Stephin Merritt releases albums under the band names the Magnetic Fields, the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes. With The Magnetic Fields, Merritt has written, produced and recorded twelve albums to date. The Magnetic Fields’ 1999 album, 69 Love Songs, was a 3-disc masterwork which garnered Merritt widespread acclaim, including “best of” year-end lists in most major national publications. He and the Magnetic Fields have performed as part of Lincoln Center’s American Songwriters series and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. Merritt composed original music and lyrics for three music theater pieces directed by Chen Shi-Zheng, and mounted an Off Broadway stage musical of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, for which he won an Obie Award. Merritt composed the score for the academy award nominated film “Pieces of April” (dir. Peter Hedges). His song “The Book of Love,” was covered by Peter Gabriel and by Olivia Rodrigo, and is a wedding favorite. In 2026, Merritt was named one of the “30 Greatest Living American Songwriters” by the New York Times. Additional information on Merritt and his work can be found at www.houseoftomorrow.com.
Margaret Leng Tan has established herself as a major force within the American avant-garde; a highly visible, talented and visionary pianist whose work sidesteps perceived artificial boundaries within the usual concert experience and creates a new level of communication with listeners. Embracing aspects of theater, choreography, performance and even “props” such as the teapot she “plays” in Alvin Lucier’s Nothing is Real, Tan has brought to the avant-garde, a measure of good old-fashioned showmanship tempered with a disciplinary rigor inherited from her mentor John Cage. This has won Tan acceptance far beyond the norm for performers of avant-garde music, as she is regularly featured at international festivals, records often for adventurous labels such as Mode and New Albion and has appeared on American public television, at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.
Born in Singapore, Tan was the first woman to earn a doctorate from Juilliard, but youthful restlessness and a desire to explore the crosscurrents between Asian music and that of the West led her to John Cage. This sparked an active collaboration between Cage and Tan that lasted from 1981 to his death, during which Tan gained recognition as one of the pre-eminent interpreters of Cage’s music, partly through her New Albion recordings, Daughters of the Lonesome Isle and The Perilous Night/Four Walls. She has subsequently recorded Works for Piano 4 and Works for Piano 7 for Mode Records’ Complete John Cage Edition. Tan takes a lively interest in the musical potential of unconventional and unlikely instruments, and in 1997 her groundbreaking CD, The Art of the Toy Piano on Point Music/Universal Classics elevated the lowly toy piano to the status of a “real” instrument.
Aliya Ultan — often called the Nocturnal Cellist — is a composer and performer based in New York. Her work treats the cello as a shape-shifting voice moving between orchestral lyricism, cathartic noise, and deeply personal forms of storytelling.
Aliya has collaborated with artists including John Lurie (The Lounge Lizards), electroacoustic pioneer David Behrman, Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes), saxophonist-composer Tim Berne, and composer-performers Tyshawn Sorey and George Lewis among others. She frequently works in interdisciplinary settings, performing with puppeteers, dancers, and circus performers most commonly with Poncili Creación and Yoshiko Chuma’s School of Hard Knocks. Aliya maintains a robust concert schedule as a freelance cellist performing on Broadway, at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Barclays Center, BAM, La MaMa, the Public Theater and more.
Following her self-released album Witch Hunt, which she supported with a sweeping 40-date tour in exclusively artist-run spaces across the US and Canada, Ultan is set to release her latest album, Looks Far Woman, on Kou Records. Produced by Randall Dunn (Björk, Sunn O))), Jóhann Jóhannsson), the project explores the outer limits of the acoustic cello as both a vibrational and healing phenomenon.
Aliya currently lives in the woods of upstate New York with her three black cats and co-leads the Creative Music Studio’s Improvisers Orchestra, an ensemble lineage connected to Karl Berger and Ornette Coleman.
Dorothy Chan is a Washington, D.C. based interdisciplinary artist, improviser, pianist, and toy pianist whose work centers on listening as both process and invitation. Working across performance, sound art, and collaborative practice, she creates intimate experiences rooted in presence, curiosity, and attentive listening. Her practice explores how sound can reveal the extraordinary within everyday moments, creating ephemeral landscapes of memory, wonder, and connection. Drawn to the toy piano for its childlike wonder and quiet act of redefinition, Dorothy embraces the instrument as a reminder that meaning often resides in what is overlooked—a curiosity that continues to shape her work through improvisation, field recordings, and multidisciplinary collaboration.
As co-founder of the creative studio Chromic Duo (CAG artists), Dorothy creates immersive performances and soundwalks that weave together storytelling, music, technology, and acts of listening. Her work reimagines the concert experience through site-specific performances, multimedia installations, and participatory works that invite audiences to engage more deeply with the people and places around them. Dorothy is also an active performer of contemporary music. As a founding member of ensemble mise-en, she spent over a decade premiering, performing, and recording hundreds of works for piano, prepared piano, and chamber ensemble. She regularly collaborates with composers, performers, and artists across disciplines, bringing improvisation and experimentation into dialogue with new music.
Her recent collaborations include projects with the Smithsonian, the MIT Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the New York Philharmonic. Her work has been supported by NYSCA, Chamber Music America, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Washington Performing Arts, and the Barlow Endowment.
