Kevin Kay (b. 1995) is a composer interested in the physicality of sound. He is furthermore interested in expressing the physical nature of our reality abstractly through music. Working in just intonation, his music is concerned with the sensation and perception of sound as a physical phenomenon through framework based on the physical, mathematical, and psychoacoustic properties of sound. Through an obsession with patterns and numbers in music, such mathematically oriented harmonic spaces often become entangled with temporal processes.

Kevin’s music has been performed by ensembles and musicians such as the Copland House Ensemble, Ensemble Linea, Spektral Quartet, Imani Winds, soloists from Ensemble intercontemporain, The Van Swietens, Divertimento Ensemble, zone expérimentale basel, Density512, PinkNoise Ensemble, Ghost Ensemble, and MotoContrario Ensemble, among others. As a clarinetist, he performs with red panel.

Festivals and academies that have performed his music include: the Copland House CULTIVATE emerging composers institute (2024), impuls Academy (2023), CIEL Academy (2023), the Cortona Sessions for New Music (2020 Cortona Prize winner, 2022, 2023), the International Workshop for Young Composers (2020), IRCAM’s ManiFeste Academy (2018-19), Les Ecoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau (2018), New Music on the Point (2017), the Yarn/Wire Institute (2017), and the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival (2017). Kevin has been in residence at Arts Letters and Numbers (2023) and the Hambidge Center for the Arts (2022).

Kevin resides in Berlin where he stayed following support from the DAAD-Stiftung (Respekt & Wertschätzung Scholarship) to pursue composition and artistic research at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Marc Sabat. He holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Stony Brook University, an M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago, and a B.S. in physics and music from the College of William and Mary. He has studied with Margaret Schedel, Sam Pluta, and Sophia Serghi, among others.

Kolten Heeren is an American composer whose work centers around diverse soundscapes and organic storytelling. His music blends modal polyphony with aleatoric soundmass, always with an emerging undercurrent of vocal lyricism evoking echoes of memory, nostalgia, and wistful dreaming.

For more information and a full bio, please visit my website at www.koltenheerenmusic.com

Henryk (Harry) Golden (1999, Warsaw) is a composer of German and American descent, who in his work focuses on juxtaposing and harmonizing different elements of musical and non-musical nature and then to play with, and humorize, these relationships that are created. He currently studies a Master’s degree in composition with Richard Ayres and Maya Verlaak at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. He completed his Bachelor studies at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague under the tutelage of Diderik Wagenaar and Peter Adriaansz. He previously studied at the Royal Birmingham Conservatory with Andrew Hamilton, Ed Bennett and Howard Skempton. At a younger age he also studied tuba and jazz with Jon Sass in Vienna, Austria. He participated in masterclasses conducted by Christopher Trapani, Syndey Corbett, Johannes Maria Staud, Anna Korsun, Yann Robin, Jennifer Walshe, Francesco Filidei among others. Last summer he was awarded a bursary to complete the collaborative composition course at the Dartington Summer School with Christopher Fox, Juliet Fraser, Larry Goves and House of Bedlam. 2020 he was selected to partake in the Roma New Music workshop with the mdi ensemble. 2019 he participated in the young composers meeting in Apeldoorn, Netherlands and in the ISA composition workshop in Mürzzuschlag, Austria. 2016 he was selected to partake in the Arnold Schönberg Center composition workshop in Vienna, Austria. His works are internationally performed with recent performances in the Wigmore Hall, London, UK by Naomi Sullivan and Luke Newby; Amare, Den Haag by the Residentie Orkest and Nicholas Collon and in the Philharmonie de Paris, France by Ensemble Multilatérale and Léo Warynski.

Canadian composer Marc Sabat (*1965) is based in Berlin since 1999. He has made pieces for concert and installation settings, drawing inspiration from investigations of the sounding and perception of Just Intonation and of various music traditions — folk, experimental and classical. His pieces are presented and broadcast internationally at festivals of new music including the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Klangspuren Schwaz, MaerzMusik, Huddersfield, Darmstadt, Musica Viva and Carnegie Hall. Scores and artist editions are available from Plainsound Music Edition. Recent recordings include the LP “Les Duresses”, released by care of editions (Berlin) as well as discs on the labels Populist Records (Los Angeles) and World Edition (Köln).

Sabat studied composition, violin and mathematics at the University of Toronto, at the Juilliard School in New York, and at McGill University, as well as working privately with Malcolm Goldstein, James Tenney and Walter Zimmermann. Together with Wolfgang von Schweinitz he has developed the Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation and is a pioneer of music written and performed in extended Just Intonation. He teaches at the Universität der Künste Berlin, and as a guest at the California Institute of the Arts, the Escola Superior in Barcelona, the Janacek Academy in Brno and the Paris Conservatoire. In 2010, he was an artist-in-residence of the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, followed in 2011 by a one year residency at the German Academy in Rome, Villa Massimo.

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