Brendan Aanes grew up in the world of rain and trees that is the Pacific Northwest. His past work has included orchestral and chamber music, as well as several pieces involving field recording and natural sounds. Currently, he focuses on multimedia and installation work, using media technology's synaesthetic possibilities to examine and represent the world in unusual ways. Brendan will complete his MFA in Electronic Music in spring of 2008, after which he aims to move in a completely unexpected direction.
Zina von Bozzay is a composer, performer, and music researcher particularly interested in small ensembles, vocal music, integration of various musical influences, and the connections between music and life. She has studied, performed, and enjoyed listening to a variety of old and new, folkloric and composed, acoustic and recorded, performed and participatory musical styles. As a composer, she aims to continue in rich traditions with a contemporary world-view, making music that is creative, thought-provoking, engaging and enjoyable. She attended School of the Arts in San Francisco and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and is now completing her Master’s in Composition at Mills College. She would like to acknowledge her friends, mentors, and musical communities for their presence, guidance, and inspiration.
Clara Brasseur is currently a music composition Master's student at Mills College. Clara graduated in May 2008 from Oberlin College with a BA in Music Composition and Astrophysics. Past composition teachers include Professors Lewis Nielson and Randolph Coleman at Oberlin Conservatory, and Peter Buckland at Penn State University. Clara's music explores intersections between textual meaning and musical embodiment. [www.professionalpenguin.com/music.html]
Andy Clifford is a first-year Mills student in the MA in Composition program. His work revolves around a network of constructions related to musical cognition and perception, psychoacoustic and acoustic phenomona, as well as computer-assisted composition.
Tomás delToro-Díaz graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a degree in Studio Art. He is currently a graduate student at Mills College earning his Master’s degree in Electronic Music & Recording Media. He is a recording engineer/producer/composer/musician and artist. He would like to thank the following people: Christina delToro-Diaz & our family, Friends that have ALWAYS been there, Travis & Melissa, Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell, ALL of the wonderful faculty that I have had the pleasure to work with (You know who you are), & all of my Mills music peers that have challenged me. Thank you.
Sally Ann Duke Last spring I composed a piece where each player improvised after being instructed to play at the same volume level on his or her instrument. Each instrumentalist’s sound fed into a laptop containing an amplitude noise gate made in Pure Data. Each laptop had a person adjusting the threshold of the amplitude noise gate without hearing the sound of the instrumentalist. The person adjusting the threshold could only see the input numbers representing the volume of the instrumentalists.
In the year before, I experimented with placing a notationally composed piece in front of musicians and having them improvise to it or play it straight ahead in their own time as they wished. I recorded each player separately. Finally, the tracks were placed together as if the players had been playing together and hearing each other all along. Only they had not. The cohesion between players was the composition itself.
Improviser, composer, and guitarist Karl Alfonso Evangelista was born in Van Nuys, California, USA, on April 28, 1986, the son of two Filipino immigrants. Evangelista performs in an improvising trio with saxophonist Francis Wong and bassist/vocalist/percussionist John-Carlos Perea, the quartet Host Family, and the duo Grex with partner Margaret Rei Scampavia, and has studied under many of the chief figures in modern creative music, including India Cooke, Fred Frith, Myra Melford, Roscoe Mitchell, and Zeena Parkins. Evanelista has in the past few years debuted new composer arrangements by Melford, Mitchell, Moe! Staiano, and Sarah Wilson. He received his BA in Social Transformation and the Development of 20th Century Artforms at UC Berkeley and is presently pursuing his MFA in Improvised Music at Mills College.
Mary Hofer Farris started her career as a classical clarinetist before discovering her love for world music. First entranced by music of the Balkans, she was a core member of the Brass Menazeri, Voluta Vox, and Top Dog Run prior to becoming the leader of her current band, the Helladelics, a traditional Greek roots band. Mary has studied music in Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey, as well as Guinea, West Africa. In addition to performing, she teaches clarinet, flute, and saxophone in the Bay Area.
