Train Racer is a programmatic piece depicting an automobile racing to beat a train across the tracks. The listener starts with the train but after impact, will take the part of a spectator as the unstoppable train fades into the distance and sirens enter speeding to the rescue.

Adam Sovkoplas was born in Brownsville, Texas, on January 16, 1982. He holds a BA in Music from the University of Texas at Brownsville where he studied composition with pianist/composer, Richard Urbis. Sovkoplas has won an Alpha Chi Alfred H. Nolle Scholarship (2003), the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers scholarship (2005), and the 2nd Annual SHSU Phi Mu Alpha/Fisher Tull Composition Contest (2005). Sovkoplas is currently studying for his MM in composition with Dr. Trent Hanna at Sam Houston State University.

Minute Distances was composed in 2005 for the Vox Novus 60X60 project and is 59.721 seconds long. The structure of this work is based upon an iso-rhythm that reduces bit by bit during each repeat. The work was realized entirely using C-sound, and it uses only samples of a marimba as its sound source. The marimba samples are at time slightly modified; however, throughout the work, the essence of the marimba remains. Minute Distances is representative of my interest in textural shape, spatialization, balancing macro and micro composition processes, and mono-thematicism.

Mike McFerron is founder and co-director of Electronic Music Midwest. McFerron has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, June in Buffalo, and the Chamber Music Conference of the East/Composers’ Forum in Bennington, Vt. Honors include first prize in the Louisville Orchestra Composition Competition (2002), first prize in the CANTUS commissioning/residency program (2002), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s “First Hearing” Program (2001), honorable distinction in the Rudolf Nissim Prize (2001), 2004 Confluencias Electronic Miniatures II (finalist) Swan Composition Competition (finalist 2002), the 1999 Salvatore Martirano Composition Contest (finalist), and the 1997 South Bay Master Chorale Choral Composition Contest (finalist).

NanoSymph is a 4-movement symphony in 1 minute: Allegro, Scherzo, Adagio, Presto.

Born outside of Philadelphia, PA, Christopher Bailey turned to music composition in his late teens, and to electro-acoustic composition during his studies at the Eastman School of Music, and later at Columbia University. Recent performances of his music occurred in Munich, Germany, and in Seoul, Korea, where he was a 2nd-Prize recipient in Korea's International Competition. Other awards include prizes from BMI, ASCAP, and the Bearns Prize for MP3's, software, and fun, informative/ interactive stuff.

Written especially for 60x60, Wakeup Call explores what it feels like between punches of the snooze button. It makes use of sounds left over from another piece about Japan.

John Gibson's acoustic and electro-acoustic music has been presented in the US, Europe, South America and Asia, and is recorded on the Centaur label. He has received grants and awards from the Bourges Institute, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Tanglewood Music Center. He writes sound processing and synthesis software, and has taught composition and computer music at the University of Virginia and Duke University. He now teaches at the Indiana University School of Music.

Roppongi Skeins is a study in the almost infinite variety of electronic timbres that exist in our world. By converting and compressing digital noise or corrupted files from hours of my sound archives, I am piecing together a work that will ideally lead to a sonic landscape worthy of repeated listening. The name is derived from the chaotic yet completely structured subway system of Tokyo. This is dedicated to my Dad who is "still learning how to play the radio"

Mike Vernusky is a composer actively writing in a variety of media, including those of instrumental, electronic and visual environments. This past year he was the grand prize winner of the Digital Arts Award in Tokyo, and recently was a guest composer at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, The Netherlands. His music has been widely performed, including performances in Asia Europe, Mexico, and across the United States. Vernusky received a BM in guitar performance and composition here at UT Austin. He is also featured on recordings with Capstone Records, Hive Records, and Displeased Records of Holland.

The source audio for Tramp/Chop was collected on a hike during a nature recording workshop in rural Wisconsin. The audio featured here is what was left over after editing out the voice of our guide.

Mike Hallenbeck is an audio artist, composer, field recordist and sound designer based in Minneapolis. His sound work was recently commissioned as part of Monika Bravo's "No_Name: Frequency+Repetition]" at El Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos in Spain. His composition "Dolphinator" is part of interspecies.com's "Belly of the Whale" project, featured in the Japan EXPO and the Berlin Liquidrom. He created sound work for the "Rock's Role: After Ryoanji" exhibition at Art In General (NYC, 2004). Hallenbeck has designed sound and composed music for over 40 theatrical productions in the Twin Cities.

Froggie's Socks is based on a loop taken from a narrative Allen recorded as a fundraiser for his daughter's school. He then processed the loop by cutting and splicing, adding some synthesizer effects, and topping it all off with a very distant tonal under-footing. Though very modern-sounding and short, the piece is based on a traditional form.

Greg Allen is an award-winning songwriter and traditional fiddler living in Lawrence, Kansas. He teaches guitar, violin, and music theory at Americana Academy in Lawrence and plays in a dance band with his wife, Jill.

The Minute Passacaglia is not Great Art with a Capital “A,” but merely a lot of fun with analog tape. It is a series of variations on a five-second “chorale”which is then inverted after 30 seconds. The second 30 seconds is obviously just a mirror-shape, but it, in turn becomes a series of variations.

Matthew Davidson (b. 1964, Toronto, Canada; now res. Chicago, U.S.A.) holds degrees from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, the University of Toronto, Canada, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Apart from concertizing in Canada, New Zealand and the United States, with ragtime, early jazz, "classical" and contemporary music concerts, he actively promotes the work of other composers (both as performer and impresario) and his work has received radio broadcasts in New Zealand, North America and Europe. His works encompass almost every medium, including book, music and lyrics for two musical comedies, chamber music, improvisatory works, theater pieces, electronic and orchestral music. Davidson is the recipient of commissions and awards from Victoria University, the Queen Elizabeth II arts council, the American Composers' Forum, the University of Illinois, Meet the Composer/California and has been associated with the New York piano virtuoso of twentieth century music, Anthony De Mare and with the Kronos Quartet. He has studied theory with Alexander Rappoport at the Royal Toronto Conservatory of Music and his principal composition teachers have been Jack Body in New Zealand, John Beckwith in Canada , and Salvatore Martirano in the United States.

