Melinda Faylor is a pianist and composer based in New York City. Ms. Faylor weaves together dense and mercurial sound worlds using field recordings, synthesized sound and piano. Current projects include a solo electroacoustic album, Melia Duo with flutist Melanie Chrignan, Sari-Sari Storybooks with Music, and her interdisciplinary piece MeMeMeMe. She is currently collaborating with the Vervet Dance Company of Philadelphia as Music Director and pianist for their upcoming Fall concerts. She is a pianist for the Joffrey Ballet School, the Garden Players and FoHI Improv. Ms. Faylor is the recipient of the Ma-Yi Theater grant (2021), NMUSA Creator Fund grant (2023) the Queens Art Fund grant (2023) and the Anti-Social Music Tiny Fund Award (2024).

KALAISAN KALAICHELVAN is a composer and pianist based in Toronto, Canada. His compositional practice spans multiple disciplines, drawing from film, dance, theatre, installation and deals with themes of translation and transference.

Named by Ludwig Van as one of “six emerging Canadian composers to keep an eye on”, his music has been performed and premiered by celebrated ensembles such as Pro Coro Canada, the Dior Quartet, NMC Ensemble and Extended Music Collective. Kalaisan is a 2021 Fellow of the prestigious Sundance Composers lab and is one of the awarded grantees of the Sundance Institute’s Art of Practice Fellowship. He has held residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and was an alumna of the Canadian Film Centre as one of the 2021 Slaight Music residents. Kalaisan was awarded the SOCAN Emerging Composer Award in 2023. In 2023, Kalaisan wrote the music for the film In Flames, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was selected as the Pakistani entry for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards.

Kalaisan has been mentored by esteemed composers and music leaders such as Paul Wiancko and David Harrington of Kronos Quartet, Dinuk Wiejertane, Suzanne Farrin, Felipe Lara, Brian Current and Michael Zaugg. He has had the opportunity to work with artists and institutions such as the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, UCross Foundation, Canadian League of Composers, Avaloch Music Institute, Nuit Blanche TO, Screen Composers Guild of Canada and VIFF.

lex Koi is a vocalist, composer, and improvising musician. Her music is the mystical translation between the privacy of her inner world and the somatic extrication of such. Through polyphonic narrative, ecstatic release, and coy murmurs, she bends between her diverse musical influences in the avant-garde, opera, Jazz, and electronic music. She has had the privilege of collaborating with musicians, composers, visual artists, directors and dancers at venues such as Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Joe's Pub, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival, and more. She recently played the combined role of Tracy Dunn/Jillian Gilchrist in the Off-Broadway production of "Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower", Toshi Reagon's theatrical adaptation of the beloved novel.

Centering the emotionality of the human experience, she creates an explosive sound that has been called “impossibly stunning” [Stereo Stickman], “primal and futuristic at the same time” [Current Magazine] and that “bends between operatic and punk rock” [Audiofemme].

She was a Teaching Artist with Ann Arbor’s University Musical Society and has conducted guest artist teaching workshops in voice and performance at Carnegie Mellon University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, the University of Mary Washington, and the University of Michigan. She has taught private voice lessons at numerous performing arts organizations including Brooklyn Music School, Expressions Music Academy, Dance Dynamics, and Third Wave Music. Additionally, she enjoys baking fancy cakes, loves reading, hiking, and making demo videos for Red Panda Lab’s effects pedals.

Post-Classical guitarist and composer, Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo, is an artist driven by collaboration and innovation who aims to redefine the constraints of 21st century classical music. Acknowledged as one of CBC’s 2023 “30 under 30 classical musicians,” his music challenges conventions and offers an expanded world of soundscapes. Seamlessly blending his influences, Lacopo unifies the different stylistic and cultural worlds of his instrument to create a more realistic picture of the genre in the 21st century.

Kirin McElwain is a cellist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer working in the realms of experimental, improvised, contemporary classical, and popular music.
In her own sound and compositional practice, she uses cello, modular synthesizer, and voice to explore the spaces between formal structures and chaos, western classical harmony and noise, and ideas of “goodness” and “correctness.”

Her self-released solo debut EP Viriditas received praise from Foxy Digitalis, A Closer Listen, and Anxious Magazine.

Trained as a classical cellist, Kirin is equally at home in concert halls, recording studios, and DIY spaces. As a cellist, she has performed on various film and television scores (HBO, National Geographic, Gimlet Media, PBS, NPR), contemporary artists (Post Malone, Ioanna Gika, This Will Destroy You), contemporary dance concerts (Claudia Schreier Company, Harlem Dance Theater, Triskelion Arts), mixed media installations (the MET, James Cohan Gallery, Neue Galerie), and traditional classical and contemporary classical concerts (Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, Kimmel Center), in addition to many community-run venues. Her scored work for cello octet has been performed at Music From Salem, Boston Conservatory, and the Boston Museum of Fine Art. Kirin has been an artist in residence at Elektron Musikstudion (Stockholm, SE), Smith College (MA, USA), and Westben Center for the Arts (ON, CAN).

Kirin collaborates regularly with vocalist/composer Alex Koi, violinist/composer Aimée Niemann, and synthesist Matthew Ryals. She is completing a full-length solo release. 

Luke Mombrea is a composer originally from Oakland, California. His work spans many different mediums including concert works, art installations and scores for film and television. Luke’s work often utilizes archival folk materials, improvisation, and electroacoustic processing.

His concert music has been performed internationally, including performances by players from the London Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His new work, titled Black Gold, for chamber ensemble and electronics, was recently premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra in May 2024. His concert works have also been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and NTS Radio.

Luke also frequently collaborates on audiovisual installations, particularly with New York based artist, Nate Mohler. Luke’s work has been featured at the Barbican, The Wallace Collection and Art Basel.

Luke has scored numerous award-winning films, including Juliet, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Route One North, a feature available on Apple TV+ and Game Day, a feature film available on Mubi. He recently completed the score for Point Unknown, a pilot being developed by HBO/Warner.

Eden Girma (also known as aden) is a multi-instrumental musician, vocalist, and composer hailing from Madison, WI. Having grown up at the nexus of widely varying and vibrant musical traditions, they create through a variety of audio-visual-technological media — bridging realms such as popular music, improvisatory. collaboration, expressionism, and experimental electronics. Through a genre-bending compositional ear and a poetic lyricism, Eden aspires to create art that not only resonates with individual hearts, but brings people closer together in a spirit of intimacy and empathy.

Growing up in West Tennessee in the ’80s and ’90s, Michael began recording albums of his own music at the age of 13 on a clunky desktop computer. After a high school career spent fostering a love of math and music theory, Michael went to Princeton University, where he studied composition and computer science and played in jazz bands. At Princeton, Michael focused on creating music software and was a founding member of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (the first in the world).
 

Michael currently works as a house engineer at Figure 8 Recording, a beautiful and versatile studio complex in Brooklyn, and he also works closely with New Amsterdam Records, having contributed production, sound design, and mixing for many albums released on the GRAMMY-winning label. In live situations, Michael has run electronics for artists including So Percussion, yMusic, Shara Nova, the Kitchener‐Waterloo Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, Residentie Orkest, and Signal Ensemble in venues including The Kitchen, Le Poisson Rouge, Zankel Hall, and the Kaufman Center.

Michael’s own music is released under the name No Lands. The debut No Lands album (released on New Amsterdam Records) was called “one of the most thrilling headphone experiences of this year” [Tome to the Weather Machine] and named the best electronic album of the year by the Brooklyn Rail.