New York City-based, JUNO-nominated composer Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis (b. 1982) hails from Montreal, Canada. "Dreamy yet rhythmic" (NY Times), with a “terrible luminosity” and “ferociously expressive” (Times Colonist), his concert music is “an amalgamation of the classical music tradition and the soul and grime of heavy metal” (I Care If You Listen). With an intimate background in progressive metal and traditional Greek music, Stafylakis has developed a unique conception of musical temporality and rhythm, infusing his compositions with a propulsive vitality that “favors doomsday chords and jackhammer rhythms” (The New Yorker).

Since 2016, Stafylakis is the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's Composer-In-Residence and Co-Curator of the WSO's Winnipeg New Music Festival. His works have been performed by orchestras including the Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Ottawa, Regina, Québec, Victoria, PEI, Spokane, Stamford, Longueuil, FSU, and Greek Youth Symphony Orchestras, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Orchestre Classique de Montréal, and Israel Chamber Orchestra. 

He has collaborated with artists and ensembles including Animals As Leaders, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Roomful of Teeth, JACK Quartet, Bent Knee, Decoda Ensemble, ShoutHouse, Raphael Weinroth-Browne, Contemporaneous, Vicky Chow, Hard Rubber Orchestra, Alexandre Da Costa, and Philippe Sly, among others. 

His works have been featured at venues and festivals around the world, including Carnegie Hall and the NY Philharmonic Biennial. In 2018–19 he collaborated with progressive metal pioneers Animals As Leaders on the symphonic adaptation of their music for metal band & orchestra, and in 2020–21 collaborated with Courtney Swain and members of Bent Knee and ShoutHouse on the prog metal & chamber music fusion dontwaitforme. Hard Rubber Orchestra’s 2022 album Iguana earned Stafylakis a JUNO nomination for his metal–big band fusion composition Source Code, featuring the composer on guitars.

Recent recordings featuring his music include albums by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra & Miguel Harth-Bedoya (Naxos), Jenny Lin (Sono Luminus), the Cicchillitti-Cowan Duo (Analekta), Patrick Kearney (Contrastes), and the Hard Rubber Orchestra (Redshift).

His music has been recognized with the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP’s Leonard Bernstein Award, SOCAN’s Classical Composer of the Year Award, four SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers, and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, FACTOR, SSHRC, and New Music USA. He serves on the board of directors of GroundSwell (Winnipeg), is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, and a founding member of the NYC composer collective ICEBERG New Music.

Stafylakis holds degrees from McGill University and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He lectures at the City College of New York (CUNY) and Purchase College Conservatory of Music (SUNY), and is a guest lecturer at Nazareth College in Rochester, NY. His research examines the conception of rhythm and meter in progressive metal.

www.hstafylakis.com


current as of Apr. 9, 2023

David Dzubay has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, the National Endowment for the Arts, the US-Mexico Fund for Culture, and the Fromm and Barlow foundations, among others. Recent honors include Guggenheim, Bogliasco, MacDowell, Yaddo, Copland House and Djerassi fellowships, a 2011 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2010 Heckscher Prize and the 2015 Sackler Prize. His music has been performed by orchestras, ensembles and soloists in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Asia, and is published by Pro Nova Music and recorded on the Sony, Bridge, Centaur, Innova, Naxos, Crystal, Klavier, Gia, and First Edition labels. Currently chair of the Composition Department and Director of the New Music Ensemble at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Dzubay also spent three years as Composer-Consultant to the Minnesota Orchestra and one as Composer-in-Residence with the Green Bay Symphony. He joined the faculty at the Brevard Music Center in summer 2011.

William Kleinsasser's compositions range from acoustic chamber and orchestral pieces to interactive computer music. His work integrating electro-acoustic music with virtuoso instrumental performance has been widely recognized and supported by commissions and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, the American Music Center, Meet the Composer, the Argosy Foundation, and Towson University, among others.  Kleinsasser's compositions have received national and international recognition in concerts, competitions, conferences and festivals.  Kleinsasser's music is recorded on the Everglade, Innova, Mark, C74, and Ars Harmonica (ICMA) labels.  Kleinsasser holds DM and MM degrees in composition from Indiana University School of Music and BA and BM degrees from the University of Oregon. He is a professor of composition and related studies at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland where he is also the Director of the New Music Ensemble.

Website: wkleinsasser.net
Email: bill_at_wkleinsasser.net

Diego Stocco is an inventor of unusual musical instruments, music sound designer and composer.
One of his most recognizable instruments is the Experibass, a mutated double bass for which he invented a playing technique called “Sticcato”, creating an intense combination of tonal and percussive timbres. With this instrument, he was invited to be a featured soloist on the soundtrack of "Sherlock Holmes" scored by Oscar®-winning composer Hans Zimmer, the video games "Assassin's Creed" and "Darktide" with BAFTA-winning composer Jesper Kyd and as a composer and performer of his piece “Thunderous” for the film "Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire”. As a composer, he produced the music for the video game "The Conduit” and the film "Chernobyl Diaries”, where he experimented with more strange instruments and sonic approaches. 
The music and sound design elements from his Sonic Artifact label, specialized in horror, thriller, western and sci-fi genres, is distributed worldwide by BMG Production Music and have been placed on dozens of film trailers, films and TV shows.

As one of the Principal Sound Designers, Diego created numerous iconic sounds for the core libraries of Spectrasonics Stylus RMX, Trilian, Bob Moog Tribute Library and the flagship synth Omnisphere. His approach to listening and psychoacoustic microphone techniques allowed him to discover musically playable sounds in a variety of common objects, such as light bulbs, a clothes drying rack, a leather hat, and a number of odd instruments created by combining pieces of furniture and parts of appliances with traditional instruments. One of his most extreme sampling session was the Burning Piano, a piano sampled while it was on fire. He later created his own Sonic Extension for Omnisphere called Twisted Trees, where he built original sculptural instruments inspired by forest trees and the random motion of elements of nature.

Diego explored the sound of nature and trees with a series of musical videos, starting from Music from Sand, Music from a Tree, and Music from Nature. In these works, a lighter, playful and more abstract approach to sound appears, where he let the unconventional sounds inspire the composition. He also built instruments that can be seen as imaginative little places, like the Magical Butterfly Valley and the Miniature Forest Piano, where the listener is invited to listen to the instruments as if they were played by butterflies and birds.

Diego also created a unique approach to Convolution processing with his “Rhythmic Convolutions” sets, where he takes sounds produced by a variety of objects, materials and interactions to create original Impulse Responses that transfer both their rhythmic and spectral profile to drums, synths and any instrument with fast attacks. Occasionally Diego teaches workshops and masterclass where he shares his imaginative approach with other musicians and sound designers.

Composer, Arranger, Multi-Instrumentalist, Music Producer, Educator.

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