Daniel Blinkhorn

David Morneau

Chris Cresswell

Melissa Grey (with Harold Jones, flute, and Mioi Takeda, violin)

Robert Voisey

Milica Paranosic (with Margaret Lancaster, flute)

Elainie Lillios

Dan Abatemarco (Speak Onion)

Mike McFerron

Daniel Blinkhorn is an Australian composer and new media artist who currently resides in Sydney. His works are regularly performed, exhibited and presented internationally at festivals, concert halls, conferences, galleries and other loci, and his creative works have received over 25 international and national composition citations.

le son de la lumière - part 1: In 1982 composer Luc Ferrari scored the soundtrack to the animated film Chronopolis by Piotr Kamler. The moment I saw the film I was struck by its beauty and elegant synchronicity between sound and image. In particular, the composer’s response to the impossible shapes conjured by the animator, in which he seemed to capture the light reflected from the shapes. When I was provided with the opportunity to use some of Luc Ferrari’s original samples from his recorded archives, I set about creating a work that reflects my own impressions of his musical oeuvre. The resulting composition gravitates conceptually around the film Chronopolis.

David Morneau is a composer of an entirely undecided genre. Described by Molly Sheridan as a "shining beacon" of inspiration, his diverse work illuminates ideas about our culture, issues concerning creativity, and even the very nature of music itself. His eclectic output has been described variously as "elegantly rendered", "happily prissy", "impressive", "unusual, esoteric, and offbeat". His recent album, Broken Memory, "absolutely wrecks shop.… For that, David Morneau wins." Morneau is Artistic Director of Circuit Bridges and Composer-In-Residence at Immigrant Breast Nest. Find out more at http://5of4.com

In 2012 I curated a compilation album for Immigrant Breast Nest called B'ak'tun Waning. Each month that year, on the 21st, we released a new track by a different artist as a countdown to December 21, 2012—the much-hyped Mayan apocalypse. King of Iniquity is my contribution to the album, released on February 21, 2012, which was also Mardi Gras. It's a potent mixture of bass trombone drones, swirling synths, and splintered dub-step beats "bursting into a million ruined colors that that let you see forever."

Originally from Cazenovia, NY, Chris Cresswell (b. 1988) is a young composer who is gaining recognition for his work in a wide variety of music genres, from large and chamber ensembles, solo works, vocal works, electro-acoustic works and collaborations with video artists. Graduating Magna Cum Laude from Syracuse University in 2011 with a Bachelor’s of Music in Composition.

Distorted Mirrors – The second in my Audifiler series, an ongoing project of works built using heavily manipulated digital samples. These works were created using small fragments of preexisting material that are then heavily manipulated using a variety of digital music programs.

While trying to come up with an idea for the piece, I stumbled upon a saxophone quartet and sampled a short section of the piece. The sample was so catchy that it became the focal point for the entire piece. It reoccurs throughout the entire work against varying backdrops. Each time the sample reappears it changes based on the surrounding textures as if motif is moving through a series of fun house mirrors.

Composer Melissa Grey’s projects include concert works, electroacoustic performances, installations, food+music events and collaborations with artists and architectural designers. Grey is currently Artistic Director of Circuit Bridges, a monthly electroacoustic concert series held at Gallery MC in New York City. Previous curatorial work includes 60x60 New York Minutes Mix (2012), Transrevelation (2007) and Sonic Channels (2006). www.melissagrey.net

Appassionata (2010) is a film collage and musical composition. Artist Angela Grauerholz invited composer Melissa Grey to interpret a fragment of music that Ludwig Wittgenstein had scribbled down in his journal in 1931. Accompanying this music, he wrote: “That must be the end of a theme which I cannot place. It came into my head today as I was thinking about my philosophical work and saying to myself, I destroy, I destroy, I destroy.” Wittgenstein’s attempt to consider the implications of the limitations language places on human experience is reflected in this piece where the meaning remains open, and several sensibilities and forms of expression are merged into one. The film collage, by Grauerholz and Réjean Myette, was constructed as a response to Grey’s resulting composition, in a dialogue that reconsiders image-sound hierarchy.

“With few opportunities and much competition,...composers show creativity in just getting heard.” And in Chris Pasles’s article in the Los Angeles Times, Robert Voisey is highlighted as one of those composers. Composing electroacoustic and chamber music, his aesthetic oscillates from the Romantic to the Post Modern Mash-Up. His work has been performed in venues throughout the world including: Carnegie Hall, World Financial Center Winter Garden Atrium, and Stratford Circus in London. Voisey has been profiled and music broadcasted on HEC-TV public television in St Louis, Elektramusik in France, as well as radio stations all around the world including: Cityscape NPR St. Louis Public Radio; Arts & Answers & Art Waves on WKCR, Upbeat with Eva Radich on Radio New Zealand; and Kol Yisrael Israeli Radio.

