2024 CORTONA SESSIONS FACULTY

COMPOSITION
Tina Tallon
Anthony R. Green

PERFORMANCE
flute | Sarah Brady
clarinet | Gregory Oakes
saxophone | Geoffrey Deibel
violin | Ari Streisfeld
cello | Kivie Cahn-Lipman
voice | Rachel Calloway
percussion | Michael Compitello
piano | Brianna Matzke
piano | Winston Choi

CONDUCTING
Chris Younghoon Kim

click names above for individual bios

THE CORTONA COLLECTIVE

The Cortona Collective is the ensemble made up of current and former faculty from the Sessions. The Collective performs together in a variety of settings outside of the Sessions themselves.

The entire membership of the Cortona Collective is listed below. The year that each joined the Collective is listed after their name.

PERFORMERS

flute: Sarah Brady (2016) — Mary Fukushima (2010)
clarinet: Gregory Oakes (2011)
saxophone: h2 Quartet (2012): Geoffrey Deibel, Jeffrey Loeffert, Kimberly Goddard Loeffert, Jonathan Nichol
violin: Ari Streisfeld (2014) — Zeneba Bowers (2011)
cello: Mariel Roberts (2023) — Kivie Cahn-Lipman (2012) — Matt Walker (2011)
percussion: Michael Compitello (2017) — Ji Hye Jung (2015)
piano: Winston Choi (2022) — Brianna Matzke (2019) — Amir Khosrowpour (2011) — Michael Kirkendoll (2010)
voice: Alexandra Porter (2023) – Paul Chwe Minchul An (2022) — Jeffrey Gavett (2017) — Rachel Calloway (2014) — Laura Bohn (2013) – Sarah Tannehill Anderson (2012)

conductor: Tim Weiss (2020) — Jeffrey Meyer (2020) — Chris Younghoon Kim (2017) — Eric Garcia (2014) — Jacob Wallace (2013)

COMPOSERS

Anthony R. Green (2024) – Jonathan Bailey Holland (2023) — Laurie San Martin (2023) — Evan Williams (2022) — Tina Tallon (2020) — Kay Rhie (2018) — Suzanne Farrin (2017) — David Rakowski (2016) — Beth Wiemann (2016) — Stevan Tickmayer (2011) — Gabriela Lena Frank (2010) — Forrest Pierce (2010)

Winner of the 2021-2022 Frederic A. Juilliard/Walter Damrosch Rome Prize in Music Composition, TINA TALLON is a temporal media artist, engineer, historian, and educator whose work grapples with questions of identity, agency, and power as constructed and performed in our increasingly technologically-mediated world. Dr. Tallon received her Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California San Diego in 2020, where she explored the potential of electronic music as a reparative medium for engaging trauma. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of AI and the Arts in the University of Florida’s College of the Arts, where she is director of the Florida Electroacoustic Music Studio (FEMS) and affiliate faculty in the UF Informatics Institute.

Her concert music and interactive installations have been widely performed and presented by ensembles such as the LA Philharmonic New Music Group, Ensemble Intercontemporain, wild Up, and Talea, in venues ranging from some of the world’s most celebrated concert halls and arts institutions to aquariums, ancient Roman aqueducts, and grain silos. She has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships from organizations such as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the American Academy in Rome, the Barlow Endowment, ASCAP, and NewMusicUSA, among others. Recent commissioners include Guerilla Opera, the LA Philharmonic, the La Jolla Symphony, and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. Her collaborators have included particle physicists, visual artists, poets, dancers, biological engineers, filmmakers, birds, and jellyfish.

Dr. Tallon’s current research focuses on the myriad ways in which artificial intelligence influences how artists engage with society, with a specific emphasis on equity and algorithmic justice. Her interests include human-computer interaction, virtual tactility, embodied sonic cognition, algorithmic composition and procedural music generation, data sonification, computational musicology, labor, automation, intellectual property, and accessibility. Her work has been featured by the New Yorker, NPR, Politico, TheNextWeb, and enterprise.nxt, and recent international public speaking appearances include two keynotes at the Iceland Airwaves PRO conference in Reykjavík and the MIT-Grafenegg Forum in Austria. She has also served as an arts and technology entrepreneurship coach for MIT Bootcamps, and is currently a research affiliate in the MIT Department of Biological Engineering, where she is developing an engineering ethics curriculum based on her work with technological bias.

Recognizing the challenges posed by lack of access to sophisticated, nuanced, and affordable documentation services for emerging and underrepresented artists, Dr. Tallon founded SALT Arts Documentation, an outfit that specializes in creating artistically-informed audiovisual documents of contemporary performing arts and training other artists in audio engineering, videography, photography, and web design. She has worked with numerous nonprofits, arts groups, and presenting organizations around the world, and her media have been published by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, the Boston Globe, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and many others. She is also active as a vocalist, conductor, electronic musician, and video artist, and has performed in and facilitated many productions around the globe. Prior to beginning her career as a musician, her research in pancreatic cancer won the Alexander J. Denner Award from MIT, and she has developed computational tools to model both cancer metastasis and stem cell differentiation.

