Sierra Wojtczack

Sierra Wojtczack is a composer and cellist from Long Island pursuing her bachelor’s degree in music composition at SUNY Fredonia. She has studied with Jamie Leigh Sampson, Andrew Martin Smith, and Paul Coleman. She is an active member of the new music community, serving as President of Ethos New Music Society and interning at the Institute for Composer Diversity. In 2020, she was the 2nd place winner of I Care if You Listen.com’s annual essay contest for her writing on composer diversity and was also selected as a semi-finalist for the SUNY PACC Prize for a proposed outreach concert.

For more information, please visit: https://sierrawojtczack.weebly.com/

Christopher Thomas Emery

Christopher Thomas Emery is a New York based composer, tenor and educator. Writing in a tonal but chromatic idiom, Emery seeks to pose more questions than answers. As a composer of vocal music, Emery is fascinating by the capacity and flexibility of the human voice as a vehicle of expression.

For more information, please visit: ChristopherThomasEmery.com

Dubravko Pajalic

Dubravko Pajalic, born in Zagreb, Croatia, graduated in musicology at Zagreb University. Later he continued his studies in Vienna, Austria. He is a versatile musician having studied flute, guitar, conducting and composition. He conducts community and church choirs and likes to organize and conduct massive choral concerts.
His compositions are in the nutshell a “bricolage" - a creation of a work from a diverse range of things available (a current mood or a mind-set - or simply a subconscious reflex to melodic material).

Kai Leung

Kai Leung is a third-year voice and composition student at the University of Toronto. He currently studies composition with Roger Bergs, and has studied in the past with Dr. Rapoport and Larysa Kuzmenko. He is the conductor of Mississauga Summer Chorale’s concert choir “Frisson”, the baritone section leader with the Toronto Youth Choir, the Bass section lead with the Ontario Male Chorus, and the assistant music director and composer in residence at St. Clements church.

Liam Moore

Liam Moore is easily entertained. He is fascinated by the evolution of our universe and life on Earth. He generally plays string instruments well and specifically plays trombone poorly. Liam lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Ted Hamilton

Ted Hamilton is a Vancouver based musician, multidisciplinary composer and sound artist working in contemporary dance, theater, film/TV and performance art. His music and collaborative creations have been produced and performed in Canada and internationally for over two decades.

Ted is also a songwriter, a musical theatre writer and has composed music for many ensembles including string trio, string orchestra, art song (voice and piano) and 50 voice SATB choir.

Ted is a member of the Canadian Musical Theatre Writers Collective and participated as a composer in their 2017-18 workshop series, led and mentored by Daniel Maté.

Michael Trew

Michael Trew has wide performing and composing experience in a variety of musical genres, including rock, classical, jazz, and the healing arts. He began studying Composition with Cortland Hultberg at UBC, graduating with a BMus in 1972. Subsequently he obtained a Professional Teaching Certificate (1976) before returning to obtain a Master's (1980) and Doctorate (1986) in Music Composition. His teachers included Stephen Chatman, Paul Reale, and Elaine Barkin. Currently Michael teaches piano, theory, history, and composition privately, is a performer, and accompanies vocal artists in Vancouver. Original works have most recently been performed by Adrian Verdejo, Tom Shorthouse, Michael Murray, The Erato Ensemble, Turning Point Ensemble, Jeremy Berkman and Dave Thomas, Nu:BC, and The Ad Mare Wind Quintet. In the summer of 2018 Michael co-wrote an art song with poet Janet Rogers which was performed by vocalist Dorothea Hayley and pianist Rachel Iwaasa.

Jonathan Newmark

Jonathan Newmark received his composition MM from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 2015, studying with Joel Hoffman, Douglas Knehans, and Michael Fiday. His work is published by TrevCo Varner and BrassArts. A CD of his chamber works was released in 2009. A 1974 graduate of Harvard College, he earned his MD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1978. He is professor of neurology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, staff neurologist at the DC VA Medical Center, retired Colonel, US Army Medical Corps, and a recognized authority on medical response to chemical warfare and terrorism.

Cameron Catalano

The majority of Cameron’s musical output for 2017 - 18 was comprised primarily of seven 90 minute film scores which have been broadcast both domestically and internationally. He did find the time to consistently provide accompaniment on his guitar or double bass for a variety of live Vancouver Theatre Shows including Off Key (an improvised musical), Sin Peaks (a serialized improvised soap opera) and Shakespeare After Dark. In recent years he’s had a number of compositions performed by artists including NuBC, Marina Hasselberg and the Erato Ensemble. He’s a farmer in the summer and composer in the winter.
serafinosoundstudio.com
soundcloud.com/camcatalano

Wilhemina "Mina" Esary

Wilhelmina “Mina” Esary is a versatile composer of chamber, choral, and electronic music whose works have been performed by members of the Seattle Symphony, Women’s Works of Ithaca, and the American Creators Ensemble. Her compositions range in character from contemplative to whimsical, dark to ethereal, and are often inspired by emotional reactions stemming from perceptions of the physical world. She is currently pursuing her BM in Composition at the Eastman School of Music and is studying with Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. Some of her most savored moments are writing double bar lines, feeling a drizzle on gray days, and smelling old books.