Lament and Sorrow – In Memory of Liana Alexandra and dedicated to Serban Nichifor; two of my dear colleagues, composers, and friends.

Critically acclaimed composer Milica Paranosic has established herself as one of New York’s finest and most daring composers, performance artists, producers, and technologists. Her music was described as “Amazing...astonishing” (The New York Times), “Like liquor-filled pralines” (Germany’s Morgenpost), and “A painter, musical Jackson Pollack” (SEAMUS). Milica’s works range from one-woman multimedia shows and sound installations to operatic and symphonic works. Inspired by her travels and international collaborations, Milica imaginatively incorporates music of her Serbian homeland in addition to cross-continental muses such as Brazil, Ghana and China, always striving to create new sound worlds in which contrasting concepts vividly coexist in unique textures. Milica is current co-director of Composers Concordance, music director of Gallery MC, and founder and director of ParAcademy.

“New-music luminary” (The New York Times) and “leading exponent of the avant-garde flute” (Village Voice), Margaret Lancaster has built a large repertoire of new works composed for her that employ extended techniques, multi-media, and electronics fusing music, theater and movement. Performance highlights include Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Ibsen Festival, Santa Fe New Music, Edinburgh Festival, Tap City, New Music Miami, and Festival D’Automne. A member of Either/Or and Fisher Ensemble, she has been a guest of many groups including Argento, Counter)induction, and the New York Philharmonic. She has recorded on New World Records, OO Discs, Innova, Naxos and Tzadik, and was selected for Meet the Composer’s New Works for Soloist Champions project. Noted for her interdisciplinary performances, Lancaster, who also works as an actor, dancer, and amateur furniture designer, presents solo and chamber music concerts worldwide. Recent collaborations include playing Helene in the 7- year worldwide run of OBIE-winning Mabou Mines Dollhouse, BMP’s Kocho, and Fables on Global Warming with Karole Armitage’s ArmitageGone!Dance. www.margaretlancaster.com.

Mrak is a piece I wrote for Margaret Lancaster and myself several years ago as a part of a larger (still in progress) project, focusing on sonorities of Margaret’s stunning, lush and diverse flute soundscapes layered over beats and vocals.

'Mrak' is 'darkness' in Serbian, often used for 'cool' or 'awesome' in Belgrade slang.

Elainie Lillios’s music reflects her fascination with listening, sound, space, time, immersion, and anecdote. Awards include a 2013-14 Fulbright grant (Greece), First Prize–Electroacoustic Piano International Competition, Special Mention–Prix Destellos, Prize Winner–Medea Electronique Competition, and First Prize–Concours Internationale de Bourges. Recognition from Concurso Internacional de Musica Electroacustica de Sao Paulo, Concorso Internazionale Russolo, Pierre Schaeffer Competition, ICMA, and La Muse en Circuit. Elainie’s acousmatic is available on the CD Entre Espaces, produced by Empreintes DIGITALes, plus Centaur, MSR Classics, Irritable Hedgehog, StudioPANaroma, La Muse en Circuit, New Adventures in Sound Art, SEAMUS, and Leonardo Music Journal. www.elillios.com

La fête de la huitièmme decennie weaves a fantasy about celebrations and the aftermath. It celebrates Francois Bayle’s 80th birthday and premiered October 27 2012 in Brussels, Belgium on a concert honoring him.

As Speak Onion, Dan Abatemarco treads on, then completely explodes, the line between producer and noisician. He spews seething noise, giant deformed beats and absolutely wrong atmospheres in fits and starts until nothing sounds like what it sounds like anymore. Breakbeats and basslines enter innocently but end up processed beyond recognition and drowning in feedback. Synth sounds are stretched, manipulated, and left ruined as chilling shrieks. The resulting sonic abomination slips between the dimensions of experimentalism, harsh noise, and beat-bashed breakcore. Dancefloor? Maybe. Slaughterhouse floor? Yes, definitely.

Nonlinear Division is Dan’s contribution to Immigrant Breast Nest’s B’ak’tun Waning project from 2012.

Mike McFerron is professor of music and composer-in-residence at Lewis University, and he is founder and co-director of Electronic Music Midwest (http://www.emmfestival.org). His music can be heard on numerous commercial CDs as well as on his website at www.bigcomposer.com.

Shape Study: Music for Metamorphoses for fixed media was written at the end of 2008 for the Lewis University Theater Department production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses. An adaptation of Ovid’s eponymous narrative poem, this production of Zimmerman’s play was directed by Dr. Kevin Trudeau. Although the composition is, on one hand, intended to serve as a prelude to the production of this play, it is also hoped that the work stands by itself as an independent electroacoustic composition. Structurally, this composition reduces the distances between traditional foreground, middleground, and background musical layers, thus clouding these dimensions. Yet at the same time, this work strives to present a clear and logical dramatic shape by assembling spectral, dynamic, and spatial elements.