Prior to commencing her doctoral work at UC San Diego as a Katzin Prize fellow, Dr. Tallon completed B.S. degrees in Biological Engineering and Music from MIT (2011) and an M.F.A in Music Composition and Theory from Brandeis University (2013). Her primary composition teachers include Peter Child, David Rakowski, and Lei Liang, and she has studied computer music with Miller Puckette and Tom Erbe. From 2020-2021, she was a Radcliffe Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, where she began work on her first evening-length multimedia opera and book on the technocultural history of voice technology. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Florida, she served as Assistant Professor of Composition at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Clark University, and Lecturer in Music and Theater Arts at MIT. She has also been on faculty at many festivals and summer programs, and currently serves as Composition Program Director for the Cortona Sessions for New Music. A passionate educator, Dr. Tallon is committed to supporting young artists and engineers as they find their voices and dream up ways for their creative endeavors to make the world a better place.

The creative output of Anthony R. Green (b. 1984; composer, performer, social justice artist) includes musical and visual creations, interpretations of original works or works in the repertoire, collaborations, educational outreach, and more. Behind all of his artistic endeavors are the ideals of equality and freedom, which manifest themselves in diverse ways in a composition, a performance, a collaboration, or social justice work.

As a composer, his works have been presented in over 25 countries across six continents by various internationally acclaimed soloists and ensembles, including : vocalists Anthony P. McGlaun, Julian Otis, Anna Elder, and Amanda DeBoer Bartlett; violists Ashleigh Gordon, Gregory Williams, Carrie Frey, and Wendy Richman; pianists Stephen Drury, Kathleen Supové, Jason Hardink, Kimi Kawashima, Lewis Warren Jr., Clare Longendyke, Hayk Melikyan, and Eunmi Ko; cellists Matthieu D’Ordine, Patricia Ryan, and Ifetayo Ali-Landing; percussionists Bill Solomon, Michael Skillern, and Dame Evelyn Glennie; saxophonists Neal Postma, Benjamin Sorrell, and Kendra Williams; and ensembles Tenth Intervention (Hajnal Pivnick – violin, and Adam Tendler – piano), ALEA III (with Gunther Schuller, conductor), the Thalea String Quartet, counter)induction, Ensemble Dal Niente, Dinosaur Annex, andPlay, NorthStar Duo, fivebyfive, Transient Canvas, the McCormick Percussion Group, the Icarus Quartet, Opera Kansas (as winner of the 2018 Zepick Modern Opera Contest), the American Composers Orchestra, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, the Minnesota Philharmonic, the String Archestra, the Playground Ensemble, Ossia New Music Ensemble, and Alarm Will Sound, to name a few. He has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation (a 2021 commissioned composer), Community MusicWorks, Make Music Boston, Celebrity Series Boston, Chamber Music Tulsa, Access Contemporary Music, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Boston University (for the 2023 Richmond Piano Competition), the Texas Flute Society (for the 2021 Myrna Brown Competition), NOISE-BRIDGE duo, Ghetto Classics (for the 2022 Kenya International Cello Festival), and various other soloists and ensembles. In 2021, three portrait concerts featuring his music were presented digitally by Boston University, and in live concerts at UMKC - presented by the saxophone studio, and in St. Paul, Minnesota - presented by the 113 Composers Collective. A fourth portrait concert featuring vocal works will be presented in December 2022 at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA. He has been a resident artist at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Escape to Create (Florida), Visby International Centre for Composers (Sweden), Space/Time (Scotland), atelier:performance (Germany), the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Nebraska), Gettysburg National Military Park (through the National Parks Arts Foundation), and the perfocraZe International Artist Residency (Ghana). Upcoming residencies include the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida) and Loghaven (Tennessee).

As a performer, he has appeared at venues in the US, Cyprus, France, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, South Korea, and Ghana, premiering original works and working with student, emerging, and established composers such as David Liptak, Renée C. Baker, and George Crumb for various performance presentations. Green has participated in consortium commissions organized by Neal Postma (saxophone), Meraki (clarinet and piano duo), and New Works Project (solo percussion). His music has been performed at Symphony Space (New York), Marian Anderson Theater at Aaron Davis Hall (New York), the DiMenna Center (New York), Jordan Hall (Boston), Tivoli Vredenburg (Utrecht), Kunstraum (Stuttgart), Cité de la Musique et de la Danse (Strasbourg), the Shoe Factory (Nicosia), the TWA Hotel (New York), the Edward A. Hatch Memorial Shell on the Charles River Esplanade (Boston), and the Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), amongst many others. Selections of Green’s music and performances are on CDs and DVDs on the Navona, Ravello, Stone, and Innova labels. His recent engagement in performance art and divergent theater has yielded presentations of such works in Berlin (Spike Gallery), New York City (Union Square for the Art in Odd Places Normal Project, 2021; JACK in Brooklyn for the 2021 Radical Acts Festival), Oslo (Kulturkirken Jakob for the Periferien “SITES AND SOUNDS” project), and in Kumasi, Ghana. Other visual and sonic art projects have been presented at Galerie Wedding (Berlin), Federation Square (Melbourne), Monkey Bar (Hannover), Alliance Francaise Kumasi, the Tampa Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and venues in Malaysia, Venezuela, Spain, and more.