Quills and Jacks of Outrageous Fortune is built of samples taken from the tone-production mechanism of a harpsichord.

Jay C. Batzner is an active composer, copyist, and teacher in the Kansas City area. He is currently completing a D.M.A. in composition at the University of Missouri — Kansas City. Prior to his D.M.A., Jay received an M.M. in theory from the University of Kansas and an M.M. in composition from the University of Louisville. Jay is a sci-fi geek, an amateur banjoist, a home brewer, and juggler.

The 60 seconds in X-R Drums reflect a life of composing electronic music, playing and inventing percussion instruments. The sound sources, (except for the Tibetan bowls), are all of percussion instruments created by O'Donnell. There is no signal processing except for a bit of transposing using Pro Tools.

Richard O’Donnell is director of the Electronic Music Studio and Percussion Department at Washington University, music director of the St. Louis New Music Circle, was principal percussionist of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra until he retired in 2002. As an instrument builder, he has produced many original instruments including: sphrahng, aqua-lips, koto-veen, tubalum and XR-drums. He has received NEA and Mid-America Arts Alliance/Meet the Composer grants for his work. He has combined large wooden sails with electronics for outdoor installations, and his music for George Greenamyer’s burning ice sculptures were featured in annual events at Laumeier Sculpture Park.

man ray was played live on wiard and homemade analog synthesizer modules. "Wiard" is a brand name of synthesizer, hand-made by a wonderful, brilliant fellow in Milwaukee named Grant Richter.

Mike Murphy (aka dr. mabuse) was born in 1956. Buddy Holly was on the radio. He lives and works near his birthplace at the confluence of the Mississippi & Missouri rivers. He went to a music school in Texas but doesn't think it was very important. He plays with live bands, composes, improvises and builds his own electronic instruments when his family is asleep.

Fibonacci is based on the idea of taking 60 seconds, finding the golden section and creating a work that is focused on that moment in time. This occurs at 37.082 seconds into the piece. The work begins with a single sound. Additional sounds are added until the moment when all sounds disappear except for a single tone. The rest of the piece is a gradual decline into nothing from the golden section. The pitch material is based on a golden section number, 0.6180339887 that gives us: C, F#, C#, G#, C, E flat, E flat, A, G#, G#, G.

Gregory Hoepfner is an assistant professor and chair of the music department at Cameron University. He received his BA and his MA at the University of Central Oklahoma and his D.M.A. in Composition at the University of Oklahoma, studying with Carolyn Bremer and Robert Dillon. Dr. Hoepfner has received prizes and awards from: the Florissant, Missouri Bicentennial Commission, Britten-on-the-Bay Competition, the Amadeus Choir of Toronto, and the Kennedy Center American College. He has been published through Brazinmusikanta Publications, Lumina Press, Imagine Music, and PBA Music. Currently he is residing in Oklahoma City.

Cat purring by an open window, variation 1 is the first of a series of digital manipulations on recordings of Vogel’s old cat (whose name was also Cat). This was recoded in a fifth floor Lowertown (downtown, Saint Paul, MN) loft in the middle of the day.

Joseph M. Vogel is currently a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, studying music composition. He writes both electronic and acoustic works and is interested in the use of text with music, acoustics and psychoacoustics, along with performance art. He holds a BA from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota with a major in Music Composition and Performance on electric bass. He is currently a student of Dr. Adam Greene.

Steven L. Ricks, born in 1969, holds degrees in composition from the Brigham Young University (B.M.), the University of Illinois (M.M.), and the University of Utah (Ph.D.). He received a Certificate of Advanced Musical Studies from King's College London in 2000 for his work with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the University of Utah. Mr. Ricks received first prize in the 1999 SCI/ASCAP Student Composition Competition and he has received two Barlow Endowment Commissions. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University where he directs the Electronic Music Studio.

Recently, while browsing in a shop that specialized in precious stones, Dribus noticed a brilliant metallic crystal. Upon examining the sample more closely and reading the description beside it, he discovered that it was actually an accidental by-product of an imperfect smelting process in an aluminum plant in Poland. In spite of its unlikely beginnings, this crystal was more brilliant and beautiful than anything else in the shop. The musical miniature Slagmetal was inspired by this experience. The musical sounds were borrowed from discarded material-- a longer musical work that never was. Yet the fragments of sound that were salvaged have become a brilliant gem; more striking and beautiful than even the conception of the original.

John A. Dribus completed his undergraduate composition studies at Ouachita Baptist University and is currently a D.M.A. candidate at the University of North Texas where his teachers have included Cindy McTee, Butch Rovan, Joe Klein, and Jon Nelson. Mr. Dribus has received numerous awards for his academic and musical achievements (including composition and piano performance). He has written for performing forces ranging in size from solo instruments to full orchestra. He is also an accomplished electronic composer and has written works for both multi-channel tape and video. His research has centered around psychoacoustics, binaural and multi-channel spatialization, and the integration of multi-media elements in composition. His works have been programmed by organizations including SEAMUS, ICMA, SCI and others, and his music has been heard in Korea, Thailand, the Czech Republic, England, Chile, Australia’s Sydney Opera House Studio, and across the United States.