Jessica Rudman

Jessica Rudman (http://www.jessicarudman.com) is an American composer whose recent works engage with contemporary social themes through realistic or fantastical frames. Her style blends melodic development and narrative structures with sensual harmony and vibrant color to create an intense emotional expression. Rudman’s music has been presented across the USA and abroad by performers including the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and Hartford Opera Theater. Jessica is a  2019 Connecticut Artist Fellow, with support from the Connecticut Office of the Arts, which also receives funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Julia Soojin Cavallaro

Julia Soojin Cavallaro, composer and mezzo-soprano, enjoys a richly varied career in art song, choral music, oratorio, and opera. She has premiered several of her own works at Tufts University in collaboration with composer and pianist John McDonald. Born and raised in the Boston area, Ms. Cavallaro grew up in an Italian/Korean American household filled with music and art. A graduate of Harvard College and Boston University, she has performed with many leading ensembles in the U.S., including the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Opera Collaborative, and most recently, New Camerata Opera in New York City.

Kelly Krebs

Kelly Krebs is a Minneapolis-based composer who loves writing for singers. After a 20-year creative hiatus, Krebs returned to composing in 2015. He was selected as a composer for the MNSong Program at the 2017 Source Song Festival and in 2018, he was part of the Composer-Librettist Studio with Nautilus Music-Theater. He is currently working on the musical “Norman!” – a wildly imaginative, tragicomic prequel to the events in the classic Hitchcock film PSYCHO.

Le Roy Wan

Le Roy Wan is a queer performer, artist and storyteller hailing from their home of East Vancouver. They want to thank all the folks who make Art Song Lab possible, including Rachel Iwassa and Rodney Sherman. Wan is currently a reporter for the queer community news program, OutLook TV. They are also a part of the performance art collective, "Leroy + The Lovebots".

Christopher Reiche Boucher

Christopher Reiche Boucher is a performer and composer in Victoria BC known for his enthusiasm for performing and composing for unusual instruments and performance situations. His compositions have been performed by the Emily Carr String Quartet, Negative Zed Ensemble, Pembroke Symphony Orchestra, ContaQt, and Quatuor Bozzini. In June 2017, he completed a solo 24 hour performance of Erik Satie’s Vexations in Prince George at the Casse-Tête Festival of Experimental Music. Reiche Boucher performs in Victoria at A Place to Listen and with the Victoria Composers Collective. When not composing he is the librarian for the Victoria Symphony.

Barbara Black

Barbara Black recently won first prize in the 2017 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition and was a fiction finalist in The Malahat Review 2017 Open Season Awards. Other publications include Freefall, The New Quarterly, and Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal. A recipient of the $1000 first prize in the 2017 Don’t Talk To Me About Love Poetry Contest, her poems have also appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, FreeFall, Forage Poetry, The Dying Dahlia Review, and Poems from Planet Earth. She lives in Victoria, BC, where she’s currently busy riding the twisties on her new motorcycle.

Janet Rogers

I am a Mohawk poet from Six Nations living on Coast Salish territory (Victoria) since 1994. I have 5 published poetry titles with a 6th due out in Fall 2018. I served as Victoria Poet Laureate 2012-2015. I am a sound artist and enjoyed hosting the Native Waves Radio show on CFUVfm for 10 years and Tribal Clefs Music Column on CBC one for 8 years. I am a spoken word poet, performance poet and produce video poems and audio poems. Self-produced samples of my poetry with music can be found on my soundcloud sites.

Michael Trew

Michael Trew has wide performing and composing experience in a variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, rock and the healing arts. He began studying Composition with Cortland Hultberg at UBC, graduating with a BMus in (1972). Subsequently he obtained a Professional Teaching Certificate (1976) before returning to obtain a Master's (1980) and Doctorate (1986) in Music Composition. His teachers included Stephen Chatman, Paul Reale, and Elaine Barkin. Currently Michael teaches piano, theory, history, and composition privately, is a performer, and accompanies vocal artists in Vancouver. Original works have most recently been performed by Adrian Verdejo, Tom Shorthouse, Michael Murray, Erato Ensemble, Turning Point Ensemble, Jeremy Berkman and Dave Thomas, as well as Nu:BC.

Irina Rakhilkina

Irina Rakina is a multimedia artist and writer. She creates interdisciplinary pieces, as well as digital art and poetry. Irina has exhibited her short film ‘/(mind/body)\’ for the duration of a week in Alexander Studio of S.F.U. That project optically explored Cartesian mind | body separation. She has taken part in a group exhibition in Audain gallery. Irina wrote and performed a poem about her experiences with mind-altering states. Irina participated in the Vancouver Outsider Art Festival providing her photography with phenomenological writing. She’s an art and film reviewer for the SAD magazine. Irina intends to find the precarious balance between visual and textual forms of expression one day.

Robert Strobel

Robert Strobel (b. 1988) has composed works both electronic and acoustic. His work Prairie Dog Rhapsody received a special mention at the Alfred Schnittke Composer's Forum and Competition and as a result was published by Aldebaran Editions. His music has been broadcast twice on WPRB Princeton in Marvin Rosen’s 25-hour new music marathon, and once on Hawaii Public Radio, in the program “Singing and Other Sins.” Among the commissions he has received include an LDS Barlow Commission. Recently, his work, Refugees was selected for the SCI CD Series.