Fred Frith Born in 1949 and raised in Yorkshire, England, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser Fred Frith has been active in a broad range of music-making since the late 1960s, starting with the iconic rock collective Henry Cow. In a career spanning 40 years, Frith is internationally renowned as a pioneering electric guitarist and improviser, ground-breaking songwriter, and composer for film, dance and theater. His compositions have been performed by ensembles ranging from Arditti Quartet and the Ensemble Modern to the Baroque ensembles Concerto Köln and Galax Quartet, from the Dutch Radio Chamber Orchestra to ROVA and Arte Sax Quartets, from rock bands Hieronymus Firebrain and Ground Zero to the Glasgow Improvisers’ Orchestra. Film music credits include the acclaimed documentary Rivers and Tides, directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer, The Tango Lesson and Yes by Sally Potter, and Peter Mettler’s astonishing Gods, Gambling and LSD. Frith has performed or recorded with a who’s who of modern music including Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, Gavin Bryars, Sylvie Courvoisier, Alvin Curran, Brian Eno, Evelyn Glennie, Carla Kihlstedt, Katia Labeque, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Viktoria Mullova, Bob Ostertag, Zeena Parkins, The Residents, Christian Wolff, Robert Wyatt, and John Zorn among many others. Current projects include the improvising trio Maybe Monday, his new band Cosa Brava, and Eye to Ear, an ensemble dedicated to the performance of his film soundtracks. Frith is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzels’ award-winning documentary film Step Across the Border. He is currently the chair of the Mills College Music Department.
Jordan Glenn plays the drums and drum-related instruments. When he's not teaching little kids to play rock beats or playing for modern dance classes, he lugs his drums around to play all sorts of composed and improvised music with all sorts of different people, including the collective Host Family and his own band Wiener Kids.
Dan Good is a composer and builder of electronic music, sculpture, and sound art. His interests lie in exploring the lines between human and machine. Previously, he studied electrical engineering at MIT and UC Berkeley. [www.dandroid.org]
Holly Herndon is a second semester graduate student in electronic music and recording media. With a background in sculpture, she synthesizes 3D structures with electronic hard-wiring and composition.
Jason Hoopes I was born and raised in the mountains of Northern California. Currently a candidate at Mills for an MFA in Music Performance and Literature, I graduated in May 2008 with an MA in Composition. I am active locally primarily as bassist for The Atomic Bomb Audition, Jack O' The Clock, Host Family, an improvising trio with Andy Strain and Noah Phillips, as well as performing with numerous other combinations of artists and ensembles. I very much enjoy composing music for dance. I am an avid reader and love standing in the wind. I have recently taken up painting.
Seth Horvitz (b. 1973, Los Angeles) is a human, electronic musician, composer, composer, designer, electronic musician, DJ, piano programmer, and human based in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1991. Under the names Sutekh and Pigeon Funk (with Joshua Kit Clayton), he has released a variety of music on round, petroleum-based objects, and performed in many places. He earned his BA in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley in 1995 and is currently in his first year of the MFA program in Electronic Music at Mills. [www.context.fm]
Sarah Howe is here at Mills working towards her MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media. She is a computer music composer, performer and video artist. She is also heavily interested in sound reinforcement and concert production. She hopes you enjoy her music and the music of her peers tonight.
Charles Johnson is in his second year of the MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media program. During his time at Mills, he has developed a versatile analog electronic performance system, created interactive and intermedia work with unusual interfaces, and worked extensively with just intonation tuning systems – all with an ear towards finding faults and instabilities that might reveal latent beauty. Johnson has worked in improvised music, noise, experimental rock, traditional forms, and music for film and dance. Recordings of his work have been published by Communion, Amish, Merge, Umbrella, Phaserprone, Squealer and Threelobed.
Johnson has performed with Pauline Oliveros, Peter Kowald,
Eugene Chadbourne, Frank Gratkowsi, and Miya Masaoka. His work has been premiered at the Transmissions festival
(North Carolina and Chicago), Signal+Noise (Vancouver), and by the pulsoptional
composers’ ensemble. Johnson has
performed at Siren Fest (New York), BENT 2004 (New York), the Festival of New
American Music (Sacramento,) and the San Francisco International Film
Festival. Johnson has composed
music for seven feature-length documentaries, including Brett Ingram’s
award-winning Monster Road and Cynthia
Hill’s Guestworker.
Gretchen Jude is a
first-year MFA student in Mills’ Electronic Music and Performing Media program.
Igor Kovalyov is an
internationally acclaimed filmmaker, designer, animator, and director. His short films, “Andrei Svislotki,”
“Hen his Wife,” “Bird in the Window,” “Flying Nansen” and “Milch” have received
numerous awards and accolades throughout the animation and film community.