[-(snow)] has the Composer’s mother recalling childhood scenes with what can only be described as the lucid ambiguity that can characterize our present relationship to distant events as well as our own younger imaginations: Something almost happens, while almost something happens. Musically, on the other hand, almost nothing happens at the same time that nothing almost does happen. That may sound like semantics, but (the) confusion is real. Snow, the ostensible token of purity, usually obscures. As a backdrop for events remembered and imagined, however, it clarifies and embodies at least one thing—their ineluctable trip into hiding as we all disappear.

Composer Stan Link is married to musicologist Melanie Lowe. Somehow managing to put those traditional professional differences aside, they have produced one offspring, a two year old daughter named Wednesday, who is joyfully indifferent both to her father’s music and her mother’s research. Nevertheless, her parents indulge her inexplicable lack of concern for anything but music’s vital pleasures and continue to support her by teaching at Vanderbilt University. With the exception of his recent very loud ballet piece, LAPseDANCE, for African drums, electric guitar, and orchestra, Stan’s music tends to keep to itself. His compositional goal: bringing ineffectuality to perfection. Turn Ons: aesthetic failure. Turn Offs: certainty.

This track stems from a treatment Mollo did for the film Un Chien Andalou. The film was hot in the early twentieth century and directed by Luis Bunuel with the help of Salvadore Dali. The music is all sampled string sounds manipulated and processed. He used Cakewalk's Sonar program for all recording, sampling and processing.

Michael John Mollo is a composer currently living in Cincinnati, OH. Michael's compositions incorporate elements of contemporary classical music, jazz, rock & roll and electronic music. His notated works range from solo piano pieces to compositions for full jazz ensemble. Each work is unique in scope, and most incorporate some aspect of aleatoric music and improvisation. He holds a BM from the West Chester University of Pennsylvania School of Music and a master's of music degree from the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.

Nearly Hidden was realized at the McIntire’s home in 2004 using a computer and some audio equipment of dubious fidelity. An early version of the piece was declared to be "too musical" by one listener. Revisions were then made, correcting this obvious flaw.

David D. McIntire was born in upstate NY and was trained on the clarinet. He became fascinated with electronic music at an early age and later wore out many razor blades in pursuit of that discipline. Also played in a series of eccentric and overly idealistic musical groups, most notably the Colorblind James Experience. He is a D.M.A. candidate in composition at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

The Answerer simultaneously layers four independent readings of an excerpt of Walt Whitman's "Song of the Answerer" from Leaves of Grass. Surrounding and penetrating these readings are instrumental and percussive sounds created by manipulating the recordings of the readings themselves.

Andrew Estel (b. 1981) is currently pursuing his MA in composition at the Indiana University School of Music, where he studies composition with Sven-David Sandstrom and Claude Baker and electronic music with Jeffrey Hass and John Gibson; he also holds a full Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the United States Department of Education. He earned his Bachelor's degree in music from Wake Forest University, where he studied composition with Dan Locklair and guitar with Patricia Dixon; he graduated valedictorian, summa cum laude, with honors in music (2004).

Study 2 (a.x.) is one of an ongoing series of microtonal studies created from viola and trumpet samples. This particular study uses viola samples in which the performer, Erin Wight, played each open note sul ponticello while detuning and retuning each string with their respective tuning pegs. The intervals explored in this study were 25 cents and 75 cents. The sound world of this piece is an homage to Xenakis, whose music Ellrott was studying at the time.

Ellrott’s undergraduate work was done at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the College of Creative Studies from 1999-2003. His teachers were Joel Feigin, Jeremy Haladyna, and Leslie Hogan. In 2003, he began his MA at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, in the Conservatory of Music. My teachers have been Zhou Long, James Mobberley, and Paul Rudy. He credits Paul Rudy with encouraging him to compose electronic music, after he noticed what a control freak he was with his acoustic music.

The electromusing in RezGliss is improvised using "aMente", software written by Don Malone in MAX/MSP.

Don Malone aka Lone Monad has applied his electromusing art in Carnegie Hall, the streets of Chicago and other venues. He is a professor at Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago, from which he will retire this year. To keep him off the streets of Chicago, send him a ticket to come perform/lecture.

Winter Light was recorded in February 2004. It consists of three different elements: a low drone, a table-top guitar and electronic feedback. Consiglio’s recordings are improvisations made with guitars and FX and edited in Pro Tools. Artistically, he finds the editing process closer to painting or sculpting. In Winter Light, Consiglio is going for an “all-over” quality much like abstract expressionist paintings, having studied painters’ working methods as much as composers’. As music is an art of time, he listens for moments when the various elements come together in surprising ways.

John Consiglio started playing the guitar at age twelve or thirteen. He went on to form legendary St. Louis bands The Oozkicks and A Perfect Fit; graduated from Webster University in St. Louis in 1990 with a media degree emphasizing audio production; had music courses with Tom Hamilton and Ken Stallings; began studying music more systematically in the mid-nineties; became more interested in modern classical and experimental electronic pieces in 2001. Since then, he has written around twenty compositions and recorded three EP’s and two full-length CD’s.

Baby uses multiple mutations of a bizarre vocalization by Noah Keesecker. Although the sounds were originally generated acoustically, the resultant work uses highly masked, abstracted layers of sound to generate a short textural sound map.

Originally from Michigan, J. Anthony Allen holds two MA’s from the Peabody Conservatory of Music. His works have reached wide audiences including the SEAMUS, June in Buffalo, ICMC, Electronic Music Midwest festival, Aspen Music Festival, and CCMIX (Paris), among others. Mr. Allen is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Allen currently teaches at the University of Minnesota and the Mt. Calvary Music Academy in Excelsior, Minnesota.

A Quick Canon started as an experiment in tuning. What if the frequency of a new note was derived not by multiplying the old note by a ratio but by adding a set number to the original frequency? How would this approach effect interval tuning, both horizontal and vertical? The ideas culled from Clem’s experiment produced this composition almost on their own. A canon between three voices (saw tooth, square and sine waves in the left, right, and both speakers respectively) starts dissonantly and with rhythmic misalignment but floats effortlessly into agreement and consonance.

