John Mackey is a composer currently based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He's also lived in New York, Austin, Los Angeles, and Ohio, but he prefers not to talk about Ohio.

As a frequent collaborator, John has worked with a diverse range of artists, from the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps to choreographer David Parsons, from the Alvin Ailey Dance Company to the US Olympic Synchronized Swim Team. (The team won a bronze medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics performing to Mackey's work for clarinet and percussion, "Damn.")

John has served as a Meet-The-Composer/American Symphony Orchestra League Composer In Residence with the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphony and with the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer In Residence at the Vail Valley Music Festival in Vail, Colorado, and in 2005, at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.  He returns to Cabrillo this summer for  performances of his trombone concerto, "Harvest," conducted by Marin Alsop, with trombonist Joseph Alessi of the New York Philharmonic.

John holds degrees from The Juilliard School and The Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with John Corigliano and Donald Erb, respectively.

To entertain himself while procrastinating on commissions, John enjoys photography and road cycling (but not at the same time). You can hear his music and see his photography (mostly of food, and the backs of conductors’ heads) on his website: www.ostimusic.com

Mehrdad Gholami studied flute in Tehran Univ. and has won different competitions in flute and chamber music in Iran. Before coming to US, as an active chamber music player, he performed with UT students as well as freelancing in Tehran and playing with local orchestras. As an orchestral performer, he recently performed with Tehran Symphony as principal flute under Alexander Rahbari as well as TCU symphony. He has received presidential award for achieving highest rank of National Concours in Arts chapter. 
Inspired by Tehran Music Group under the direction of Alireza Mashayekhi, he started to work with different composers and devoted his time to commission, premier and record new sounds for flute. These collaborations with Iranian composers resulted more than 15 new pieces for flute with different ensembles and electronic sounds. He has played in a wide range of recordings in various genres ranging from contemporary classical music to world music and pop music. Some of these pieces have received acclamation around the world such as Italy, United States, Germany and France.
Mehrdad has done his BM studies in Tehran with Dr Azin Movahed and he has received a MM from Texas Christian Univ. and currently is pursuing a DMA at Texas Christian Univ. with Dr Shauna Thompson.


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