The innovative and highly energetic music of Rob Smith is frequently performed throughout the United States and abroad. He is an Associate Professor of Music Composition and director of the AURA Contemporary Ensemble at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music.  Boosey & Hawkes, Carl Fischer, Southern Music, C-Alan Publications, and Skitter Music Publications publish his music.

Dan Welcher is a composer of symphonic, wind ensemble, choral, operatic, and chamber music works.  A Guggenheim fellow, he has been awarded prizes and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, ASCAP, and msny other organizations.  He has composed over 150 works, more than 60 of which are published and recorded.  Most of his music is published by Theodore Presser Company (www.presser.com)
A complete list of works can be found at www.danwelcher.com

TIMOTHY ROY (b. 1987, Nederland, Texas) composes music steeped in imagery and allusion, which seeks to elicit a sense of time, place, and feeling. With an output that encompasses works for acoustic instruments, electronic sound, and the intersection of these two realms, Roy endeavors to explore a broad range of mediums and contexts in which his work might be experienced.
 
Engagement with other disciplines of study is the lifeblood of Roy's creative practice. Recent projects have involved cooperation with practitioners in fields as varied as medieval and religious studies, ecology, dance, and film. His current slate of projects includes an ambisonic fixed media work, commissioned by ASCAP/SEAMUS and an orchestral work for the Shepherd Symphony Orchestra at Rice University.  
 
Roy’s music has been heard in concerts across the United States and twenty countries abroad, with performances by Ensemble Signal, Illinois Modern Ensemble, the Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra, the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus, Loop38, violinist Sayako Kusaka, and pianists Keith Kirchoff, Adam Marks, Stacey Barelos, and Xenia Pestova. His music has been presented at such venues and events as the National Theater of Taipei, Music Biennale Zagreb, ZKM Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica, Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre (BEAST), Sonosfera Theatre (Pesaro, Italy), the DiMenna Center (NYC), San Francisco Tape Music Festival, Seoul International Computer Music Festival, Florida State University Festival of New Music, Bowling Green New Music Festival, June in Buffalo, Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium, Sonorities Festival Belfast, International Computer Music Festival (ICMC), Center of Cypriot Composers, Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) National Conference, Electronic Music Midwest, and the International Electroacoustic Music Festival of Chile, “Ai-maako.”
 
In 2024, Roy received an Honorable Mention in the McKnight Composer Fellowship awards from American Composers Forum. He has also received awards and recognition from the Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award (First Prize, 2022), ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Award (First Prize, 2023; Finalist, 2018), Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers (First Prize in Professional Division, 2023), Giga-Hertz Production Prize (Honorable Mention, 2022), Prix CIME from the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music (Distinction, 2023), Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest (Second Prize, 2023), New Music on the Bayou (2021 Black Bayou Composition Award), Sigma Alpha Iota Inter-American Music Awards (Winner, 2015), the International Competition of Electroacoustic Composition “Prix Destellos” (First Prize, 2013; Honorary Mention, 2019), Musicacoustica-Beijing Composition Competition (First Prize, student mixed media category, 2012), the First International Jean Sibelius Composition Competition (Finalist, 2015), the International Composition Competition “Città di Udine” (Finalist, 2012), and the I-Park Foundation (Resident Artist, 2018).
 
His work "Behind the Back" for pipa and electronics appears on Crossings: Contemporary Music for Chinese Instruments, The Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra’s debut album with Albany Records. His "Salve Regina" for chorus is published by Edition Peters.

He frequently collaborates with musicians to present works for instruments and electronics. In July 2021, he worked closely with Steven Takasugi to produce two portrait concerts of his works for amplified instruments and electronics during the Twin Cities New Music Festival. Other notable collaborations include performance of electronics for Kate Soper's Voices from the Killing Jar and for the North American premiere of Unsuk Chin's "Double Bind?" for violin and 8-channel audio, using proprietary motion-tracking sensors and software from Ircam.

He was a visiting faculty member at Western Michigan University during the 2018–2019 academic year, where he taught private composition lessons, undergraduate theory, and graduate seminars in musical form and the aesthetics of electroacoustic music. He previously taught at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas.
 
