Described as having a voice that "has a spiritual quality that [is] wholly arresting" (Steve Smith, Night After Night/The New Yorker) and and having "a sound that is well-suited for the strange world of new music" (Chicago Classical Review), Kayleigh Butcher (mezzo soprano) has gained critical and audience acclaim as a soloist and contemporary chamber musician.
Chase Elodia is a drummer and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. He will be releasing an album on Biophilia Records in May 2022.
Noah Gershwin is a guitarist and composer currently residing in New York City. As an active performer, Noah explores pushing the boundaries of free improvisation within the confines of the jazz idiom. Since moving to NYC, Noah has performed in venues such as The Stone and Bar Bayuex and has collaborated with artists such as Okkyung Lee, Billy Hart and Ben Street. Noah has had the privilege to perform both nationally and internationally at festivals such as the Iowa City Jazz Festival and The Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. With his collaborative jazz quartet, Junior Ranger, Noah had the opportunity to participate in the Avaloch Farm Music Institute as well as tour in the Netherlands as a result of being awarded the CIGSIE Grant for Study in Dutch Improvisation.
Nora Stanley is a New York-based saxophonist and composer whose interests and work live at the intersection of composed and improvised music. With strong roots in the jazz, afro-cuban and improvised music traditions, Nora’s music emphasizes interaction and collaboration. Her sound is melody-driven and reaches to expand the possibilities of the harmonic realm…
Admired for his “marvelous ringing tone” (Joseph Dalton, Albany Times Union) Bixby Kennedy is one of the most versatile clarinetists of his generation. He has performed concerti with the Minnesota Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Bloomington Sinfonietta, and Indiana University Symphony. As a chamber musician, Bixby has performed throughout the US and Europe in venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, The Kennedy Center, Marlboro Music Festival, and is the clarinetist for the “explosive” New York City based chamber ensemble Frisson. As an orchestral musician, Bixby currently holds titles as the Associate Principal Clarinetist of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Associate Principal in the Albany Symphony, and the Principal Clarinetist of Symphony in C. He has appeared as a guest artist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. On period instruments, Bixby performs classical repertoire on original and replica instruments throughout the US with Grand Harmonie Orchestra. He is a former member of Ensemble Connect and works as a teaching artist throughout the US. As a university professor, he has held positions at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Vanderbilt University, and Tennessee State University. He loves traveling, trying new foods, laughing, hiking, and playing tennis.
Living in New York City, Emily Brandenburg is an educator, chamber musician and freelancer in the New England area. She has performed with ensembles such as The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Portland Symphony, Metropolis Ensemble and the Frisson Chamber Ensemble…
American German cellist Julian Müller, performs as soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player in the United States and Europe. Hailed as “...haunting and mesmerizing...” by USA Today, Julian appeared as soloist with the Louisville Orchestra, giving world premiere performances of the ballet How They Fade, composed by him and art-pop band, YASSOU, on a commission from the Louisville Ballet Company. Julian has been presented on NPR Live, with Sergei Babayan. Other chamber music collaborations include performances with Simone Dinnerstein, Matt Haimovitz, Peter Salaff, and members of the Cleveland Orchestra. Julian has made festival appearances at the Aspen Music Festival, Heifetz International Music Institute, Caroga Lake Music Festival, among others. Julian appears frequently with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, performing in many of New York City’s various venues. Additionally, he performs with the Montclair Orchestra, has served as principal cellist of the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Mannes Orchestra, was a member of the New York String Orchestra Seminar, and is principal cello of the Berkshire Symphony. Julian holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Master of Music and Professional Studies Diplomas from the Mannes School of Music, and will receive a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Rutgers University. Principal mentors include Timothy Eddy, Georg Faust, Ronald Feldman, Sharon Robinson and Jonathan Spitz.
Flutist Isabel Lepanto Gleicher has been called “excellent” by The New York Times. Isabel is an artist member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wild Up, new music sinfonietta Ensemble Echappe, the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival, and the band ShoutHouse…
Hailing from Taiwan, bassoonist Yen-Chen Wu recently received her doctorate degree from StonyBrook University. Passionate about chamber music, Wu is a Yellow Barn musician since 2019, and a founding member of the NYC based woodwind quintet, ConnectFive.
Paraguayan/American oboist Tamara Winston is a highly sought after chamber and orchestral musician. Tamara performs regularly in the greater New York City area and abroad. She has performed with the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and the Montclair Orchestra. Ms. Winston is a founding member of the New York City based woodwind quintet, ConnectFive, and she is on faculty at Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.