D. Travis Clem was born in Louisville, KY on September 17, 1984. In 1989, the family moved to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where Travis’s father worked for an oil company. While there, Travis learned the trumpet and piano. At age twelve, his family moved to Dallas, TX, where he played in regional honor bands. At 15, the Clem moved to Chattanooga, TN, and Travis began to compose. At 16, his composition File Under Misc. was performed at the MENC National Convention. After graduating, another composition, A Dozen Rowses, ranked second in a local composition competition. Currently, Travis is attending college and improving his musicianship.

Short Dance is a part of larger cycle of organ pieces. It is performed and recorded by the author on the Wolff organ at the Bales organ recital hall in the University of Kansas.

Sabin Levi (D.M.A. in organ and D.M.A. in composition, M.M.(organ), M.M. (composition), B.Mus.(organ) B.Mus.(composition), AAGO, FAGO, Carillonneur Player Certificate) is a composer, organist, carillonneur, and teacher. He was born in Bulgaria and has studied music in Bulgaria, Israel, France and the US. He is a first-prize winner of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Competition (as an organist, 1991-1992 and 1993-1994) a second price winner of the Mayhew Composition Competition (1998), first-prize winner of the Anthony B. Cius Composition Competition (2005). He has published his compositions in the Bulgarian publishing house Amadeus, the MALI Publishing House, Israel and ZBPI and in Fenwick Parva Press in USA.. Sabin Levi has performed as a pianist, composer, organist and carillonneur in Bulgaria, The Czech Republic, Serbia, Hungary, Israel, France and the US.

The main concept of this color triage, of which Green is a part, is to associate different colors with certain musical gestures over the course of the work. Elezovic has tried to transform each color into music language by dedicating each movement of the piece to one of the three primary colors: red, blue and green. The characteristic development of each color is presented in two different versions in which the blending process of colors has influence on development of music material.

Ivan Elezovic received his BA at the University of Manitoba, and his MA at McGill University. He was studying with Dr. Michael Matthews, Dr. Randolph Peters, Zack Settel and Alcides Lanza. Presently, he is completing his D.M.A. in composition, music theory and electro-acoustic music at the University of Illinois studying with Dr. Guy Garnett, Dr. Erik Lund and Prof. Scott Wyatt. Besides his teaching achievements in academia, Ivan has achieved notable performances of his acoustic and electro-acoustic compositions in North America and Europe. Internationally, he has taken part in different conferences among which the most significant are the IRCAM-Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique in Paris, France.

In this piece, Curve, Tompkins employs several extended techniques for the flute, the principal effect being multiphonics (sounding two or more notes simultaneously by the use of alternate fingerings and a subtle change of embouchure). However, his ultimate goal is to construct music that has a lyrical sense of form and continuity.

Fred Tompkins began his career in New York City in the late 1960s, composing in a style that combined the broad forms and free harmonies of modern classical music with jazz rhythm sections, often propelled by such drummers as Elvin Jones and Rick Cutler. In the 1980s, he added vocal composition to his vocabulary, yet set in his own rhythmic style. He has produced many recordings of his music, at present all available on CD from his web site (tompkinsjazz.com). He now continues his work in St. Louis and serves on the board of the New Music Circle.

March was primarily inspired by the deep house sounds of Larry Heard, who grounds his darkly colored jazz instrumentation with steady, minimal house beats. The piece was written without a pre-conceived structure in mind, only the experience of writing cool grooves. March uses a few themes from Dvorak's fifth symphony as a starting point, with considerable original additions.

Curt Nordgaard is a part-time amateur composer living in Minnesota, where he works as a research biochemist. He started pursuing music as a teenager but was diverted by his scientific studies. Despite nine years invested into my science education, Nordgaard is continually drawn towards writing music.

Nordgaard started writing popular music (inspired by techno, downtempo, and house music) during his nine years of science education, which still strongly determines the shape of his music. However, in the past year since he began studying Western music in earnest his works have begun to juxtapose the sounds and rhythms of popular music (especially deep house) with tonal harmony.

This piece is based on the familiar Minuet in G from the Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach-often attributed to J.S. Bach, it is a staple in the early piano student repertoire. In this version it is stretched into a new form. The stretching occurs by using its existing harmony, based on thirds, and mapping this into a similarly hierarchically structured harmony based on fourths. The result is both familiar and unfamiliar. Recognizable melodic and rhythmic motifs are found recast in a foreign atmosphere.

Greg Chmura lives in Northeast Ohio where he is the keyboard artist at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Akron. His varied background includes work as a jazz bass guitarist and as a church organist and choir director. His formal music training includes organ study with Dan Hathaway and composition study at Cleveland State University. He has degrees in Mathematics and Physics. Several of his solo organ pieces have been selected and published at Lorenz Publishing.

Of Mystery … is a composition for solo piano composed specifically for the 60X60. The intention was to create a rhythmically intense yet elegant composition. The recording is done with Finale Software.

Born in Iran, Mozhgan Shahidi resides in Knoxville, Tennessee. She has degrees in Piano, Composition, and Computer Science. She has composed a Concerto forAlto Saxophone, String Trio, and solo compositions for various instruments. She studiedwith John Anthony Lennon, Allen Johnson, and Kenneth Jacobs at the University of Tennessee.

Wildly Flowering is written for solo piano and a Chinese painter Wu Guan Zhong's three paintings inspires the idea. In this music, I am not only attempt to broaden my view and insight as a painter, but also transform the abstract image and expression into sound. "Wildly Flowering", a group of running notes gather together or apart, doesn't bother each other

Pui-shan received her BM from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, where she studied with Law Wing Fai and Clarence Mak. She completed her MA in music composition at the University of California, San Diego under Chinary Ung, and she is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri, Kansas City where her principal composition teacher is Chen Yi.

