Tenor, Taka Lee

Taka has a Bachelor's of Music in Opera Performance from the University of British Columbia and a Master's of Music in Voice Performance from The University of Western Ontario.

As a fourth generation Japanese Chinese Canadian, Taka descends from a family who experienced the Chinese head tax and the unconstitutional Internment of Japanese Canadians in WWII. Growing up in BC’s Lower Mainland he witnessed the challenges immigrant families faced regarding accessibility to services and preservation of their culture. This has led to work in the performing arts and advocacy.

Past performances include: the Arts Club Theatre’s and Theatre Calgary’s joint production of Forgiveness by Mark Sakamoto adapted by Hiro Kanagawa, the Alberta tour of Hold These Truths by Jeanne Sakata, Carousel Theatre's for Young People's, Vancouver Opera, Vancouver Asian Actor Theatre.

Taka teaches for the City of Burnaby, adjudicates throughout BC.

When not performing Taka volunteers as Vice President of Powell Street Festival and is active with local municipalities to bring light to Nikkei history.

Kristen Baum

Kristen Baum is an American composer writing works for solo piano, art song, and film. She holds a M.M. in Theory and Composition from Youngstown State University. Her undergraduate degree had a piano performance concentration. Her current project is composing a parallax of Schumann/Chamisso’s Frauenliebe und Leben using erasure poetry techniques. Baum’s art songs frequently center fairy tale retellings. She frequently collaborates with living poets, including Sarah J. Sloat, Sally Rosen Kindred, and Mary McMyne. Her concert works have premiered in Hollywood, Nashville, Michigan, Minneapolis, New York, Baltimore, and Berlin. She splits time between Nashville and Manhattan.

https://kbdebeasi.com/art-song/

Christopher Douglas

Christopher arrives at Art Song from the world of theatre. As producer or stage manager of other people's words, he worked on 40+ productions in a variety of venues including parks, a bed-and-breakfast, a former coffin factory, and on a literal island. As a writer, his short works and adaptations have been performed in academic and festival settings. A Torontonian by birth and a graduate of York University, he currently lives in Winnipeg.

John MacLachlan

John MacLachlan has studied composition for over four years with Edward Top at the Vancouver Academy of Music. Recently, John’s music has been performed in the Sonic Boom Festival of New Composition and by the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra. In 2023, John won the Intermediate category of the Vancouver Academy of Music Young Composers’ Competition, and his orchestral work was performed at Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre. John currently studies music composition at the University of British Columbia.

In addition to composing, John plays musical instruments and participates in Scouts. Since 2018, John has been honing his abilities on the trumpet, cello, and piano, with numerous performances, including solo and orchestral. As a recipient of a National Gold Medal from the Royal Conservatory of Music for trumpet performance, John played at Mazzoleni Hall in Toronto. A Rover and Colony Scouter with Scouts Canada, John helps to organize activities and camps for dozens of youth.

sites.google.com/view/johncomposer

Max Maclean

Max Maclean (he/him) is a musician and poet living in Vancouver, BC. Currently studying poetry at UBC, his work was recently published for the first time in CV2. Exploring themes of disability, hope, and the many distances of life, he’s written a poem every day for over 6 years running, working tirelessly to better understand himself and the world.

Marie Herrington

Marie Herrington is a Baltimore/D.C. based soprano, composer, and keyboardist who works to culminate all of the hidden beauties of the classical world with the ever-growing world of post-classical/new music. Marie’s most recent performance endeavors include performing works by living composers part of New Orleans’ Alluvium Ensemble’s Voice to Water festival and showcase which featured performers J.T. Hassell, Marie Herrington, Sixto Franco, Timothy Krippner, and Loadbang’s Will Lang. Marie also made her debut at the American Alliance for New Music Theatre in Washington D.C. with singer and pianist Alan Naylor, and Erin Lee performing Songs We Need Now. You can follow Marie’s works on her website, MarieHerringtonMusic.com or follow her on instagram @jsbachdafachup. 

marieherringtonmusic.com

Kevin McNeilly

Kevin McNeilly is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and the UBC site co-ordinator for the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. A book of poems, Embouchure, is published by Nightwood Editions (2011). Two audio chapbooks have appeared: Ammons: A Sheaf of Words for Piano (2015) and Pining, for broken solo voice (2020). He has published poetry in Canadian Literature, Ariel, Descant, Event, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. Audio, video and more can be found at kevinmcneilly.ca and kevinmcneilly.com, or on his Bandcamp page, kevinmcneilly.bandcamp.com.

