saxophonist Anthony Braxton's quartet in the 1980s and '90s.
Fred Hersch is an American jazz pianist, composer, educator and HIV/AIDS activist. He was the first person to play weeklong engagements as a solo pianist at the Village Vanguard in New York City. He has recorded more than 70 of his jazz compositions. Hersch has been nominated for several Grammy Awards, and, as of December 2014, had been on the Jazz Studies faculty of the New England Conservatory since 1980.
Chris Brown is an American composer, pianist and electronic musician, who creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. He was active early in his career as an inventor and builder of electroacoustic instruments; he has also performed widely as an improviser and pianist with groups as "Room" and the "Glenn Spearman Double Trio." In 1986 he co-founded the pioneering computer network music ensemble "The Hub". He is also known for his recorded performances of music by Henry Cowell, Luc Ferrari, and John Zorn. He has received commissions from the Berkeley Symphony, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, the Gerbode Foundation, the Phonos Foundation and the Creative Work Fund. His recent music includes the poly-rhythm installation "Talking Drum", the "Inventions" series for computers and interactive performers, and the radio performance "Transmissions" series, with composer Guillermo Galindo.
Joëlle Léandre is a French double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation.
Denny Zeitlin is an American jazz pianist, composer, and clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco. Since 1963, he has recorded more than 100 compositions and was a first-place winner in the DownBeat International Jazz Critics' Poll in 1965 and 1974. He composed the soundtrack for the 1978 science-fiction horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Hans Fjellestad is a pianist, music composer and documentary filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California.
Sarah Jane Cion is an American author and jazz pianist.
Sarah Cahill is an American pianist based in the Bay Area. She has also worked as a writer on music and as a radio show host.
Judy Dunaway is a conceptual sound artist, avant-garde composer, free improvisor and creator of sound installations who is primarily known for her sound works for latex balloons. Since 1990 she has created over thirty works for balloons as sound conduits and has also made this her main instrument for improvisation.
Julian Waterfall Pollack / J3PO is an American pianist, keyboardist, composer, and producer associated with jazz, classical, and hip hop music.
Brenda Hutchinson is an American composer and sound artist who has developed a body of work based on a perspective about interacting with the public and non-artists through personal, reciprocal engagement with listening and sounding. Hutchinson encourages her participants to experiment with sound, share stories, and make music. She often bases her electroacoustic compositions on recordings of these individual collaborative experiences, creating "sonic portraits" or "aural pictures" of people and situations.
Julia Feldman is an Israeli jazz vocalist, composer and educator. Her singing combines elements of multiple jazz genres, free improvisation and modern classical music.
Nicole Mitchell is an American jazz flautist and composer who teaches jazz at the University of Virginia. She is a former chairwoman of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
The Feminist Improvising Group (FIG) were a five- to eight-piece international free improvising avant-garde jazz and experimental music ensemble formed in London in 1977 by Scottish vocalist Maggie Nicols and English bassoonist/composer Lindsay Cooper. Their debut performance was at a "Music for Socialism" festival at the Almost Free Theatre in London in October 1977, and they toured Europe several times in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Maria Baptist is a German musician and professor.
James Harley is a Canadian composer, author, and professor of music born in Vernon, British Columbia. His creative output consists of orchestral, chamber, solo, electroacoustic, and vocal music.
Karen Ng is a Canadian improvisational musician, teacher and event organizer based in Toronto, Ontario. Best known as a saxophonist, she is a multi-instrumentalist who has performed internationally with acts including Andy Shauf, Do Make Say Think and L CON. A former programmer and board member of Somewhere There, she is the co-founder of TONE Festival and joined the Guelph Jazz Festival in 2018 as the Assistant Artistic and General Director.
