Dr. Nick Virzi (b. 1991) is a composer from New York City whose work includes acoustic, electronic, and electroacoustic music, as well as intermedia pieces and multichannel installations. His recent pieces explore the relationships between humans and the natural world, numerology and rhythmic structure, and ethnography and identity. His practice includes field recording in nature preserves, orchestration of rhythmic frameworks based on complex numerical systems, and ethnographic research focused on collecting and adapting archival media as an exploration of his identity as an Italian-American. In addition to composing, he is an electric guitarist, conductor, photographer, researcher, and educator. He also hosts the international composer interview series Composer OverTime.

Nick’s music has been performed throughout the USA and internationally by leading artists such as cellist Séverine Ballon (France), soprano Tony Arnold, the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, the JACK Quartet, the Spektral Quartet, Splinter Reeds, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Ensemble Liminar (Mexico), Distractfold (United Kingdom), the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, the TAK Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Wild Up. His work has been featured at such venues as the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center, the Center for New Music in San Francisco, and the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark. His recent projects include “Convergent Boundaries” for Percussion Trio and Electronics, an electroacoustic piece featuring field recordings from Kopački Rit Nature Park in Croatia, Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, and Mt. Etna in Sicily, Italy. This piece was commissioned by the Novalis Music and Art Festival and premiered by Line Upon Line Percussion in October 2022.

Virzi has been a featured composer at international festivals such as Gaudeamus Muziekweek (The Netherlands), the Impuls Academy (Austria), and Festival Ecos Urbanos (Mexico). He has been awarded fellowships by the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival (NYC), the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy), the soundSCAPE Composition and Performance Exchange (Italy), and the New Music for Strings Festival (Denmark). He has won festival competitions including the Black Bayou Composition Award, 2nd Prize at the New Music on the Bayou Festival in Louisiana. He has held residencies at the Academy of Arts and Culture and Kopački Rit Nature Preserve in Osijek, Croatia, the Sagehen Experimental Forest and Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve in the UC Reserve System, and the Poto Festival in Grass Valley, California. He has presented his music and given lectures at universities such as UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Missouri (Mizzou). He has presented his research in music theory and analysis at conferences hosted by the American Beethoven Society, the California Interdisciplinary Consortium of Italian Studies (CICIS), and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). He has presented his research in acoustic ecology at NYU’s Steinhardt School as part of the Precarious Sounds/Sounding Sanctuary Conference (NYC), The Catholic University of America at the Eleventh International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts and Responses (Washington, D.C.), and the Centro Cultural Vila Flor at the Ninth International Conference on the Constructed Environment (Guimarães, Portugal).

Dr. Virzi completed his D.M.A. in Music Composition at Stanford University, where he studied with Mark Applebaum and Brian Ferneyhough. He also completed his B.M. at the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Du Yun, Huang Ruo, Laura Kaminsky, and Suzanne Farrin. He recently completed the H&S Dean’s Fellowship at Stanford University, where he was a Lecturer in the Department of Music and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). His music is published by the American Composers Alliance (ACA) in New York City.

Seth Andrew Davis (b. 1994) is a performer, composer, improvisor, & electronic musician from the Kansas City area. Davis is involved in many different genres including, jazz, rock, classical, electronic, electro-acoustic, and free improvisation. Davis graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance in Kansas City, Mo. in 2019 with a BM in Music Composition. Davis has studied with Jim Mobberley, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Mara Gibson and Michael Miller.

Davis’s music has been performed in the United States, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Davis has had his work performed at various conferences and festivals including the New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, Kansas City Performing Media Festival, NASA Regional IV Conference, Electronic Music Midwest, Exchange of Midwest Collegiate Composers, the International Navy Saxophone Symposium and has had pieces premiered by Mnemosyne Quartet, Project C4, Dionysus, Second Nature Ensemble. Chi Him Chik, Sputter Box, & loadbang. 

As an artist, Davis works closely with performers and collaborators to create pieces, installations, and works that are unique to that partnership. Davis is an avid collaborator, having worked with choreographers, video artists, animators, playwrights etc. Davis’s artistic influences run the gamut from popular music, free-jazz, hip-hop, electronic music, film, literature, visual art, contemporary culture and from this Davis wishes to blur the lines between genres, composer and performer, and various artistic mediums. Davis has released his electronic music under the pseudonyms The Gods Hate Kansas, Mr Sandman, and Ghost In The Machine. Davis is also a founding member of Second Nature, a free jazz/new music/math-rock ensemble, BetaMax, Re-Animator, and is a guitarist in the new music ensemble Project C4. Davis is also an active concert organizer in the Kansas City music scene as the Vice President of KcEMA (Kansas City Electronic Music Alliance) and as the Production Coordinator of newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. In 2020, Davis co-founded Mother Brain Records with saxophonist & composer Michael Eaton. Mother Brain Records is a Midwest based label focused on releasing the works of artists in the experimental & improvised music scenes.

Melissa Grey & David Morneau are composer-producers who design music informed by elemental themes: time, space, nature, language, dance.