Zach Kurth-Nelson (b. 1986) is a composer, video artist, and singer. He is currently pursuing an MA in Composition at Mills
College, where he has studied composition with Maggi Payne, Laetitia Sonami and
Fred Frith. Originally from
Minnesota, he received his BA in Music Composition from Minnesota State
University Moorhead in 2006, studying composition there with Henry Gwiazda. [people.mills.edu/zkurthne]
Conner Lacy graduated from the University of Virginia
in 2008 where he studied music and digital art. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Electronic Music and
Recording Media at Mills College. His work includes sound-based performance art, building multimedia instruments,
interactive installations, and composing acoustic and electronic music. His interests include: changing
religion frequently, mathematical/data-based aesthetics, ecological power,
shamanism, sophisticated systems, the ancient, and the ineffable.
Sofia
Larsson Born in Sweden, Sofia came to the US to
study cinema and language. During
her undergraduate studies in Film Theory and Italian Cultural studies at UC
Santa Barbara, Sofia became increasingly interested in translating theories of
film and language into creative practice. After completing her bachelors in
2005, Sofia stayed at UCSB to pursue cross-disciplinary research under the
mentorship of faculty in Film, Media Arts and Music. Sofia’s work (a number of
experimental videos) has been screened at festivals/venues in Santa Barbara and
San Francisco. Sofia is currently
an MFA student in Electronic Music at Mills. Her teachers have included Curtis
Roads, Edward Branigan, John Hajda and Roscoe Mitchell.
Annie Lewandowski is in her first year at Mills, pursuing
an MFA in Music Performance and Literature.
Travis Margain served as the Artistic Director of the Black Repertoire Dance Troupe for five years at the University of California, Davis. With over twenty years of dancing experience, he has trained in Jazz, Modern Dance, and Classical Ballet, Afro-Caribbean Modern Dance and African Dance forms. He is currently working on the development of a center for the arts that would include a multicultural aspect to the center in educational presentations of dance, art and music. His raw strength and classic dance lines have been showcased with Ruth Rosenberg Dance Ensemble, Fass Barro- West African Dance Company, Sacramento Orchestra, Harlem Renaissance Revisited-Bobbie Wynn-Bolden Production, and recording artist Third World. He has received additional training from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, and the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. Travis’ goal as an educator and performer is to present the art of dance as a medium to understanding cultures and as a vehicle to improve mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health.
Chad McKinney is an experimental musician and sound
artist living in Oakland, California. He is currently completing his MFA in Electronic Music & Recording
Media at Mills College, where he is studying with Chris Brown, John Bischoff
and Roscoe Mitchell. He received
his Bachelor of Music degree in 2007 from the University of Oklahoma, studying
with Christian Asplund, John Haek and Michael Lee.
Curtis McKinney Born 1983 in Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma. Favorite
micro-organisms: Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, Saccharomyces. Favorite beers: Russian imperial stout,
sour ale, Belgian quadruple. Least
favorite number: 127.
Paul Naughton is a Bay Area-based artist working in
electroacoustic music, intermedia collaboration, and installation. He has studied at Kingston University
in London, holds a BM in Composition and Theory from California State University,
Long Beach and is currently pursuing his MA in Composition at Mills College.
Benjamin O'Brien is a composer and guitarist. He is a second year graduate student
pursuing an MA in
Music Composition at Mills College. He studies composition and
improvisation with
Fred Frith and Roscoe Mitchell, electro-acoustic/computer music
with Chris Brown and
John Bischoff, and post-tonal theory with David Bernstein.
Benjamin earned a BA
in Mathematics from the University of Virginia in May 2006.
Benjamin’s
compositions have been played in the US, Italy, and Scotland. [www.benjamin-obrien.com]
Danishta Rivero is
an electronic music major at Mills College.
Regina Schaffer performs all over the Bay Area as a
soloist, accompanist and ensemble member. She annually organizes and performs in New Keys, a concert series of new
music for the piano with many other pianists. She has also been teaching piano privately for the past 11
years to students of all ages and levels. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in piano performance from the San
Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Mack McCray. She is currently pursuing a Master’s
degree in piano performance and literature.
Aram Shelton is a multi-instrumentalist on saxophones
and clarinets, a composer & improviser, and creates electroacoustic music
through computer-based electronics. While the music he makes is spread across a
variety of aesthetic lines, it is related by the importance of improvisation to
develop material and express musical individuality. He has performed throughout
the United States, Canada and Europe including appearances at the Chicago Jazz
Festival, the Suoni per il Popolo Festival in Montreal, and the Krakow Autumn
Jazz Festival. His playing and music has been documented through various
imprints including 482 Music, Locust Music, MultiKulti, Edgetone, Delmark, and
his own Singlespeed Music. He currently lives in Oakland, California.