Through music, text, and entrepreneurship, Green comments on many issues related to social justice. Such issues have included: immigration (Earned - narrator & double string quartet), civil rights (Dona Nobis Veritatem - soprano, viola, & piano), the historical links between slavery and current racial injustice in the US (Oh, Freedom! - spoken word, voice, flute, viola, cello), the contributions of targeted and/or minority groups to humanity (A Single Voice: Solitary, Unified - solo alto sax & fixed media), and more. His ongoing opera-project Alex in Transition highlights the life of Alex - a trans woman - and her journey to truth and authentic living. This opera has been featured in the Ft. Worth Opera Frontiers Festival, presented by New Fangled Opera and One Ounce Opera, and performed in a concert production at the Israel Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv. For the Concord Revisited Project, organized by pianists Jason Hardink and Kimi Kawashima at Westminster College (Salt Lake City), Green composed The Baldwin Sonata : a concert-length piano sonata celebrating and musically analyzing the life, legacy, philosophy, and text of the legendary James Baldwin. Other social justice works include: short cabaret operas, which are comedic-yet-piquant critiques on capitalism via corporations (one of which was premiered by Strange Trace for their 2021 Stencils Festival); His Mind & What He Heard in Central Park in the Late 90s for solo voice, concerning a gay Black man’s encounters with queer racism and toxic exotification (premiered by Anna Elder at the 2019 Conference: Music & Erotics at the University of Pittsburgh); To Anacreon in the US for solo piano, concerning nationalism - especially US “patriotism” (premiered by Aristo Sham at New England Conservatory, with subsequent performances by Kathleen Supové at Barge Music, Clare Longendyke at the Mostly Modern Festival, and more); the sax quartet Almost Over, a musical symbol of Black history in the United States (featured in the 2017 Grachten Festival in Amsterdam and the 2017 Gaudeamus Music Week in Utrecht); rest - reflect - reignite, a video work exploring Black rest, inspired by the Nap Ministry (commissioned by the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project for the Re:Sound 2021 Festival); Piano Concerto: Solution, sonifying and visualizing the power of women (commissioned by the McCormick Percussion Group; presented at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and the Milwaukee Art Museum presented by Present Music); and I Returned. I wanted to., a video work examining Black joy, Black queerness, Christianity in Africa, and more (commissioned by CAP UCLA for the 2021 Tune In Festival), amongst others. Publications include text for New Music Box, TEMPO (Cambridge University), Archive Books, Positionen magazine (Berlin), and more.

Green’s most important social justice work has been with Castle of our Skins : a concert and education series organization dedicated to celebrating Black artistry through music. Co-founder, associate artistic director, and composer-in-residence, his work with Castle of our Skins has included concert/workshop curation and development, community outreach, lecturing about the history and politics concerning Black composers of classical music, commissioning and supporting young, emerging, and established composers, curating the BIBA (Beauty in Black Artistry) Blog, and more. The current 10th season will be his final season with CooS, after which he will transition to director emeritus, occasional consultant, and lifelong friend.

His primary teachers include Susan Kelley, Dr. Donald Rankin, and Maria Clodes-Jaguaribe for piano, and Dr. Martin Amlin, John Drumheller, Theodore Antoniou, Lee Hyla, and Dr. Robert Cogan for composition. He has participated in masterclasses with Laura Schwendinger, Paquito D’Rivera, Walter Zimmermann, Jonathan Harvey, the Fidelio Trio, and the JACK Quartet, amongst others. His solo and collaborative work has been recognized by grants from Meet the Composer, the Argosy Foundation, New Music USA, and the American Composers Forum as a McKnight Visiting Composer, among others. A passionate educator, Green has given courses, workshops, lectures, and studio visits at numerous institutions, including Walker West Music Academy, Boston University, the Longy School of Music, the Piet Zwart Instituut, the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO), UC Santa Cruz, the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, the Gotland School of Music Composition (Gotlands Tonsättarskola), Westminster College, the University of Milwaukee, and Columbia University. He has served on the faculty for the Sewanee Music Festival, Project STEP summer program, Really Spicy Opera’s Aria Institute, the Alba Music Festival Composition Program, and the Vienna Summer Music Festival’s Composers Forum. An avid thought contributor, he has appeared on panels concerning various subjects for the Wellesley Composers Conference, the 2020 New Music Gathering (along with Angélica Negrón, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and more), and most recently for the 2022 WASBE Conference in Prague (along with Jennifer Higdon and David T. Little, and more), among others. He has also taught various subjects and given private composition lessons at the Universität der Künste Berlin, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Hartford’s Hartt School of Music, Theater, and Dance. He is a 2021 graduate fellow (alumnus) of the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Science (BAS) at the Berlin University of the Arts graduate school (Graduiertenschule), and also holds degrees from New England Conservatory and Boston University.

Green was born on Nacotchtank land (Arlington, VA) and raised on Narragansett and Pauquunaukit land (Providence, RI) in a country named by violent Europeans and built significantly by the labor of the enslaved. He currently splits his time mostly between the US and Europe, with ever-increasing travel to Africa. He is married to his occasional piano duo partner and forever husband Dr. Itamar Ronen.