Pui shan Cheung has had her music performed in the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. Darmstadt, Germany, as well as at New Music Festivals in California, China, Hong Kong, Cincinnati, MUSICARAMA, New Music Concert featured by the Empyrean Ensemble, Fringe Club Music Festival the New Generation Music Festival Recent Music for Solo Piano featured by pianist, Jeri-mae Astolfi.

Ergasiophobia is a surgeon's fear of operating. This piece is from a set of 8 all with different phobia titles and intentions. Ergasiophobia is the least programmatic and best suited to describe a variety of fears. The music is fast and rhythmic with a sense of anxiety. Even though this piece might work to describe any number of fears, the Composer would like to think that a surgeon's fear of operating might not be just scary to the surgeon. It doesn't make other people feel good either.

Stacey Barelos is currently a doctoral student in piano at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. As a pianist, she is a winner of the Greek Women's University Club Competition in Chicago, IL, the Beethoven Piano Competition at UW-Madison and a finalist in the Neale Silva competition of Wisconsin Public Radio. Barelos’s compositions have been performed in Italy, Russia and across the U.S. including a recent performance of Phobia at the New Music Forum concert in Oakland, CA.

Folding Transparencies is an electronic manipulation of Romig’s Transparencies for solo piano, performed here by pianist Ashlee Mack. In this "folding" version, the original work is divided into three parts heard simultaneously, resulting in new counterpoint and new harmonies in a condensed texture.

James Romig (b. 1971) studied at the University of Iowa and Rutgers University, where he earned a Ph.D. under the tutelage of Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbitt. His works—commissioned by soloists, ensembles, and arts organizations—have been performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. He has previously held teaching positions at Rutgers University and Bucknell University and is currently on faculty at Western Illinois University. As a conductor, Romig tours and records with the Luna Nova new-music ensemble and serves as co-director of The Society for Chromatic Art, a NYC-based ensemble/organization founded in 1997.

Make a Distinction was composed in late 2004 and is 56 seconds long. It is in a simple binary form. The first section consists of 5 tracks of pianos, each processed through a digital delay, and 2 tracks of synthesizer, presenting a unison expanding to a Lydian cluster. After the climax of the cluster comes a sudden silence. The second section, as a compliment to the first, presents an E in five arpeggiated octaves, also using 7 tracks.

Phillip Schroeder was born into a military family in Northern California in 1956. His life as a musician began early and has paralleled the diversity of surroundings, now eleven states: trumpet in concert bands, boys and mixed choirs, electric bass in rock bands, orchestral and chamber conducting, experimental improvisation ensembles, and piano performance. He has composed music for orchestra, wind ensemble, live-electronics, chamber ensembles, choir, instrumental solos, and voice, all variously described as continuing "a tradition of brilliance and openness" with "powerful expressive qualities that focus on subtle shadings and nuances" and as "expressive lyrical sound-worlds." His music appears on the Capstone Records, Boston Records, and Vienna Modern Masters labels.

PSO[ab] was composed using the sounds and algorithmic system from ABSTRACT BODY, an emergent music and dance installation by Norbert Herber and Yacov Sharir. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is an algorithm originally developed by scientists James Kennedy and Russell Eberhart for optimizing nonlinear functions. It is related to artificial life, flocking behavior, and evolutionary computation. PSO is rooted in the idea that the social sharing of information among individuals can be beneficial to an entire group. This piece reveals the behavior of swarm agents and translates their dynamics into a musical composition.

Norbert Herber is from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. At 16, he began his musical career as a jazz saxophonist, trading sets with the swing-tenor legend Irv Williams. His love of jazz and improvised music led him to arranging and composition, where he developed an interest in creating music for interactive applications. His work is focused on the use of sound in interactive environments, nonlinear and experimental composition, and Emergent Music, a genre rooted in Artificial Life systems.

Light travels 17,987,547,480 meters in 60 seconds.

Tom Lopez has appeared at festivals and conferences around the world as a guest lecturer and composer. He has been a resident artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Copland House, Villa Montalvo, and Djerassi. His compositions have received critical acclaim and peer recognition; including a Grant for Young Composers from ASCAP and CD releases by Vox Novus, SCI, and SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States).

Aquarelle is a recording of a work for mbira and live DSP performed using MAX/MSP. The performances of this piece were done in small installments at various locations using a portable set-up so the performances could happen and then disappear. This enabled the performance to exist briefly in a unique space and then fade away. The title refers to the wash technique used in watercolors in relation to the soft layering of textures, as well as the "running" performance aspect.

Noah Keesecker is a composer and sound artist living in Minneapolis. He is currently a graduate student at the University of Minnesota working in acoustic, digital, visual and interactive mediums.

Kettle Music is a quick voyage into an imaginary world where tympani play things that are not possible in the real world: very high and low pitches, passages of great speed, and playing many notes at once. The title of the piece simply comes from the antiquated name for tympani, kettle drums.

J. Ryan Garber is Assistant Professor of Music at Carson-Newman College where he teaches Composition, Theory, Organ, and Bassoon. A native of Virginia, he received two music degrees from James Madison University and a Doctor of Music degree from The Florida State University. In 2003 Carson-Newman recognized Garber with both its Creativity award and Excellence in Teaching and Leadership award.

As a composer, Garber has received awards and recognition from ASCAP, The College Music Society, American Composers Forum, among others. In 2002, the Tennessee Music Teachers Association presented Garber with its “Tennessee Composer of the Year” award.