Christopher
Michael Skebo (January
6, 1983 - ) received his B.A. in music (education and composition) from Wayne
State University in Detroit, MI in May 2007. While at Wayne, Skebo was an active member of the Wind
Symphony, Concert Band, Orchestra, and Jazz Lab and was the recipient of the
2006 Outstanding Compositional Achievement Award for his composition Das
Ratsel von Adolf Hitler. There he studied composition with Dr.
James Hartway and Jon Anderson. In
August 2006, Skebo was awarded an undergraduate research grant by the WSU
Honors College to work on his Music for EWI, Turntables, and Percussion. A fragment of this composition was presented at the 2006 WSU Conference
on Undergraduate Research. In
April 2007, Skebo and his ensemble presented the full version of Music for
EWI, Turntables, and Percussion at the 21st Annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research in San Rafael,
California. He is currently
attending Mills College in Oakland, California. There he is pursuing his MA in music composition and
studying with Roscoe Mitchell, Chris Brown, John Bischoff, and Fred Frith.
Skebo is currently on staff at St. Anthony - Immaculate Conception School,
where he teaches K-8 music. Skebo
is a member of ASCAP, AMC and ACF. [www.chrisskebo.com]
Stefan Smith: I am
presently studying electronic music at Mills. You already have an MA in Film Sound from NFTS London and a
BA in Sonic Art. He loves Samuel
Beckett.
Joe Straub is a composer, performer, and improviser
currently in residence at Mills College. He dislikes (auto)biographies. [www.DisplacementOfAir.com]
Ryan Tallman [by Sally Ann Duke]: I have heard Ryan
play the electric guitar and feedback. I have also heard him scream. Lately, he seems to be working exclusively with electronics.
Devon Thrumston was raised in Boulder, Colorado, and
began playing the cello when she was ten. An avid music lover, she has participated with a number of orchestras
and chamber ensembles. She is
always looking for an opportunity to learn a new piece, and is thrilled to study
under the instruction of Joan Jeanrenaud. Devon is currently a sophomore and a cello performance major at Mills
College.
Alex Vittum is a percussionist, composer and
instrument builder based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is completing
an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College. His focus is combining the disciplines
of percussion, instrument building and electronics. Among the artists that Alex has collaborated, performed, and
recorded with are Kitty Brazleton, Daniel Carter, Gina Gibney Dance, Loop 2.4.3
and Paul Kikuchi. Alex studied
percussion with Milford Graves at Bennington College and is currently studying
under William Winant. He is also
an associate instrument builder and designer with the Paul Dresher Ensemble and
works as a technician for synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla.
Melissa Wynn is a choreographer, performer and Co-Artistic Director of Dangerous Lorraines Dance Theater. She received her BFA in Dance from The Julliard School and her MFA in Theatre and Dance with an emphasis in Choreography from the University of California, Davis. She has received additional training and scholarships at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center and Dance Theater of Harlem among a variety of other training workshops, conferences and master classes. As a performer Wynn has worked with a variety of artists and professional dance companies in the Bay Area and New York City where she resided for 17 years including the Bebe Miller Company, Rent choreographer Marlies Yearby, Reggie Wilson’s Fist and Heel Performance Group, the theater group John Kelly and Company, Sarah Skaggs Dance, and with Sideshow Physical Theater. She is currently a full time dance lecturer at Sacramento State.
Born in 1987, the Yamaha
Disklavier is a
modern-day player piano that uses electromechanical solenoids and optical
sensors connected to LEDs that allow it to play notes and use the pedals
independent of any human operator. Renowned for its accuracy and precision, the Disklavier has performed in
hundreds of colleges and universities, churches, restaurants, medical
facilities, and hotels around the world.
Saxophonist and
composer Jacob Zimmerman (b. 1986) studied at the renowned Garfield High School in Seattle, and the New
England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he received a
Bachelor of Music in Jazz Saxophone Performance. Zimmerman is currently a first year MA Composition student. His teachers have included Roscoe Mitchell,
Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, Joe Morris, Anthony Coleman, Allan Chase, and
John Mallia. Zimmerman has
performed at a variety of prominent venues and festivals, including the North
Sea Jazz Festival, Jordan Hall in Boston, and Avery Fisher Hall in New York. [www.jacobrexzimmerman.com]
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