Kevin Germain

Kevin Germain lives with his family in New England where he owns an occult bookstore and composes chamber music. Past works include a guitar and vocal arrangement of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder published by Edizioni Berben and a collaboration as an oud performer on Peter Blanchette’s Fantasy for Oud and Guitar Orchestra. His compositions have been performed by the Julius Quartet, Soli Chamber Ensemble, Carlos Marin Trigo, Anna Heller, Bowers Fader Duo, and others. Kevin currently studies with Rodney Sharman, is working on a song cycle based on alchemical texts, and leads the ensemble Corps Exquisite in Terry Riley's In C. 

otherguitar.weebly.com/

Marlo Browne

Marlo Browne is an award-winning Barbadian multi-hyphenate artist who has published 5 poetry books and currently lives in Langley. Marlo has performed and featured at many events and has converted some of his poetry into short films. To date, he has released three short films- ‘I'm Sorry’ in 2023 and ‘Dear Single Mom’ and ‘Invisible’ in 2025. The first film ‘I'm Sorry’ was the runner up in the Short Film category of the Langley City Film festival in 2023. The second short film, ‘Dear Single Mom’ won a Bronze Award at the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts in Barbados in 2025.

His fourth and fifth poetry collections, entitled ‘The Life and Times of a Poet’ and ‘Journal of a Black Man’, both earned Gold Book Awards from Literary Titan in May and September 2025 respectively.

Claudia Beroukhim

Claudia Beroukhim is a New York City-based composer from Atlanta, GA, earning her Master’s degree in Music Composition and Theory at NYU Steinhardt. Her music aims to grapple with how intangible phenomena can be translated to music in the most genuine and evocative ways possible. Influenced by jazz, indie, classical, contemporary, Persian and Jewish music, among others, Claudia explores emotional truth through meaning, color, and narrative in her music. Her work is also influenced by her experiences as a pianist, singer, and songwriter, finding the most fulfillment in writing for the voice and music tied to extra-musical art.

Mateo Quispe

Mateo Quispe is a poet, writer, and actor from Auburn, Washington, where he serves as the 2024-2026 Auburn Poet Laureate. A librettist in the Seattle Opera Creation Lab, he partnered with composer Mina Pariseau to create Blood Dawn of the Inti Sun, a twenty minute chamber opera. He has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Collections of Transience, EchoX, The Fine Arts Work Center, The Future Perfect Project, Jack Straw, and UrbanWordNYC. He is also the recipient of the 2024 Dwone Anderson Young Youth Leadership Award for QT-BIPOC youth activists and the former Youth Poet Laureate of Seattle.

Clayton Trumbull

Clayton Trumbull (b.2002) is a queer, American composer and instrumentalist from Saratoga Springs, NY. His music is cathartic, incorporating his original poetry, indeterminacy and improvisation, illuminating the interpersonal connection that art fosters. Exploring nature, heartbreak, self-discipline, materialism, queerness, and other intimate and personal themes through music and poetry with genuine expression is ever present in his bittersweet, nostalgic sound. He is pursuing a M.M. in Composition at Pennsylvania State University with Baljinder Sekhon, Sarah Genevieve Burghart Rice, and Paul Coleman after receiving his B.M. in Music Composition from the Eastman School of Music in May 2024.

 www.claytontrumbull.com/

photo credit: Meredith Hart

Gerry Hill

Regina poet Gerry Hill, Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan in 2016, published his seventh collection, Crooked at the Far End, with Radiant Press during the pandemic. In total he has published seven books with five Canadian presses, and dozens of poems in literary magazines and anthologies. He has participated in readings, workshops, retreats and conferences across Canada and internationally. As independent musical theatre producer, Gerry adapted Charlotte’s Web for staging at TicTocTen Short Performance Festival in Regina in 2022 and, in 2023, produced Oak Floors!, book and lyrics by Gerry Hill, for a short run live in Regina and online.