Bells 3 is part of the small works collection. Taylor was exploring modal melodies created with fractal geometry and non-linear functions. He mixed the resulting musical lines and found it created great harmonies and counterpoint. Small works consists of 10 short tracks ranging from 37 seconds to just over four minutes. ExUx was performed on August 23 2003 at Dartmouth College during the Electric Rainbow Festival. Fx->Dy was released on Tales from the Oxygen Den by Radical Turf Records in 2004. The images to the left were inspired by the thoughts and sketches of John Zadeh.

Michael Taylor holds an MA in Computer Music and New Media Technology from Northern Illinois University. At NIU he was part of the Annex Group directed by Dr. James Phelps and taught an introductory class in computer music for undergraduates. Michael is the founder of the InterMedia Manifold, a collective of artists interested in Multimedia Art and Technology. His goal at IMM is to educate creative people about new art and technology. Michael is an active performer and Composer. His music has been performed at Dartmouth College and released on CD by Radical Turf Records.

Originally composed in 1979 for solo vibraphone, two mallets, Wanderers has both serialist and aleatory elements. Its compositional methods were largely inspired by John Cage's work using the I Ching and Karlheinz Stockhausen's serial organization of musical elements. Wanderers is a movement from a larger work that uses every possible double stop (two mallet interval) and single note available on a three octave vibraphone played only once and organized according to aleatory operations. Dynamics, tempo, mallet hardness, note lengths, sostenuto pedaling, and even the name of the movements of this work were also selected using the I Ching.

After attending Arizona State University and Northern Illinois University, Mr. Berg received a Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, IL. There he studied composition with Dean Kincaid, orchestration with Stella Roberts, counterpoint with William Winkey, jazz drum set with William Windhorst, and mallet and orchestral percussion with James Dutton. He has played drum set with the Stanley Paul Orchestra for 30 years.

I Minus Minus (i - -) is a brief work for algorithmically organized synthesized sound, simulating falling tones in trickles to torrents. Sound events have been organized through the use of a custom software application written by the composer.

Michael Berkowski is a composer of electro-acoustic and computer music, active in the Minneapolis, MN area. He holds an MA in Music Composition from the University of Minnesota School of Music and a BM from the University of Dayton. Mr. Berkowski's compositions utilize the composer's custom software applications for sound organization or synthesis through the use of algorithmic or cellular automata processes and genetic models. He currently serves as an adjunct instructor for electronic and computer music at the University of Minnesota.

Ex-prone was created from selected recordings of resonating metal lamp shades. The idea was to collate the harmonic resonances by layering, and transposing several tracks against one another. Digital processing was used to further shape the sound, with a focus on trying to preserve the subtle transients of the original recordings.

Sean O’Neill is an Austin-based composer who uses field recordings as primary source material, layering elements of environmental/urban/found sound with processed acoustic and electronic instrumentation. His work focuses on perception of space and natural ambience. An avid sound recordist, O'Neill has collected recordings throughout Southeast Asia, Europe and the US. He has appeared on several compilations under the moniker When I Know You Will Too, and has releases with Detroit's Asaurus Records and London's Evelyn Records.

Grotto: “I was walking alone down the street at midnight, hands in my pockets and a light, cool wind in my face. The church bells rang, and momentarily I was back in fifth grade, riding my bicycle through the darkness down Linus Drive at 5:45a.m. to serve as an altar boy for the 6:00 mass. I've heard that they have since remodeled the church. Hey--Where's my cellphone?”

Doug Geers is a composer who works extensively with technology in composition, performance, and multimedia collaborations. He is founder and director of the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art, co-founder of the Electric Music Collective, a member of the performance group Søreel, and assistant professor of music composition at the University of Minnesota (USA). His works have been performed widely, and can be heard on CDs on the Innova, Capstone, and SEAMUS labels.

Another Room is a two-part counterpoint between fragments of a source guitar recording and its granular reverb ambience. Recently I have been experimenting with forms that exploit the contrast between static and active energy (musical activity) over time. In this example, the source guitar is nearly always active while the clips of reverberation are more static and/or change at a much slower pace. To me, the interest is in the interplay between these poles of activity.

James Hegarty’s compositions have been presented at universities, festivals and concerts throughout the United States and abroad. Recent and upcoming performances include “Sound Objects” at the Kemper Museum in Kansas City, and “In the hollow of an afterthought” on the Los Angeles Sonic Odyssey series. He has also written and produced several multi-media works for theatre, video, and music that have been presented in St. Louis over the past few years. Hegarty founded the music technology program at St. Louis Community College at Forest Park and is currently Associate Professor of Music at Principia College.

Mustela Twilight: We live in a fast-paced world. With cell phones, Internet and the developing pressure to achieve and succeed, people are constantly surrounded, occupied and having to put their image out to the world. When do we get to have that moment of solitude? What have we lost by always being in touch? Gresl is fascinated by that one moment where one finds himself finally alone; that moment as we transition from hectic consciousness to the adventures of sleep.

Canadian by birth, Jason Gresl, has found himself spending his days gallivanting around the US and beyond as a clarinetist/bass clarinetist. Having received degrees from the University of Colorado-Boulder and Oberlin Conservatory under the tutelage of Daniel Silver, Bil Jackson and Daniel Gilbert, Jason has played with a variety of orchestras both professionally and as a student for two summers at the Aspen Music Festival. Fond of chamber music, Jason has performed with such groups as Denver’s Mercury Ensemble, The Experimental Playground Ensemble, Grupo Montebello and Claricello, a duo co-formed with his wife, Lara Turner.

Merry Widows was created on November 4, 2004, in a live improvisation concert by Williams and Hultgren at the Moonlight Music Cafe in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. Playing amplified guitar and amplified cello, the performers each used a miniature music box cylinder turned by a small crank. In this instance, the boxes played Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow Waltz. By placing the toy music chimes directly on the strings of the instruments, the tunes were then amplified through the instruments and their pickups. Simple live signal processing of distortion overdrive and digital delay were applied in the piece.