Photo credit: Mariam Mekiwi

Called “enchanting” by the Boston Globe, flutist Sarah Brady is sought after across the country as a soloist, chamber musician, and master teacher.  An avid promoter of new music she has premiered and recorded new music from many of today’s top composers. Recent projects have included premieres of new solo flute and electronic music from Elena Ruehr, Andy Vores and John Mallia, Curtis Hughesas well as music for flute and strings from Marcos Balter, Nicholas Vines and Johnathan Bailey Holland. Her solo, chamber and over 40 orchestral recordings can be heard on the Albany, Naxos, Oxingale, Cantalope and BMOP/Sound music labels. As a leading interpreter of contemporary music, she was invited to read and record new music commissioned by Yo Yo Ma for his Silk Road Project at Tanglewood.

Sarah lives in Boston and performs regularly as principal flute with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Odyssey Opera. She can also be heard performing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Boston Ballet, Portland Symphony Orchestra and Boston Lyric Opera. As a chamber musician she has been described as “clairvoyantly sensitive” (New Music Connoisseur), and has collaborated with the Fromm Players at Harvard, the Firebird Ensemble, the Radius Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva,  The Talea Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, Sound Icon and NotaRiotous. She is a member of the Michigan based new music ensemble Brave New Works a group that is dedicated to promoting new music throughout the US and Canada by premiering new music and educating young composers through a college residency program. The ensemble has been in residence at Cornell, Bowling Green University, the University of Michigan, Tufts University, University of Puget Sound, Williams, Western Washington University and the Boston Conservatory.

In competition she was awarded second place in the National Flute Association 2006 Young Artist Competition, where she also won an award for the best performance of the newly commissioned work by Paul Drescher.  She was a Semi-finalist in the Myrna Brown Competition Flute Competition, Heida Herman Woodwind Competition, Eastern Connecticut Young Artist Competition, and twice received second place in Boston’s prestigious Pappoutsakis Flute Competition. As a soloist Sarah enjoyed a sold out debut at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall with pianist Oxana Yablonskaya. Sarah is Associate Professor of Flute and Head of the Contemporary Classical Music Program at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

www.Bradyflute.com

Gregory Oakes is an exciting and energetic clarinetist and a passionate champion of the music of our time. From his Carnegie Hall debut with members of Ensemble Intercontemporain and Pierre Boulez to his performances as a member of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Oakes has been praised by critics for his “outstanding performance” (New York Times) and “jazzy flourishes” (Denver Post). American Record Guide says “Oakes is the rare player who has both excellent classical training and a mastery of the otherworldly procedures demanded by non-traditional repertoire,” and Fanfare Magazine lauds the “formidable technical armamentarium at his command.”

A flexible and versatile musician, Mr. Oakes has performed with notable musicians in prestigious venues around the world. He has been a concerto soloist with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the Denver Brass, performed with Grammy® Award-winner Terence Blanchard at the Telluride Jazz Festival, and appeared at the Chicago Arts Club. His recordings have been released on Bridge, Centaur, CRI, Gothic, Karnatic Lab Records, and Naxos and broadcast on National Public Radio. His recent CD, Aesthetic Apparatus: Clarinet Chamber Music of Helmut Lachenmann, appears on the New Focus Recordings label.

As a soloist, Mr. Oakes has performed at multiple International Clarinet Association ClarinetFests, the University of Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium, the New Music Gathering, the International Computer Music Conference, the Crested Butte Chamber Music Festival, Boulder’s Modern Music Festival (M2F), and the Pendulum New Music Series. An international artist, Mr. Oakes has performed frequently in the Netherlands at Amsterdam’s venerable new music hall De IJsbreker, Gaudeamus Music Week, Concerten Tot en Met, the Karnatic Lab concert series, De Badcuyp, STEIM, and Utrecht’s Theatre Kikker. He has been a featured soloist at the prestigious MaerzMusik festival in Berlin. He has also toured Brazil—performing in Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, and Campinas—and conducted masterclasses at notable Brazilian universities UnB, UNIRIO, and UNICAMP. He was in residence as a guest artist at the MUPA Festival of Contemporary Music in Bangsaen, Thailand. In the summer, Mr. Oakes is on the faculty of The Cortona Sessions festival for new music in Tuscany, Italy.

Mr. Oakes has been a member of several orchestras including the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Ballet, Central City Opera, and the Colorado Music Festival. He is currently the principal clarinet of the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra. He is also an active chamber musician. As a founding member of the new music and creative arts ensemble Non Sequitur, he has been in residence at Princeton University, Harvard University, Dartmouth College, and the Aspen Music Festival. Oakes has also performed as a member of the woodwind quintet Category 5 and the award-winning clarinet quartet Ensemble Syzygy.

Mr. Oakes holds a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University, a master’s degree from DePaul University, and a doctorate from the University of Colorado. His teachers include Bil Jackson, Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, and John Bruce Yeh. He has been honored as an Aspen Music Festival Fellow, a Tanglewood Music Festival Fellow, and a Fulbright Scholar Finalist. Mr. Oakes has presented masterclasses at numerous institutions including the University of Michigan, University of California Berkeley, Peabody Conservatory, the Amsterdam Conservatory, and the Aspen Music Festival. He has previously taught at the University of Southern Mississippi (Hattiesburg, MS) and Bemidji State University (Bemidji, MN). Mr. Oakes is on the faculty of Iowa State University (Ames, IA).

Gregory Oakes is a Buffet Group USA and a Vandoren Performing Artist.

