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.
Christopher arrives at Art Song from the theatre world. As a producer and stage manager, he has worked on over forty 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 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 has studied composition for over three years with Edward Top at the Vancouver Academy of Music. His style involves non-triadic harmonies, layered rhythms, and adventurous instrumentation. 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.
Max Maclean (he/him) is a musician and poet living in Vancouver. Currently studying poetry at UBC, his work is highly introspective, 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 specializes in contemporary vocal music and channels her musical passions through directing choirs, composing for solo voice and choir, and creating works for voice and electronics. Her choral music has received accolades, including the 2024 Mixed Voices Award from the International Federation of Choral Music, and has been performed by ensembles such as the Handel Choir of Baltimore and New York City’s C4.
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 is a composer whose work explores alchemy, dreams, divine love, and occult symbolism. Centering on art song and shaped by the rhythm of language, his music seeks moments of stillness and revelation, merging Romantic expressiveness with minimalism and atonality. His compositions span choral works, solo guitar, art song, string quartet, and pieces for Turkish oud and various ensembles. Highlights include Pastoral for String Quartet No. II: Mt. Tom (premiered by the Julius Quartet, 2022) and a published guitar–voice arrangement of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Edizioni Berben, 1996). Germain studied at Berklee College of Music and is mentored by composer Rodney Sharman. 2024 Fellow in the Alba Composition Program.
Marlo Browne is a Barbadian award-winning poet, spoken word artist, host, film-maker and author of 5 poetry books who currently lives in Langley, BC.
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 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 (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.
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, mezzo-soprano, is a performer-composer studying voice performance at the Glenn Gould School. Her works have been premiered by Pax Christi Chorale, Concreamus, Continuum Contemporary Music, and student ensembles at GGS and the Taylor Academy. She is currently studying with Juhi Bansal as member of the NATS Composer Mentorship 2025/26 cohort, and is looking forward to a premiere with the Cincinnati Song Initiative. She was an artist in residence in the Westben PCR 2025 session and is currently a participant in the 2025/26 HappLab new music creation program. She is also the founder and director of the GGS Contemporary Music Collective.
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.
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 short films Letters Home and 256,000 Miles from Home and for the feature Ex Libris (in progress); graduating from Eastman’s Beal Institute in 2023. Her work reflects her fascination with the human condition and the influences encountered in her eclectic performing career: Stravinsky and Strayhorn, Mahler and Machaut and (Joni) Mitchell. Like all inhabitants of our contemporary world, she strives to weave a fabric from disparate threads.
Tamara Gorin 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 is composer hailing from Rochester, NY who weaves emotional intelligence into music. As a secondary psychology student who has had their fair share of unique psychological experiences from brain surgery to other psychological conditions, they use their experience to console and empower people through music. After working as a Direct Support Professional, helping their own community meet their basic needs, they returned to school and are going into their final year at SUNY Fredonia, eagerly absorbing everything they can. As a classically trained vocalist themself, they have thorough experience working with voice and piano.
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 as a modern-day settler, 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. They also perform as Stella Palermo on the local story and poetry slam stages. Holly grew up moving between the US and South America; she immigrated to Canada in 2008.
Filipino-Canadian composer and pianist Francis Reyes is currently based in Vancouver, studying at the University of British Columbia under Dorothy Chang and Edward Top. Drawing from jazz, classical, and video game music, his work explores themes of the human condition inspired by classic and contemporary literature. He has composed for orchestra, art song, jazz combo, and classical ensembles. Francis served as Composer-in-Residence for the Canadian Anti-Racism Youth Coalition and has performed at venues including Frankie’s Jazz Club, Apollo’s, and Guilt & Co.
Mado Christie is a pianist and writer living in St. John's, Newfoundland. Originally from Toronto, Mado completed their Bachelor's in Piano Performance at the University of Toronto and their Masters in Vocal Accompanying at the Manhattan School of Music. They currently co-teach the Opera Workshop at Memorial University’s School of Music, on top of collaborating with students, colleagues, and other arts organizations around St. John’s and beyond. Their writing appears in Riddle Fence and Acta Victoriana, and they were a founding editor of Augur Magazine.