Michael Laurello’s compositional work, praised for its “intricate structure” and “hints of thrashing and angularity” (The Wall Street Journal), reflects a fascination with time, energy, and emotion. It has been presented at venues and festivals such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, MATA, PASIC, Carlsbad Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire, North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA), National Conference of the Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI) by artists including icarus Quartet, Bluecoats, United States Marine Band, The U.S. Army Band, Nashville Symphony, Sō Percussion, HOCKET, Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, Yale Percussion Group, and Ensemble Repercussion featuring the Duisburger Philharmoniker and Deutschen Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz. 

Laurello studied composition at Yale School of Music and Tufts University, and music synthesis (electronic production and design) at Berklee College of Music. His mentors include David Lang, Christopher Theofanidis, Martin Bresnick, and John McDonald. Honors include a residency at Avaloch Farm Music Institute, a commission from the American Composers Forum, a Nashville Symphony Composer Lab Fellowship, selection for the EarShot Berkeley Symphony Readings, and a Baumgardner Fellowship and Commission from the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. He has attended the highSCORE and Etchings composition festivals, and was a fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival.

His recording, mixing, and multimedia work is focused on contemporary classical music and can be heard on labels such as Furious Artisans, Ravello, Albany, Equilibrium, New Focus, and MSR Classics. He currently serves as Manager of Recording Services and Technical Engineer for the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at Bowling Green State University.

Ólafur Arnalds is a BAFTA-winning multi-instrumentalist and producer from Mosfellsbær, Iceland. Ólafur Arnalds mixes strings and piano with loops and beats crossing over from ambient/electronic to pop.

	My favored compositional medium is virtuosic chamber music, although I've also composed solo, orchestral, choral, wind ensemble and vocal works. My music is often characterized as having a very wide range of expression and includes experimental pieces like  8 ------>∞  for eight cellos (eight tends toward infinity), and unusually slow, stark music like the grief that does not speak.  Other works from the1990s found common ground between disparate musical cultures. Recent works avoid references and in the last few years, some freedom for the players has been incorporated in an effort to create complex webs and networks of sound that are fashioned from fragments of individual "utterance"; in DAGGER/the night has been unruly  rhythmic freedom was guided by the use of speech rhythm from players' interpretation of text as a way of shaping longer lines and gestures. Strange Parade has layered musical spaces and passages in which the listener can dwell in texture, meander amongst voices which branch and wander, focus on elemental shapes, or be carried along by eddies and currents. In Still Telling (2010),microtonal "tinted" colors add further subtlety; almost all the sections of the piece are fashioned out of "DNA" from a striking melody from the middle of the piece, not audible on the surface of the sound, but deeply felt.

	Great players that have performed my work include the Pro Arte Qt., Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Escher Qt., Eastman and New England Conservatory Wind Ensembles, Firebird Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, Lions Gate Trio, Speculum Musicae,  New Millenium Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Phantom Arts Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, New Century Players, League of Composers-ISCM,  Earplay, Musica D'Oggi, Composers, Inc., Parnassus, Washington Sq. Contemporary Music, Prism Players, Music on the Edge, Volti, Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, Cabrini Quartet, pipa virtuoso Wu Man, avant garde violinist Carla Kihlstedt, pianist Donald Berman.


A pop project collaboration. Songs written, produced and performed by Christiana Athena Usenza and Friends.
Music video for "I Wonder"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2g4VmHs2mA

Follow Christiana Athena on facebook: facebook.com/christiana.athena.music


This is where I put classical compositions and found sound things.

Other projects:
transducersmusic.bandcamp.com/
eighths.bandcamp.com/
@subletter
jordanthomasgray.com/portfolio.html

:: Vocalist. Songwriter. Innovator. Empathizer. 

k8marcosmusic@gmail.com

Clock Strikes is following