Flutist Leo Sussman grew up playing chamber music in living rooms and gigging with a salsa band in his hometown of San Francisco. A recent alum of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect and founding member of the wind quintet ConnectFive, Leo delights in designing and performing interactive, interdisciplinary musical experiences for communities ranging from elementary schools to concert halls across New York City and beyond. He is currently pursuing a doctorate at Manhattan School of Music.
Brooklyn-based percussionist, composer and improviser Deric Dickens divides his time between the improvised and creative music scene and the indie rock scene in NYC. Dickens has toured, recorded and performed for many years with Robinella (Columbia Records) Daniel Carter, Aaron Quinn, Jaimie Branch, John Ralston, Russ Lossing, Caroline Davis, Eli Wallace, Eriika Dicker, Ben Cohen, Ted Brown, and Brad Linde, and has worked on soundtracks for James Schamusʼ Indignation, D.W. Youngʼs Too Cold to Swim, as well as many other indie films and T.V. projects.
Leia Slosberg is a New York based flutist committed to the performance of new music. She is a co-founder of the flute and cello chamber ensemble Berrow Duo, with Thea Mesirow, and a member of the Tredici Bacci. Leia pursued her undergraduate studies at The Boston Conservatory and holds a master’s degree from Manhattan School of Music’s Contemporary Performance Program.
Thea Mesirow is an NYC-based cellist, composer, and writer, a member of The Nouveau Classical Project, a founding member of CMA grant recipients Quartet121, and one-half of Berrow Duo. Hailed as “hypnotic” and “engaging” by Cleveland Classical, Berrow Duo has been presented by Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project, the 2018 NYU Music Conference, the SENSE Concert Series, and the Mise-En Place Curator Series. As a soloist and chamber musician she has worked with composers such as Reiko Füting, Michael Pisaro, and Sofia Gubaidulina and regularly performs at venues throughout New York City including Roulette, Lincoln Center Atrium, and National Sawdust. Her 2019/2020 season included the Actualizing Communities project, which involved commissioning new works by Wandelweiser community composers, such as Antoine Beuger and Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, and performing these new works within the composer’s communities in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Haan, Germany. Thea completed her Masters at the Manhattan School of Music in May of 2017 where she studied with Fred Sherry.
Abby Swidler is a composer, violinist, violist, and vocalist whose work appears in many contexts including new music, improvisational music, and song.
Abby is a passionate collaborator, frequently performing with ruby, a song collaboration with kim mayo; Xanthoria Quartet, a string quartet which performs new and old works ; Italian film-score band Tredici Bacci; and The Jessica Pavone String Ensemble, among other projects across genre lines.
Originally from Missoula, MT, they live in Brooklyn, NY.
Matt Evans is a composer and percussionist who produces acoustic and electronic music, cross-disciplinary performances, and sculptural sound installations through an experimental, ambient adjacent, eco-fictional lens. His work utilizes aqueous, drum-driven, hypnotic soundscapes and cathartic, embodied improvisatory performances to question the unknowable and absurd nature of our experience.
Tristan Kasten-Krause is a bassist and composer living in Brooklyn, NY, creating immersive, extensive and transcendent sound worlds. His music has been described as “heavenly” (the Guardian), “beguilingly frictionless” (Steve Smith) and full of “beautiful, unearthly soundscapes” (WNYC’s New Sounds).
Mikael Darmanie has performed throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, Russia and the Caribbean. Recent festival appearances have included: The Weil Institute at Carnegie, Trinity Wall Street, Prototype, Bang on a Can Marathon, Close Encounters With Music, Berkshire High Peaks Festival, Cape Cod Symphony Nth Degree, Pianofest in the Hamptons, the Mozarteum, Mainly Mozart, and L’Acadèmie de Musique de Sion.
Lester St. Louis is a New York City-born and based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and curator. Lester has worked in, performed and created in artistic environments in The United States, Canada, South America, Europe and China with groups and artists such as Dré Hočevar Trio, Jaimie Branch Fly or Die, Ensemble Adapter, TAK Ensemble and many more. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists such as the JACK Quartet, Mahan Esfahani and Stefan Jackiw, RAGE THORMBONES, Lauren Cauley and others. In the near future Lester will be continuing to develop groups such as MADD (with Dré Hočevar and Leafar) as well as TRANSFER (with Jordan Balaber, Daniel Brew and Rocío Bolaños) along with many new ventures.
a violinist moonlighting as a cider maker, maeve schallert is a sound artist, improviser, and electronic musician exploring the nuances of interaction, communication and the self and other through sound. based in kingston, ny, they are exploring the extremities of both the violin and fruit wines.