Roy and his wife currently reside in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he is choirmaster and organist at the Church of Saint Peter Roman Catholic Community. He is completing a doctorate at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music; there, he taught electronic music, theory, and composition, and served for three years as the Teaching Fellow for the Rice Electroacoustic Music Labs (REMLABS). His teachers have been Kurt Stallmann, Pierre Jalbert, Karim Al-Zand, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Paul Rudy, Kevin Hanlon, Simon Sargon, and Martin Sweidel.

Conor is the bassoon instructor at Auburn University where he teaches applied bassoon lessons as well as written and aural theory.  
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Dr. Bell also performs as part of the Elicio Winds, a woodwind trio formed with the flute and oboe faculty at Auburn, as well as the Aether Reed Quintet, formed with friends made while pursuing doctoral studies at Indiana University.  Conor has been the principal bassoonist of the Owensboro Symphony in Kentucky since 2016.

Conor holds degrees in bassoon performance from Indiana University (Master's and Doctorate) as well as West Texas A&M University (Bachelor's).  His recently completed dissertation analyzes the bassoon works of David Maslanka.

Shane Monds is a composer who works in many mediums and frequently collaborates with film-makers, artists, performers and scientists. Each project is a new place for sonic exploration. He has composed music for traditional mediums such as choir and orchestra, film, micro-tonal piano, art installations, Cajun fiddle, traditional Chinese instruments and much more. His music has been heard at a variety of venues ranging from St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican to the documentary film channel to the City Hall in Nafplio, Greece.

Mr. Monds is completing a DMA Rice University. He serves as Young Artist Composer-in-Residence for Da Camera:Houston for the 2015-2017 season. In May of 2016 he was appointed as piano technician at the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston. He has studied composition under Kurt Stallmann, Anthony Brandt, Karim Al-Zand, Michael Schelle, Dinos Constantinides and Keith Gates. He studies sitar under Srinivas Koumonduri. When not involved in music he can most likely be found cooking in the kitchen or studying the ancient game of go.

Marcus Karl Maroney studied composition and horn at The University of Texas at Austin and Yale School of Music. His principle composition teachers were Joseph Schwantner, Ned Rorem and Joan Tower. In 1999, he received a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center, the First Hearing award from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and an ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer’s award. Other awards and fellowships followed, including: a Charles Ives Scholarship from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a residency at the Copland House and consecutive Woods Chandler Memorial awards from Yale University.

Commissions have come from such organizations and individuals as eighth blackbird , the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Timothy McAllister, the Moores School Percussion Ensemble, the Texas Music Festival, the Deer Valley Music Festival and the Juventas! New Music Ensemble. Three Pieces for Sting Orchestra was recently premiered by the Utah Symphony, and he was recently named the winner of the inaugural College Orchestra Directors Association Composition Contest. 

Mr. Maroney served on the faculty of the Yale School of Music from 2002-2004. He is currently Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music and on the Artistic Board of Musiqa, a composer-led contemporary music group based in Houston.

The music of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand (b.1970) has been called “strong and startlingly lovely” (Boston Globe). In a wide-ranging catalogue of solo, chamber, vocal and orchestral compositions, his music embraces a variety of interests, issues and influences. It explores connections between music and other media, and draws inspiration from graphic art, myths and fables, folk music of the world, film, spoken word, jazz, and his own Middle Eastern heritage. From scores for dance, to compositions for young people, to multi-disciplinary and collaborative works, Al-Zand’s music is diverse in both its subject matter and its audience. His compositions have enjoyed success in the US, Canada and abroad, and he is the recipient of several national awards, including the “Arts and Letters Award in Music” from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Al-Zand is a founding and artistic board member of Musiqa, Houston’s premier contemporary music group, which presents concerts featuring new and classic repertoire of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In his scholarly work, he has pursued several diverse areas of music theory, including topics in jazz, counterpoint, and improvisation (both jazz and 18th century extemporization). Al-Zand was born in Tunis, Tunisia, raised in Ottawa, Canada and educated in Montreal (McGill University, BMus 1993) and Cambridge (Harvard University, PhD 2000). Since 2000 he has taught composition and music theory in Houston at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University.

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