Jason Thorpe Buchanan is a tri-continentally active composer, intermedia artist, and technologist. His works explore multiplicity, causality, behavior, and the integration of live performance with technology. In 2025, he was appointed Professor für Komposition mit digitalen Medien at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg, Germany, and leads the graduate program in Komposition mit neuen Medien as director of the Studio für experimentelle elektronische Musik. He has been recognized internationally through fellowships and commissions from the Fulbright Foundation (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, 2010-11) as a visiting scholar, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, EMPAC, Royaumont (France, 2016 & 2017), TIME SPANS (NYC), the Mizzou International Composers Festival (MICF, 2013), the International Horn Society, Eklekto Percussion (Switzerland), Tetractys New Music (Austin), Tzlil Meudcan, the Earle Brown Music Foundation, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards (2014 & 2015), Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, as winner of Iron Composer (2014), the Howard Hanson Orchestral Prize (2014) and more, including selection as Artist-in-Residence at USF Verftet (Norway), the Embassy of Foreign Artists (Geneva), the Brush Creek Foundation (Wyoming), nomination for the 2015 Gaudeamus Prize, as a 2024 Aaron Copland Bogliasco Fellow (Italy), and as an SWR Experimentalstudio Fellow (Germany, 2026). His works have been described as “an unearthly collage of sounds”, “sharply-edged”, and “free jazz gone wrong—in a good way.”
     Commissions and performances have included collaborations with Alarm Will Sound, the Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Interface (DE), Ensemble Nikel (Israel), Linea (FR), Insomnio (NL), EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble (UK), Slagwerk Den Haag (NL), Eklekto Percussion (CH), the Mivos Quartet (USA), Iktus Percussion, wild Up, the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble, TACETi (Thailand), the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, and Line Upon Line. Scenes from his multimedia opera Hunger have received performances at the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, The Industry’s FIRST TAKE in L.A., and MATA (NYC) with the [Switch~ Ensemble]. “Hunger is a kind of training session in mental disintegration… An ungodly opera needs ugly music, singers who produce primal sounds, an electric guitar that sounds scraped raw, a wailing orchestra effects, cuts the ear like a knife. Buchanan delivers.” – L.A. Times
     He serves as Artistic Director of the [Switch~ Ensemble] since 2012, Artistic Associate and Lecturer in New Media and Digital Technologies for Music at the Hochschule für Musik ‘Carl Maria von Weber’ Dresden, Germany within the Hybrid Music Lab (DE) since 2022, and Faculty Artist of the IntAct Festival’s International Composition Institute of Thailand since 2019. Prof. Thorpe Buchanan has formerly served as 2022 Managing Director of the New Music Initiative at the University of Missouri (USA), 2020 Visiting Lecturer in Composition and Interim Director of the UT Austin Electronic Music Studios at the Butler School of Music, University of Texas at Austin, 2018-2022 Department Chair/Lecturer in Composition, Theory, and Electroacoustic Music at Mahidol University (Thailand), 2015-17 Executive Director of the VIPA Festival (Valencia, Spain), and Curator for the San Francisco Center for New Music. His mentors have included Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Steven Takasugi, Pierluigi Billone, Chaya Czernowin, and Georges Aperghis.
     He holds a Ph.D. in Composition from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, and is widely sought as a collaborator and guest composer by institutions such as the University of Chicago, Stanford University, TRANSIT Festival (Belgium), TIME SPANS Festival (NYC), the MATA Festival (NYC), the Grieg Academy at the University of Bergen (Norway), Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (Singapore), the SinusTon Festival (Germany), the Bergen Center for Elektronisk Kunst, UC Santa Barbara, and dozens of Universities throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Current projects include a cello concerto for the TACETi Ensemble and Mariel Roberts, and the development of new technologies for an upcoming collaboration with Nadar Ensemble using generative audiovisual processing systems, wearable technology, and machine learning/listening for real-time analysis and reactivity.

A recipient of the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer/vocalist/sound artist who is currently a Professor at UC Berkeley, where he holds the Jerry and Evelyn Hemmings Chambers Distinguished Professor Chair in Music. Ensembles and performers who have played Ken’s music include Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky, Mayumi Miyata, Teodoro Anzellotti, Aki Takahashi, Wendy Richman, Greg Oakes, BMOP, Alarm Will Sound, Steve Schick and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Nieuw Ensemble, and Frances-Marie Uitti. His music has been performed at such venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MusikTriennale Köln Festival, the Muziekgebouw, Ars Musica, Warsaw Autumn, Other Minds, the Hopkins Center, Spoleto USA, Steim, and at the Norfolk Music Festival. Ken’s piece for the Hilliard Ensemble, Shiroi Ishi, was featured in their repertoire for over ten years, with performances at such venues as Queen Elizabeth Hall in England, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and was aired on Italian national radio, RAI 3. Another work, Pharmakon, was performed dozens of times nationally by Eighth Blackbird during their 2001-2003 seasons. A portrait concert of Ken’s was featured on MaerzMusik in Berlin in 2011. In 2012, he was a featured artist on Other Minds 17. In 2014, Frances-Mairie Uitti and the Boston Modern Orchestra premiered his concerto for two-bow cello and orchestra, and Guerilla Opera premiered a run of his chamber opera, Gallo, to critical acclaim. He has performed as soloist in his vocal concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in New York and Boston, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Lithuanian National Symphony, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, and with orchestras in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and California. Ken holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. A monograph CD of three orchestral concertos was released on the Bmop/sound label. His bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music.

Happy Hardcore Surrealist 
@massivescrolls

Grace Gollmar’s expressive works have been performed by several chamber ensembles as well as sacred and secular choirs. Previously premiered by ensembles such as Quintet Sirocco, Present~Continuous New Music Ensemble, and the Auld Saxophone Quartet, Grace’s chamber pieces reflect her background as a vocalist with their infectious melodic lines and articulate turns of musical phrase. As a vocalist and pianist, Grace also regularly collaborates with other living composers and is passionate about premiering new works for voice.

Grace is currently a master’s student at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studies composition with Yevgeniy Sharlat and organizes events with CLUTCH New Music. When Grace is not composing, she enjoys photography, baking, and learning new languages.

25 musicians from 13 countries are constantly exploring new horizons of artistic creativity together with the most eminent composers of our time. 

Open-minded, virtuosic in performance and aurally perceptive, Klangforum Wien – one of the internationally most renowned ensembles for contemporary music – devotes itself to the artistic interpretation and expansion of experiential space.

A performance of Klangforum Wien is an event in the best sense of the word; it offers a sensual experience, immediate and inescapable; the novelty in its music speaks, acts and beguiles.

Ever since it was founded by Beat Furrer in 1985, the ensemble – which, over the years, has received a great number of awards and distinctions – has written music history:
It has presented around 600 world premieres, it boasts an extensive discography of more than 90 releases, appearing at the most prestigious concert halls, opera venues and at major music festivals.

Klangforum Wien has its own annual concert series at the Wiener Konzerthaus. Since 2009, the musicians have been sharing their comprehensive mastery of playing techniques and forms of expression with a new generation of artists in the context of their collective professorship at the University of Music, Graz.

The repertoire choice and the ensemble’s intense understanding of the compositions contribute to diversity, and are matched by the most excellent and joyful execution of the music.

Simply put, the music is slow and requires patience. Not much more explanation is needed. Published scores available from Edition Peters/Wise Music.

send me a message or email me

slithernineteen@gmail.com

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