Douglas McCausland is a composer / performer, sound designer, and digital artist whose visceral and often chaotic works explore the extremes of sound, technology, and the digital medium.

As an artist, he researches and leverages the intersections of numerous technologies and creative practices, such as real-time electronic music performance with purpose-built interfaces, spatial audio, interactive systems, intermedia art, musical applications of machine-learning, experimental sound design, and hardware-hacking.

Described as “Tremendously powerful, dark, and sometimes terrifying…” (SEAMUS) and “Ruthlessly visceral…” (The Wire), his works have been performed internationally, including features at Sonorities, SEAMUS, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, MISE-EN Music Festival, Klingt Gut!, Sounds Like THIS!, NYCEMF, Sonicscape, and Ars Electronica.  Recent collaborations include artists such as bassist Aleksander Gabryś, cellist Seth Parker Woods, the Quasar Saxophone Quartet, the TAK Ensemble, and vocal ensemble Variant 6.  His work is available through various online platforms, and on SEAMUS, Plyta Z Audiomatu, and Jikken Records.

Recent honors include an award of distinction in the 2021 Prix Ars Electronica for his piece “Convergence”, winning 1st-Prize in the 2021 ASCAP/SEAMUS commission competition, the gold-prize award for “contemporary computer music” in the Verband Deutscher Tonmeister Student 3D Audio Production Competition, and being awarded the runner-up nomination for the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music's 2019 CIME Prix. 

Douglas is currently the Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) Studio Manager at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  He holds a DMA in music composition from Stanford University, where he studied with Chris Chafe, Patricia Alessandrini, Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, and Mark Applebaum.  He additionally holds a MSc in Digital Composition and Performance from the University of Edinburgh, a MM in Music Composition from Michigan State University, and a BM in Music Composition, Saxophone Performance, and Music Education from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Dr. Nick Virzi (b. 1991) is a composer from New York City living in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. His recent work explores the mystical nature of music through imagistic representation, orchestration of complex numerical systems, and use of original natural sound recordings. In addition to composing, Nick is a field recording artist, electric guitarist, conductor, researcher, and educator. He also hosts the international composer interview series Composer OverTime.

​Nick’s music has been performed throughout the USA and internationally by established artists such as cellist Séverine Ballon (France), soprano Tony Arnold, the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, the JACK Quartet, the Spektral Quartet, Splinter Reeds, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Ensemble Liminar (Mexico), Distractfold (United Kingdom), the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, the TAK Ensemble, and Ensemble Dal Niente. His work has been featured at such venues as the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center, the Center for New Music in San Francisco, and the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark. His recent commissions include a new work for Line Upon Line Percussion from the Novalis Music and Art Festival, along with artist residencies at the Kopački Rit Nature Preserve in Osijek, Croatia.

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He has participated in such international festivals as Gaudeamus Muziekweek (The Netherlands), and Impuls (Austria), and New Music on the Bayou (Louisiana), including fellowships granted by the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival (New York City), the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy), the soundSCAPE Composition and Performance Exchange (Italy), and the New Music for Strings Festival (Denmark). He has presented his work at the Conrad Prebys Music Center at UC San Diego, the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at UC Berkeley, the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara, as well as the American Beethoven Society at San José State University, the California Interdisciplinary Consortium of Italian Studies (CICIS) at the Italy’s Centers and Peripheries Conference hosted by Stanford University, and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) at the SEAMUS 2021 Virtual National Conference.

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As a field recording artist specializing in natural sound, Nick has held artist and research residencies at wilderness locations throughout California, such as the Sagehen Creek Field Station in Sagehen Experimental Forest, the Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve in Big Sur, and the Poto Festival in Grass Valley. He has presented his research in soundscape ecology and bioacoustics at NYU’s Steinhardt School as part of the Precarious Sounds/Sounding Sanctuary Conference (New York City), The Catholic University of America at the Eleventh International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts and Responses (Washington, D.C.), and the Centro Cultural Vila Flor at the Ninth International Conference on the Constructed Environment (Guimarães, Portugal).

 

Dr. Virzi is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Music and H&S Dean’s Fellow at Stanford University. His research is based at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. He completed his D.M.A. in Music Composition at Stanford University, where he studied with Mark Applebaum and Brian Ferneyhough. He also completed his B.M. at the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Du Yun, Huang Ruo, Laura Kaminsky, and Suzanne Farrin.

Georg Boenn, born 1965, is a composer and computer scientist. He studied composition at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, Germany. Resident artist at the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, and at the Atelierhaus Worpswede. Visiting scholar at Stanford University. PhD in Computer Science at the University of Bath for work on Automated Analysis and Transcription of Rhythm Data and their Use for Composition. Lecturer for Electronic Music at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen. Since 2003, Senior Lecturer in Music and Sound Technologies at the University of South Wales. In 2015, Georg moved to Canada where he is working as an Associate Professor in the Music Department of the University of Lethbridge, Alberta.

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