Clara Moniz

Clara Moniz is a Toronto based performer, composer, and music educator studying voice performance at the Glenn Gould School. Her works have been premiered by the Cincinnati Song Initiative, NATS, Pax Christi Chorale, Concreamus, Continuum Contemporary Music, and students at GGS and the Taylor Academy. She was a participant in the Westben Performer-Composer Residency in 2025 and is a member of the HappLab mentorship program. She is also the founder and director of the GGS Contemporary Music Collective. She is looking forward to upcoming premieres with the Chroma International Music Festival and the N.E.O. Voice Festival. 
claramoniz.com 

Natasha Boskic

Natasha is a writer and multimedia artist, working across different media, combining digital and analog media. Her poetry has been published in different journals, anthologies and special collections. Her textile and fibre art, poetry weaving, has been exhibited in Canada and Internationally. Her video poetry has been awarded and screencast across the globe. She lives and works in Vancouver, where she often reads her poetry at literary events.

onlywords.ca

Karen Goldfeder

Karen Goldfeder writes music and sings. Career highlights thus far: international touring and recording with Gregg Smith Singers, New York Virtuoso Singers, Bobby McFerrin’s Vocabularies Project; choral premieres by New York Treble Singers, Eastman Chorale, and Artek; scores for the documentaries Letters Home (2010), 256,000 Miles from Home (2024), and Ex Libris (in progress); graduating from Eastman’s Beal Institute in 2023. Her work reflects disparate influences, intellectual curiosity, and a bad case of the human condition. Her focus on art song over the last two years is fueled by the belief that we desperately need to get better at listening to each others' voices.

karengoldfedermusic.com

photo credit: Eric Camping

Tamara Gorin

Tamara Gorin (she/they) is a poet, editor, and essayist. A graduate of SFU Writer’s Studio 2006/2007 poetry cohort and a member of the Federation of BC Writers, she owns Western Sky Books, an independent bookstore and art gallery in Port Coquitlam / kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, BC, with her wife. You may or may not want to ask about her favourite limerances: birds, trees, water, bears, pollinators, resisting AI, and decolonization praxis— that depends on how much time you have.

Twylen Bernegger

Twylen Bernegger(they/them) is composer, vocalist, and direct support professional from Rochester, NY. They are in the final year before earning a B.S in Psychology and B.M. in Music Composition at SUNY Fredonia. Having experienced many unique trials from brain surgery to other psychological conditions, they bring empathy and understanding to all of their work. Between their career in assisted living and education in music, they use their experience to console and empower people through music. They love writing for voice and plan to compose for friends and their own projects while earning a doctorate in Psychology

Holly Flauto

Holly Flauto (she/they) lives and writes on the traditional, ancestral and stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Selilwitulh Nations. Holly's debut poetry-memoir collection exploring immigration to Canada during an era of reconciliation, Permission to Settle (Anvil Press), was named one of the top poetry books of 2024 by CBC Books. Her fiction and creative memoir has previously been published in The Ex-Puritan, Joyland, and The Rusty Toque. Holly teaches creative and academic writing at Capilano University. 

Francis Reyes

Francis Reyes (b. 2005) is a Vancouver based Filipino-Canadian pianist and composer studying at the University of British Columbia under Dorothy Chang and Edward Top. Drawing from jazz, expressionist, and popular music, his compositional practice continues to metamorphosize with the intent of evoking different philosophical and psychological themes found in literature, visual arts, video games, and even manga. As a result, his music calls forth in juxtaposition moments of humour, beauty, and the overtly grotesque with an emphasis on timbre and harmony. His music has been performed by distinguished ensembles such as the Victoria Symphony, Standing Wave Ensemble, Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra, and Black Dog String Quartet.

IG: @frannie._pack