A Washington, D.C. native, Geoffrey Deibel is emerging as an important voice for the saxophone and contemporary music. He maintains a multi-faceted career as performer, teacher, and researcher. Recent concert highlights include performances with the Athens Saxophone Quartet (Cyprus), International Contemporary Ensemble at the Park Avenue Armory (NYC), concerts at Merkin Hall and Zankel Hall (NYC), and recitals in Brooklyn NY, Stuttgart, Germany, Cortona, Italy, and in Wichita, KS. Geoff has been an invited guest lecturer at Die Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Stuttgart, at University College Cork, Ireland, and many Universities in the US. He has appeared at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, the International Iannis Xenakis Festival in Athens, Greece, and World Saxophone Congresses in the UK, Europe, and Thailand. Geoff has commissioned new works by both established and emerging composers, including Drew Baker, Nathan Davis, Claudio Gabriele, Martin Iddon, Robert Lemay, Marc Mellits, Joseph Michaels, Forrest Pierce, David Rakowski, David Reminick, Jesse Ronneau, and Eric Wubbels. He has also premiered the music of Louis Andriessen, Jason Eckardt, Hiroyki Itoh, Pierre Jodlowski, Marc Mellits, Elliott Sharp, Jagoda Szmytka, Mari Takano, Hans Thomalla, and Amy Williams. Geoff is a member of the critically acclaimed h2 quartet, first prize winners at the Fischoff Competition, recent finalists at the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and recipients of multiple Aaron Copland Fund Grants. The American Record Guide has hailed h2 as a group of "artistic commitment...boasting superb blend, solid technique, [and] tight rhythm." h2 has six recordings available. Geoff holds degrees in history and music from Northwestern University, and a doctoral degree from Michigan State University. His principal teachers have included Joseph Lulloff, Frederick Hemke, Leo Saguiguit, and Reginald Jackson. Geoff has held teaching positions at the University of Florida and Wichita State University, where he was the recipient of the 2015 College of Fine Arts Award for Scholarly and Creative Activity, and the 2016 WSU Faculty Award for Excellence in Creative Activity. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Saxophone at Florida State University. He also serves on the faculty of the Cortona Sessions for New Music, and the Great Plains Saxophone Workshop. Geoff is a Yamaha and Vandoren performing artist, and performs on Yamaha Saxophones, and Vandoren reeds, ligatures, and mouthpieces exclusively.

Violinist Ari Streisfeld has garnered critical acclaim worldwide for his performances of diverse repertoire and has established himself as one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary classical music. Praised for his “dazzling performance” by the New York Times and “scintillating playing” by New York Classical Review, Dr. Streisfeld is a founding member of the world renowned JACK Quartet. Recent season highlights include performances at Wigmore Hall (London), La Salle Pleyel (Paris), Teatro Colon (Argentina), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Carriage Works (Sydney, Australia), Venice Biennale (Italy), Carnegie Hall, The Library of Congress, The Morgan Library (New York), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), and the Salzburg Festival (Austria). He has collaborated with many of today’s most prominent composers including John Luther Adams, Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe, Helmut Lachenmann, Matthias Pintscher, Georg Friedrich Haas, Steve Reich, and Salvatore Sciarrino. He has recorded for Mode, Albany, Carrier, Innova, Canteloupe, and New World Records.

Together with his wife, mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway, Dr. Streisfeld formed Duo Cortona, a contemporary music ensemble dedicated to the creation of new works for the unique instrumentation of mezzo-soprano and violin. Recent and upcoming performances include the Resonant Bodies Festival, SONiC Festival, The Stone (NY), Contemporary Undercurrents of Song Project (Princeton, NJ), New Music on the Point (VT), and The Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy). He is also a member of Shir Ami, an ensemble dedicated to the performance and preservation of Jewish art music. Dr. Streisfeld frequently collaborates with some of today’s leading ensembles, including Ensemble Signal, Worldless Music Orchestra, and Weekend of Chamber Music.

Hailed as “imaginative” by the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Streisfeld’s arrangements of madrigals and motets for string quartet by Machaut and Gesualdo have been performed to acclaim both at home and abroad. A recipient of the Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Dr. Streisfeld most recently premiered his Machaut arrangements for voice and violin at The Stone (New York).

A passionate and committed music educator, Dr. Streisfeld holds the position of Assistant Professor of Violin and Violin Pedagogy at the University of South Carolina School of Music. He also serves as head of strings at the Carolina Summer Music Conservatory and is on the faculty of the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy). He was previously on the faculty of New York's Special Music School, Face the Music, and New Music on the Point.

Dr. Streisfeld holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (Bachelor of Music), Northwestern University (Master of Music), and Boston University (Doctor of Musical Arts). His teachers include Zvi Zeitlin, Almita Vamos, and Peter Zazofsky.

While all the other kids were learning addition in first grade, Kivie Cahn-Lipman was running around the classroom singing that he was a yeti. His kindly teacher said he was very musical, so Kivie was allowed his choice of instruments along with the therapy. He told his parents he wanted to play the drums, so they asked him what instrument he REALLY wanted to play. "The tuba," he replied, and they handed him a violin. The violin teacher was all "you have to respect the violin before you can touch the violin," but in their third lesson Kivie picked his nose and wiped it on the violin, and then that teacher went away and Kivie's parents gave him a cello. And when he picked his nose and wiped it on the cello, the new teacher was like "ewww gross don't do that, here's a tissue, clean that up and let's play music," and that seemed like a good idea.