Guitarist Davey Williams has toured the world playing free-style improvisation with virtually every major artist of the medium. Known for exciting the guitar strings with unusual devices and armature motors, he is the ultimately innovative player. An avid surrealist, Williams also writes and paints.

Cellist Craig Hultgren is from Iowa and his family still has a couple of farms. He is an long-time activist for new music, the newly creative arts, and the avant-garde. Hultgren presents his own spontaneous, free-style improvisations along with programs of newly composed music. 2005 finds him holding the Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, an international competition that highlights the best new compositions for the instrument.

The five pieces from which Five Pieces for Guitar II is taken are written in an expressionist style reminiscent of the Second Viennese School of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern; indeed, the set is dedicated to the memory of Arnold Schoenberg. They are freely dissonant; they are not, however, 12-tone pieces. This second of the set of five -- a mood piece, really --is the most constrained emotionally, consisting of a repeating harmonically ambiguous (but not dissonant) chord, over which a sparse melody containing much empty space occasionally but briefly takes over and hints at an expressive direction. The underlying chords have the last say, however, and the piece ends without any questions being answered.

Tim Brace has studied composition with Tom Borling, Gunther Kahowez, and Jules Langert; classical guitar with Wolfgang Justen and George Sakellariou; baroque lute with Catherine Strizich; and ethnomusicology with Stephen Slawek and Steven Feld. Tim has written and published on modern Chinese music (modern and traditional), and has composed over 30 works for classical guitar. His "Tejana" for guitar quartet won first prize in the Austin Classical Guitar Society's first Composition Competition in early 2005.

Vocalización Cristalina (2005) is a stereo work that lasts 59 seconds. It was realized in the CEMI studios at the University of North Texas. The composition uses voice, glass and synthetic sounds as sources for sampling as well as musical quotes from Javier Alvarez’s Mambo à la Braque. Vocalización Cristalina explores granular synthesis and convolution. Dramatic changes contrast with vocal processed sounds and synthetic sounds creating non-linear interruptions to the linear granular processes. As in the case of Alvarez’s piece, Vocalización Cristalina borrows techniques utilized by the cubist painter George Braque. Alvarez’s piece quotes Perez Prado’s mambo Caballo Negro.

Lucio Edilberto Cuellar C., born in Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia, began musical studies at the conservatory of the National University in Bogotá. In 1979, he moved to the United States, where he completed a BA in composition at Georgia State University and a D.M.A. in composition from the University of North Texas. He works with sound synthesis, multimedia Video, mixed media (tape and acoustic instruments and interactive composition) and music for acoustic instruments. His music has been performed in several international festivals around the world.

Character Sketch was inspired by a short video of a man staring at himself in the mirror -- the source of the spoken word sample, "My character...personality..." The piece is a musical response to the video, in which I perceived the man to be in a state of intense apprehension and self-doubt.

Jacob Gotlib is a junior TIMARA major at Oberlin College. His primary studies are with Tom Lopez. He has written music for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, electronics, and multimedia. His music has been performed in Oberlin OH, at the 2005 Threshold Electro-Acoustic Music Festival in Bowling Green OH, by the California EAR Unit at Arcosanti AZ and Los Angeles CA, and at the Imagine2 Festival in Memphis TN. Outside of school, he plays with the band Ayin, who have released two albums and have toured nationally.

Seconds is a musique concrete work based on source material recorded during a single dinner with the family. 96 separate sonic events, each one second long, were combined and processed using Protools to create a 5.0 surround file. This is the stereo version of that file. Seconds was composed and realized at the Visby International Centre for Composers' Studio Alpha in June, 2005.

Critics have called Dr. Dorothy Hindman's (b. 1966) music 'intense, gripping, and frenetic', 'sonorous and affirmative' and 'music of terrific romantic gesture'. Each of her unique pieces explores her ongoing interest in issues of musical perception, beauty, timbre, contextual meaning, and profundity. Her work is performed extensively in the U.S., and throughout Europe, and has received numerous awards. Recent works include Drift for the Lithium Saxophone Quartet, Taut for the Corona Guitar Kvartet, and Time Management for bassist Robert Black. Hindman teaches music theory and composition at Birmingham-Southern College. Her works are available on the Living Artist CD series.

LILY was requested by composer Cindy McTee, lead production/arranger for a collection of new electronic miniatures to memorialize her late student, Colombian composer Nicolas Useche (1974-2004). LILY captures the spirit of Useche's bright, happy personality and evokes his homeland through the required programmatic element of the use of "bells" as the foreground instrumentation. Without using actual Colombian folk instruments, Job succeeds in this sonic portrait by blending ocean waves, nightingale song, an Indian percussion ensemble, and custom midi instruments."

Lynn Job was born in South Dakota and is published exclusively by Buckthorn Music Press. She is an active professional art composer for all new classical genres and operates her main production studio in Denton, Texas.

Attention is an exploration of ADD/ADHD, remixed from a work commissioned by dancer-choreographer Keimi Umezu.

Zachary Crockett is a prolific composer, computer programmer, and interdisciplinary collaborator living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

A frequent collaborator, Mr. Crockett has a particular interest in dance, having formally studied modern dance and choreography himself. Recent collaborative projects include a multimedia performance work about ADD/ADHD with Keimi Umezu and Lisa Leppa to include dance, music, video, and paintings, and his first orchestral work, entitled The Expanse is being choreographed by Harper Piver of the North Carolina Dance Alliance. In October 2004, Zachary worked with sculptor Bonnie Brabson and choreographer Heather Parker on the Arts Quarter Collective's ArtsMosis festival.

