Dionté Anderson is a proud Father and Husband.

I'm a flute player, an improviser/composer and I'm mostly making and performing my music in the jazz and experimental music realms throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe.  My most active groups are Black Earth Ensemble and Black Earth SWAY.  I also do some composing for new music (classical) settings and make soundtracks.  And I really enjoy playing with my friends including Moor Mother, Tiger Trio, Indigo Trio, Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra, David Boykin Expanse, Michael Dessen, Mark Dresser and others.

More a performance trio than a band, the HawtPlates make conceptual live vocal works through breaking down and abstracting musical forms that include blues, rock, hip hop, r&b, folk, mantra, gospel, and various vocal traditions from around the world. In hearing their work, there is a sense that the music is specific to them as a family, and that it can only be made by them. By amassing a pantry of sights, ideals, persons, and places, they produce potent tonics and “one pots” hearkening the spirit of the family heirloom recipe.  

Sounds like….
OUTKAST, Mahalia Jackson, Kirk Franklin’s Nu Nation, Dirty Projectors, Throbbing Gristle, Georgia Sea Island Singers, and Andy Bey at a family reunion in upstate New York eating at a global soul food buffet, drinking mango lassi.


“Lackey has orchestrated an emotionally moving, multimedia work called Ritual of the Body Electric.” – Nick Malewski, Kansas City Star - September 4, 2008. 

The music of William J. Lackey 
 has been performed by The New York Art Ensemble, the California E.A.R. Unit, newEar,  mezzo soprano Linda Hirst, soprano Rebecca Sherburn, clarinetist Alan Hacker, saxophonist Keith Michael Bohm, double bassist Corrado Canonici, percussionist Joby Burgess, and percussionist Chris Brannick.  Lackey collaborated with choreographers: James Jordan, Andrew Lamar, Jennifer Owen and Charles Martin, visual artist Nate Fors and theatrical directors: Art Manke, Paul Mullins, Susan Gregg and Barry Kyle.      His music has been featured at the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento, CA), the First Annual Society of Composers, National Student Conference (Austin,TX),  the Fourth Annual Society of Composers, Inc. National Student Conference (Bowling Green, OH), and California’s Festival of the Arts. Lackey received commissions from Quixotic Performance Fusion and James Jordan of the Kansas City Ballet. In 2008, he received a Curatorial Honorarium from the Urban Culture Project. 
 Lackey is the winner of the 1998 New York Art Ensemble Young 
Composers Competition. He was selected to participate in the 2009 Etchings Festival for Contemporary Music at Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France. In March 2009, Lackey was one of 24 Kansas City based artists selected to participate in the 2009 Creative Capitol Professional Development Workshop. Lackey was selected as a resident artist for Troika Ranch’s 2008 Live – I Workshop held at the 3LD Art and Technology Center in New York. He studied with Samuel Adler for two summers (2002 & 2003) at the Bowdoin International Summer Music Festival. Dartington International Summer School awarded him the Hinrichsen Foundation Bursary to participate in the 2002-Advanced Composition Seminar instructed by Errollyn Wallen in Devon, England. Mr. Lackey has also studied with Stephen Jaffe at the 2001 Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East (Bennington, VT) as a Composition Fellow. In the summer of 1997 he studied with Dinu D. Ghezzo, Robert Rowe and Justin Dello Joio at New York University and participated in the "Music for the XXI Century" Festival. 
Lackey received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Music Composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance. He studied composition with James Mobberley, Paul Rudy, Chen Yi, and Zhou Long. Mr. Lackey received his Bachelor of Music degree in Theory/Composition from Christopher Newport University where his primary composition teacher was Jennifer Margaret Barker. He has also received training at the Walden School’s Teachers Training Institute. 
Currently, he is Administrative Director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative, Admissions and Publicity Coordinator for the University of Missouri – Columbia School of Music, Vice President/ President Elect of the Board of Directors for the newEar contemporary chamber ensemble, and a member of the Board of Directors for the Odyssey Chamber Music Series (Columbia, MO) and the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance (KcEMA).	


Courtney Bryan is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (New York Times). Her music is in conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and other types of experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. Bryan has academic degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM), Rutgers University (MM), and Columbia University (DMA) with advisor George Lewis, and completed postdoctoral studies in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Bryan is currently an Assistant Professor of Music in the Newcomb Department of Music at Tulane University, the Mary Carr Patton Composer-in-Residence with the Jacksonville Symphony, a 2019-20 recipient of the Samuel Barber Rome Prize, and 2020 United States Artists Fellow. She was the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Bryan’s work has been presented in a wide range of venues, and she has two recordings, Quest for Freedom and This Little Light of Mine.

Nicole M. Mitchell is following