Eventually Kivie went to Oberlin and then Juilliard, and after awhile each school gave him a fancy document written in Latin that hopefully indicates that he graduated. He finished up his education at the University of Cincinnati, and he's a doctor now. Not that kind of doctor. Since its foundation in 2001, Kivie has been a cellist with the International Contemporary Ensemble (and don't call it ICE anymore), and he still tours all over the world performing with them. He taught at Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and The College of New Jersey, and he's now on the faculty of the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University. Whatever you think you know about Youngstown is probably true, but it also has a really pretty park and a surprisingly good artisanal hot dog shop.

Kivie started his own Baroque ensemble called ACRONYM (www.acronymensemble.com), and he finds seventeenth-century music in old manuscripts and transcribes it, and they give the first performances of it in hundreds of years; they've got nine CDs of modern premieres released and more on the way. He also plays viola da gamba for some reason and performs and records with LeStrange Viols. Kivie's 2014 solo recording of J.S. Bach's cello suites got a nice blurb in a trade publication called The Strad, but he's way more proud of the warm personal letter praising the disc which he received from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Kivie's mom also claims to like the recording, but she thinks that some of the tempos are too fast. You can find it on sale wherever you can still find music on sale, and the discs make great coasters.

Also, a recent review in the New York Times noted that "his long, flowing hair often covered his face as he played." Seriously, the New York Times printed that. Kivie mostly stopped picking his nose in 1985.

As an internationally recognized leading interpreter of contemporary and modern music, mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway brings versatility and compelling insight to stages worldwide. Her work has been praised by the New York Times for “penetrating clarity” and “considerable depth of expression” and by Opera News for her “adept musicianship and dramatic flair.”

This season’s highlights include The Diary of One Who Vanished at The Castleton Festival, the world premiere of Harlequin’s Rainbow (Robert Xavier Rodriguez) with the Amernet Quartet in Miami and Dallas, The Messiah with The Charleston Symphony and Aiken Symphony, Augusta Read Thomas’s Upon Wings of Words, works by Ligeti and Cerrone with Third Coast Percussion with Ensemble Music Society of Indianapolis, and works of John Zorn at the Big Ears Festival (Knoxville). She will sing A Forest Unfolding, a work by composers David Kirkland Garner, Eric Moe, Melinda Wagner, and Stephen Jaffe, at Duke University, The University of South Carolina, and The National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Recent engagements include a debut with the California Symphony in works by Gabriela Lena Frank and Mahler, continued collaborations with John Zorn in Katowice, Poland, alto soloist in The Messiah with the Aiken Symphony and The Charleston Symphpny, and performances and residencies with Duo Cortona, Calloway’s duo alongside violinist Ari Streisfeld. She has sung with the Orlando Philharmonic in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, the music of John Zorn at November Music in the Netherlands, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago, collaborations with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with Ensemble Signal at the Library of Congress. Ms. Calloway has appeared in concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Series, the New York Philharmonic, Berkeley Symphony, Ojai Festival, San Francisco Girls’ Chorus, BAM Next Wave Festival, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Cal Performances, and Lincoln Center Festival. Calloway is a frequent collaborator with today’s leading ensembles including the Amernet Quartet, JACK Quartet, and Third Coast Percussion. She has collaborated with today’s foremost composers including: Gabriela Lena Frank, Georg Friederich Haas, Unsuk Chin, Steven Stucky, Oliver Knussen, Nico Muhly, and Donnacha Dennehy. Ms. Calloway has appeared at the Kennedy Center under the auspices of Pro Musica Hebraica. She is a founding member of Shir Ami, an ensemble dedicated to the preservation and performances of lost and unknown Jewish art music.

Ms. Calloway made her European operatic debut as Mrs. Grose in The Turn of the Screw at Opéra de Reims, Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jovet (Paris) and Opéra de Lille. She has performed with Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival in Virginia, Opera Philadelphia, Tulsa Opera, Central City Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, The PROTOTYPE Festival, and the Glimmerglass Festival.

Ms. Calloway serves on the faculty of the University of South Carolina as Assistant Professor of Voice and Director of Spark, Carolina’s Music Leadership Laboratory. She joined the faculty of the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy) in 2014 and Summer Performing Arts with Juilliard (Switzerland) in 2016. She joins the faculty of the Chautauqua Opera Conservatory in 2023. She is a founding member of Shir Ami, an ensemble dedicated to the preservation and performance of lost and unknown Jewish art music. Ms. Calloway holds degrees from The Juilliard School (BM) and Manhattan School of Music (MM) and can be heard on Albany Records, Tzadik Records, BCMF Records, and Toccata Classics. www.rachelcalloway.com

Michael Compitello is a dynamic, “fast rising” (WQXR) percussionist dedicated to commissioning and premiering new works that explore the sonic and expressive possibilities of percussion instruments.

He has developed sustained collaborations with composers such as Thomas Kotcheff, Tonia Ko, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Robert Honstein on new works, in addition to working with Helmut Lachenmann, David Lang, John Luther Adams, Alejandro Viñao, Marc Applebaum, and Martin Bresnick on premieres and performances of new solo and chamber works.  Currently, Michael’s project Unsnared Drum (released August 2021 on New Focus Recordings) seeks to reinvent the snare drum through new works by composers Nina C. Young, Hannah Lash, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Tonia Ko. 

With cellist Hannah Collins as the “remarkably inventive and resourceful” (Gramophone) New Morse Code, Michael has created a singular and personal repertoire through collaboration with some of America’s most esteemed young composers. New Morse Code's 2017 debut album Simplicity Itself on New Focus Recordings was described “an ebullient passage through pieces that each showcase the duo’s clarity of artistic vision and their near-perfect synchronicity” (I Care if You Listen) and “a flag of genuineness raised” (Q2 Music). In 2019 they released the title suite of Matthew Barnson’s portrait album, Vanitas, on Innova recordings and collaborated with Eliza Bagg, Lee Dionne, and andPlay on and all the days were purple, Alex Weiser’s Pulitzer Prize-finalist work on Cantaloupe Music. 

Michael is also a member of Percussion Collective, an ensemble dedicated to refined performances of contemporary percussion repertoire, with whom he performed as soloist with the Colorado Symphony, and on concert series across the country. 

As an orchestral musician, Michael has performed with the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the Aspen Festival Orchestra, and with conductors Pierre Boulez, Marin Alsop, Reinbert de Leeuw, David Zinman, James Conlon, Brad Lubman, and Gustav Meier.

Michael is currently Assistant Professor of Percussion at Arizona State University.  He previously taught at the University of Kansas, Cornell University and Mt. Holyoke College, and was Interim Lecturer in Percussion at UMass Amherst in the fall of 2012.  Michael earned a DMA and MM from the Yale School of Music, and a BM from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with renowned percussionist Robert Van Sice.  From 2009 to 2010, Michael performed and studied contemporary chamber music with the Ensemble Modern and the International Ensemble Modern Academy in Frankfurt, Germany on a Fulbright Grant from the US Department of State. Michael proudly endorses Vic Firth Drumsticks, Zildjian Cymbals, Pearl/Adams instruments, Black Swamp Percussion, Beetle Practice Pads, and Remo Drumheads. For more information visit michaelcompitello.com

Dr. Brianna Matzke's dynamic pianism shows “a sense of refinement, flair, and technical prowess” (clevelandclassical.com). An avid performer and commissioner of new music, she has collaborated with many composers, including Tina Tallon, Marc Mellits, Michael Fiday, Elliot Cole, Molly Joyce, Alexandra du Bois, D. J. Sparr, Danny Clay, Jennifer Jolley, John Glover, and Evan Williams. She has appeared in concert at across the globe; recent appearances include concerts in Italy, Beirut, São Paulo, and in series such as TriBeCa New Music, Vanguard New Music Series, ETHOS New Music, Re:Sound Festival, neif-norf New Music Marathon, and the Accidental Music Festival. She has given multiple concerts with the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, and has performed with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and the concert:nova chamber ensemble.

Matzke is the founder and artistic director of an ongoing and widely-acclaimed commissioning initiative, called The Response Project, which asks composers to write music for piano in response to a pre-existing artwork or idea. The project has premiered and recorded dozens of new works, and often invites artists from other disciplines (such as film, painting, and poetry) to also create and present responses in large-scale community events. Recent collaborators include Hajnal Pivnick (violin) and Chris Graham (percussion).

Additionally, in 2021 Matzke was named CEO and President of the International Foundation for Contemporary Music, and appointed as Executive Director of the Cortona Sessions for New Music. Through these positions she works as an advocate for new music across the globe, leading an annual two-week long contemporary chamber music institute and assisting in the production of many projects, concerts, and recordings.  

In addition to performance and leadership,​ Brianna is a dedicated music educator and pedagogue. A Nationally Certified Teacher of Music (NCTM), she​ serves as Assistant Professor of Music at Wilmington College. She has also served on the faculties of the Oberlin Conservatory, Interlochen Arts Camp, Thomas More College, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Preparatory Department. She is founder and President of the World Piano Teachers Association Ohio Chapter and maintains an active presence as a member of the Music Teachers National Association. She holds degrees from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and the University of Kansas.

Canadian pianist Winston Choi is Associate Professor of Piano and the Head of the Piano Program at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts. His professional career was launched when he was named Laureate of the 2003 Honens Piano Competition and winner of France’s Concours International de Piano 20e siècle d’Orléans in 2002. An inquisitive performer, his fresh approach to standard repertory, and masterful understanding, performance and commitment to works by living composers, make him one of today’s most dynamic young concert artists.

Choi maintains an active international performing schedule. In demand as a concerto soloist, orchestras he has appeared with include the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the East Texas Symphony Orchestra, the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Iowa, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Iowa, the New Philharmonic, the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra, the Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra, La Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia, the Symphony Orchestra of Oak Park and River Forest, l’Orchestre Symphony d’Orléans, l'Orchestre National de Lille, the Mississauga Symphony Orchestra, the Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, and the Victoria Symphony Orchestra.

Known for his colorful approach to programming and insightful commentary from the stage, Choi has recently appeared in recital at the National Arts Centre of Canada, the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, New York’s Carnegie-Weill Recital Hall and Merkin Recital Hall, the Kennedy Center and the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the Kravis Center in Florida, and the “Cicle Grans Solistes" in Spain. Choi performs extensively in France, having played venues such as the Salle Cortot, Lille’s Festival Rencontre Robert Casadesus, the Messiaen Festival, and the Strasbourg Festival. Frequently in demand throughout his native Canada, his numerous performances can often be heard on CBC radio broadcasts. Recently, he toured Eastern Ontario and Quebec under the auspices of Jeunesses Musicales and embarked on a 10-city Prairie Debut tour of the Canadian Prairie provinces. An accomplished chamber musician, he has performed with the Aeolus, Avalon, Philomusica and Spektral string quartets He also tours regularly with the Civitas Ensemble, and as a part of Duo Diorama (with his wife, violinist MingHuan Xu). As Duo Diorama, they are the Artistic Directors of the Unity Chamber Music Series held at the Unity Temple in Oak Park, IL.

As a dedicated champion of contemporary music, Choi has premiered and commissioned over 100 works by young composers as well as established masters. A composer himself, being involved with the creative process is an integral part of his artistry. He was the first pianist to perform Pierre Boulez’s last version of Incises in North America and made the South American premiere of Luciano Berio‘s Sonata for pianoforte solo. He also regularly appears in concert at IRCAM, the world’s most renowned institution for contemporary music. Composers he has collaborated with include William Bolcom, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, Brian Ferneyhough, Jacques Lenot, George Lewis, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bright Sheng, Christian Wolff, Chen Yi and John Zorn. He is also a core member of Ensemble Dal Niente. A frequent performer on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW Series, Choi has also performed with Contempo and the Fulcrum Point New Music Project.

A prolific recording artist, Choi’s debut CD, the complete piano works of Elliott Carter (l’Empreinte Digitale in France) was given 5 stars by BBC Music Magazine. He has also recorded the complete piano music of Jacques Lenot for the Intrada label, having won the Grand Prix du Disque from l’Académie Charles Cros for Volume I. His recording of the piano works of Thomas Adès was recently released on the Buisonne label. Other labels he can be heard on include Aeolian Classics, Albany, Arktos, BIS, Cedille, Crystal Records, Naxos, New World Records and QuadroFrame.

Choi obtained his Bachelor and Master of Music from Indiana University, and his DM from Northwestern University. His studies were with Vivienne Bailey, James Tweedie, Menahem Pressler and Ursula Oppens. An accomplished teacher, Choi is also in demand as a master class clinician and lecturer on a variety of pedagogical topics. Two of his presentations: “Towards a More Organic Approach to Phrasing at the Piano” and “Symmetrical Inversion: A Pianist’s Journey Towards Ambidexterity” have been presented nationally and internationally at conferences. Prior to his position at Roosevelt University, he was on the faculties of Bowling Green State University and the Oberlin Conservatory. He has been a guest professor at Indiana University, and he also currently teaches at the Academy of the Music Institute of Chicago as well as the New Music School in Chicago.

Chris Kim is the Choi Family Endowed Director of Instrumental Activities and conductor of the Occidental Symphony Orchestra at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

The League of American Orchestras/ASCAP has recognized his advocacy of contemporary music by awarding the Adventurous Programming Award six times between 2008-2014. The American Prize has recognized his work in 2014-2018 in multiple categories. He has premiered over 250 new works for orchestra. He has sought to program worthy, unknown repertoire with orchestras. In the 2016-2017 season, all concerts by the Cornell Symphony Orchestra featured a work by a woman composer both present and past; Kristin Kuster, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jacqueline Keeyoung Kim, Tonia Ko, Joan Tower, and Lili Boulanger. During the 2017-2018 season, Jazz-influenced works permeated the repertoire of the Cornell Symphony Orchestra; Duke Ellington, Gunther Schuller, Charlie Parker, and Wynton Marsalis. At Cornell University he directs the Chamber Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra.  The Cornell Chamber Orchestras was a featured ensemble at the CODA National Conference in 2012. The Cornell Orchestras have formed multiple collaborative relationships with the Royal Academy of Music in Dublin, Ireland, Conservatorio de Puerto Rico in San Juan, PR, Sinfónica del Neuquén in Argentina, and have taken multiple visits to these sister cities. In January of 2019, Cornell Orchestras embarked on a tour to Taiwan to collaborate with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra as well as Engagement activities with five different student orchestras across the city of Taipei. Cornell Orchestra and Ithaca College Orchestras have jointly presented the Ithaca International Conducting Masterclasses for over a decade bringing conducting pedagogues such as Carl St. Clair, Larry Rachleff, David Effron, Alexander Polischuk, and Gustav Meier to work with young conductors.

He has led opera productions at Ewha Womans University in South Korea in the production of Magic Flute as well as having been the music director of the Comic Opera Guild in Ann Arbor, MI where he conducted Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow, Mozart’s Magic Flute as well as Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera. He has appeared with orchestras in the US and abroad, including ensembles such as the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Delta Festival Ballet, Symphoria, Divertimento Ensemble of Milan, Italy. He has appeared in music festivals such as Kinhaven Music Center, Skaneateles Music Festival, and International Bartók Festival in Szombathely, Hungary among others. Each summer he is a part of the faculty at Cortona sessions for new music where he teaches conducting and helps premiere new works by composers from around the world.