Oblivious... is a sixty-second odyssey around the world: individuals absent to one another. This piece exposes the importance of our lives at one given moment in time. Individually and collectively, the importance of that moment can be far less - or more - important as we are distant from these slices of time unfolding in our universe. One moment may bring the relative unimportance of mundane tasks, while for another - at the same moment - it might bring the choice of life or death. The consequence may be a momentous performance; conversely, it may be a meaningless act as we give our oblivious regard to it.

Gary Knudson is a composer, musician and researcher. Born in St. Louis, Mr. Knudson holds a Bachelor's and Master's of Music degree in Composition from the University of North Texas where he studied under Phil Winsor and Larry Austin. North Texas was where he began his introduction into computer based music and algorithmic composition, and after a long hiatus, he has returned to UNT to continue his studies in 2005 for his doctoral degree in composition with a specialization in computer music media.

His interests include experimental music, algorithmic composition, computer music, sound synthesis, interactive computer music, multimedia, visual art and installations. Mr. Knudson’s works have been presented both in America and internationally at universities, concerts and festivals.

Boom! Singular Explosion is a one-minute work about chaos. Crazed grackles, crumpling plastic, bubbles in a cup, and the Emu Modular Synthesizer are just some of the sounds used in this short burst of electronic mayhem. Since its inception, Singular Explosion has grown into a larger work entitled Fixed Explosions, which exists as a solo electronic work and a work for electronics, brass septet, and two percussion.

Samuel Pluta is a composer of electronic, acoustic, and mixed media works. Recently receiving his MA in composition from the University of Texas, where he studied primarily with Russell Pinkston, his music has been played at many concerts and conferences, including Seamus and ICMC. Pluta and pop duo composer Mike Vernusky just completed their first full-length album, entitled Ready for Japan. Samuel is now a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham, where he studies with Scott Wilson and Jonty Harrison.

Trottenbach is a miniature portrait in sound of the town where Ludwig Wittenstein began his controversial career in education.

Wittegenstein youth is a chamber noise ensemble consisting of Heinrich maneuver (percussion and voice), Tracy Andreotti (cello and Voice), an Thomas Sutter (Guitar, Electronics, and Voice. They have released 8 CDs on the Regicide Bureau Label.

David Heuser's (b. 1966) music has been performed by various groups and individuals and on festivals and conferences throughout the US and abroad. He has won a variety of awards, grants and commissions including an ASCAP Young Composer Award, a First Music commission from the New York Youth Symphony, the Delius Composition Contest Chamber Music Award, and a Texas Music Festival "New Texas Overture" Commission.

Michael Souther in the Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) called Heuser's orchestral work Cauldron "an exciting, dynamic tour-de-force," and Charles Ward of the Houston Chronicle called A Screaming Comes Across the Sky (also for orchestra) "all-American music at its most dynamic and visceral."

Crumbling is an electronic work exploring the theme of entropy: a universal tendency toward disorder. A simple, four-bar gesture is deconstructed using a stochastic algorithm programmed using Native Instruments' Reaktor software. The familiar rock and roll orchestration of guitar, keyboard, bass, and drums is heard in a new context as the instruments' traditional roles are obliterated and their timbres reduced to sonic dust.

Timothy Flood is an artist and musician from Ann Arbor, MI. As a jazz bassist, he has performed with artists such as Frank Lowe, Roswell Rudd, and Uri Caine. More recently, his electronic artwork has been shown at the Detroit Institute of the Arts, Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening Space, and Sync 2005. Tim is currently pursuing an MA in the Media Arts from The University of Michigan.

On a Wire is an electro-acoustic miniature which takes most of its sound material from the classical guitar. Different layers of improvisation and sounds are juxtaposed in a chaotic texture that builds in density as the piece progresses.

Kari Besharse is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois working in both electro-acoustic and acoustic mediums. She completed her BA in composition at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and her MA at the University of Texas at Austin. Primary composition teachers have been Stephen Andrew Taylor, Guy Garnett, Russell Pinkston, Donald Grantham, Robert Cooper, Rick Taube, and James Mobberly. Her music has also been presented around the country by venues and organizations such as June in Buffalo, Society of Composers, Inc., Texas Computer Musicians Network, The LaTex Festival, The Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest, ICMC, and Pulse Field.

Ocsidoomglop Dance uses excerpts from marathon improvisational sessions with the wall-sized Moog synthesizer at one of Roosevelt University’s electronic music studios, as well as percussion loops. Moses also generated material with a program written in LISP that creates MIDI events from the Fibonacci series.

Laurie Lee Moses is a Chicago-based performer/composer equally at home in the diverse contexts of musical theater, experimental jazz, R&B, world music, acousmatic music and performance art. Her lively, eclectic work embraces a range of styles and techniques, from traditionally notated works to structured improvisations and everything in between—with perhaps a dash of narrative, theater, movement or gizmos—and ranges in mood from the sublime to the, well, silly. She attended the 2004 Workshop in Algorithmic Computer Music at UC-Santa Cruz, taught by David Cope and Peter Elsea. Moses is a MA student at Roosevelt University.

Summer breeze, sung and played on the keyboards by Kanniks, with accompaniment on the Indian sitar and the tabla drums. Composed in the scale of the Indian raaga bhimpalasi (whose parent scale is roughly equivalent to the dorian mode), this piece visualizes the balmy late afternoon breeze of a tropical summer day in India.

Kanniks Kannikeswaran is a visionary composer and a passionate educator with several recordings and productions and awards to his credit. His recent work Shanti featuring ancient Sanskrit hymns built a 120 member strong diverse choir around the music and won accolades from community leaders and critics alike. He has collaborated with leading dance companies from India and his work has been featured on Indian national television. Kanniks teaches the theory and history of Indian music at the College Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati.