Each year, approximately five-hundred billion plastic cups are used, of which roughly six billion end up in landfills. ...grind... attempts to symbolize the faulty business and political ideologies that ultimate contribute to a lack of environmental sustainability through the destructive morphology of a single sound source: a plastic Keurig coffee pod hitting the floor. 

...grind... was inspired by Donkey Coffee's Fair Trade Coffee initiative and their continued commitment to Zero Waste.

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| Droki Ouro (b. 1996) is a Tennessee-based composer, researcher, and educator. Described as “patiently evocative” (George Lewis) and “unsettling, [yet] interesting” (Cycling ’74), Ouro’s music longs for the experiential allure of balance and introspection. Much of their music blends pictorial properties with organizing principles of philosophical and sociological intent. Their recent works engage disability masking and temporality as an apparatus for acoustic and electronic media.

Droki’s research interests are primarily driven by composer advocacy and DEIA. Their presentation entitled Recent Trends in Composition Calls and Competitions addresses the inequities of the call for scores, competition, and residency ecosystem through a statistical analysis of over five-hundred surveyed composition opportunities. Droki has presented Recent Trends at numerous conferences including the Northwestern University New Music Conference (NUNC!), PASIC, and New Music Gathering. They have also presented several forums on the topic at Duke University, Montana State University, and the University of Miami. They are currently developing literature with the American Composers Forum that expands on Recent Trends by distilling several short- and long-term solutions. Droki currently serves as the Director of Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity for the Millennium Composers Initiative, a non-profit dedicated to supporting developing composers through commissioning and performance opportunities. 
Droki’s music has been featured at festivals worldwide including the Aspen Music Festival, NYCEMF, and Cube Fest. Their music has been performed by Hypercube, Duo Sequenza, and ensemble vim, among others. They have held residencies with Arts Letters & Numbers and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Their music is featured on several record labels including Navona Records, Petrichor Records, and RMN Music. Droki’s music has been selected for over one-hundred calls for scores and competitions, including prizes from the Ensemble Ibis, MAP, and Robert Avalon competitions and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Current and upcoming projects include collaborations with the Brightfire Collective, JoULE, Ithaca College Orchestra, and jackrabbit, a digital opera fusing the model collapse of AI and corporate math with screamo and breakcore. 

Originally from the Washington D.C. area, Droki holds a BM in Music from Virginia Commonwealth University, an MM in Composition from Ohio University, and a DMA from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Droki currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Music Technology where they teach courses in computer music programming, sound design, synthesis, instrument modeling, studio recording, digital art, and composition. Droki has studied composition with Lansing McLoskey, Dorothy Hindman, Juraj Kojs, Tania Leon, George Lewis, Robert McClure, and Maria Schneider.

Wesley Thompson is a composer, writer, and multi-instrumentalist from the coastal town of Fairhope, Alabama. Drawing from eclectic influences such as 20th century classical music, heavy metal, and video game soundtracks, Thompson explores the blurring of boundaries between the categorical tools called “genres.” A love of improvisation, born from his piano studies, is also integral to his compositional style.

As a pianist, Thompson filters everything through his unique manner of improvising that melds diverse pieces of music together into extended sets or suites, as exemplified in his album "Improvisations and Arrangements."

Thompson's compositions have been performed by artists as diverse as the Beo String Quartet, Transient Canvas, and Aaron Petit. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in composition at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music.

I'm an electroacoustic composer who specializes in micromontage and granular synthesis. My complete works are available on Bandcamp:
mcgender.bandcamp.com.

Andrew McManus’ (b. 1985) orchestral work Strobe, premiered in 2014 by the New York Philharmonic, was called “riveting” and “breathless…surging…hazy…sometimes all at once” by the New York Times. His 2021 work "Quiet Down" for 4 players and electronics draws on a recording of LGBTQ activist Silvia Rivera's iconic 1973 speech. "Whatchya Got (Sweet Water prints)" (2021) for the Chicago Composers Orchestra, works with the “freedom, sentience, joy and mourning” assembled in a “lockdown print” by artist Michelle Nordmeyer. "Embers, fused to ash" (2015), for Alarm Will Sound, amalgamates Richard Wagner’s “Magic Fire Music” from Die Walküre with other fire-based imagery. In 2014 he began "Neurosonics", a multi-work collaboration with University of Chicago neuroscientist, which creates electronic soundscapes using data from experiments used in the study of epilepsy. The project was supported by residency awards at the Aaron Copland House (2018) and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (2018). New Music USA funded the project’s second work, "pathways, bursting [neurosonics 2]" for string quartet and electronics, which places the Spektral Quartet amidst a sea of alternately violent and tender spatialized sounds. Pathways was the winner of the 2020 Charlotte New Music & Beo String Quartet Competition. Other organizations that have featured his work include Latitude 49, NYCEMF, eighth blackbird, Fort Worth Opera, Aspen Music Festival, SPLICE Institute, New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the Minnesota Orchestra. In 2020 he was Limited Term Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Georgia. He is based in Chicago.

Composer based in South Korea

cysh3426@gmail.com
https://chaeyunsim.com

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drɔ-ˈki ˈow-ɾʊ