Nahre Sohl performs, composes and teaches an eclectic mixture of music that draws from aspects of improvisation, the avant-garde, traditional Western forms and harmony, jazz, and minimalism. She runs a notable series of videos on Youtube where she documents new ideas about music theory, harmony, practicing, and composition. Nahre’s music has had her
works premiered at Aldeburgh, Wigmore Hall, Elbphilharmonie, Verbier Music Festival, Dortmund Concert Hall, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival by artists and ensembles such as Timothy Ridout, Ema Nikolovska, Kunal Lahiry, Melvin Chen, Tina Chong, Michael Hey, and Julian Martin. She has also contributed to the soundtrack of Boss Baby II upon invitation from Hans Zimmer and Steve Mazzaro, and composed music for the Rayark video game DEEMO II. In the 2023-2024 season, she was the first Creator in Residence at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. She holds degrees from The Juilliard School and The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and has also studied piano and composition in Paris under Gabriel Tacchino and Narcis Bonet, pupils of Francis Poulenc and Nadia Boulanger. https://www.youtube.com/c/NahreSol
Hwayoung Seo
Pianist Alex Peh, described by the Wall Street Journal as “stunning” and possessing “facility, flair and fearlessness”, collaborates with musicians globally in search of shared resonances that emerge from friendship and connection. A 2021 Fulbright Global Scholar, and a 2019 Asian Cultural Council Fellow, Peh is part of an improvising piano trio, Talking Gong, with percussionist and composer, Susie Ibarra; and flutist, Claire Chase. Their newest piece created by Ibarra, Sky Islands, received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in music. He has collaborated with internationally-renown artists worldwide in major festivals such as Ojai Music Festival, Bang on a Can Long Play festival, and in venues such as Carnegie Zankel Hall, Kennedy Center, National Sawdust, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Detroit Institute of Art.
Based in Dobbs Ferry, NY, composer/pianist Elizabeth Margit Distefano is a multi-instrumentalist on flute, violin, harp, kalimba, merlin dulcimer, ukulele and has recently ventured into the world of toy piano. During her time at SUNY New Paltz, she collaborated in the Persian tuned piano project with Dr Alex Peh, Ramin Zoufonoun and Amir Etemadzadeh. She performed and composed “Echoes” for the New Music Ensemble, and most recently, she directed and composed the multimedia play “The Man and the Cursed Bull” for the SUNY New Paltz Convivium, a campus-wide Greek Banquet. She is not afraid to venture into unusual instrumentation, such as her piece “Rains and Acorns” for bowed guitar, deer antlers and field recording. In 2024, Elizabeth ventured to Greece where her composition, “Il Bell’ Amore” was performed at Thessaloniki Concert Hall for the 5th international Composition Competition of the Summer Music Performance Program at ACT/ A Division of Anatolia College. She has recently released two compositions for streaming “The Name Unknown” for solo piano and “Let’s Get Married”, a wedding lyrical piece. Elizabeth is one of the recipients of the 2026 SURE Research grant from SUNY New Paltz to co-create the UnCaged Toychestra with Phyllis Chen.
Curt Sydnor is a keyboardist and composer living in Richmond, VA whose most recent project with Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier, Bach Artillierie, reimagines the canons from the Goldberg Variations as a suite for analogue synthesizers and drums. Curt has released a half dozen albums of his own music on various labels and plays keyboards for artists such as Javanese composer Peni Candra Rini. His work has received awards from Downbeat Magazine and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Curt has degrees in piano, composition and jazz from Vanderbilt University, Indiana University, and the Russian Academy of Music, where he studied with Igor Nikonovitch and Yuri Butsko (students of Sofronitsky and Shostakovich, respectively). In October he will premier a new work for solo piano, River Codex, inspired by Leonardo da Vinci and the James River.
Pippin Barnett is a Richmond, Va. drummer who’s a founding member of Idio Savant, The Orthotonics, Famous Actors From Out Of Town and Zarove and has toured playing in the bands Curlew, Nimal and No Safety with stars of the avant-garde like Fred Frith, Tom Cora, George Cartwright, Zeena Parkins, Wayne Horvitz and Amy Denio.
Elijah J. Thomas (he/him) is a Black Philadelphia-born, Harlem-based flutist, multi-instrumentalist, educator, creative producer, and composer/experimentalist. His learning of improvisation, composition and music education he chiefly credits to Reggie Workman, Tim Warfield, Jr., William Parker, Walter Bell, Dr. Cynthia Folio, Kevin Rodgers, Dr. Allison Reynolds, and Dr. Rollo Dilworth. He has held numerous teaching positions and has four recorded projects: enuff music, vols. i and ii, Our Search, and Three Contemplations for Jason Moran. Elijah proudly serves as Jazz Program Manager for the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (BKCM), as an Assistant Line Producer for the world-renowned Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA), and as Musical Director of the non-profit performance-based organization Honk NYC!, and Co-Organizer and Music Director of the Artists For a Free World Marching Band (AFFW).
Christiana Fortune-Reader is a multi-faceted musician, passionate about the intersection of teaching, performing, community building, and arts advocacy. She is an Assistant Professor at SUNY New Paltz, teaching violin, viola, chamber music and serving as orchestra director. Her research interests broadly examine music as a tool for social change and community building, in early childhood, among college-aged students, and within larger communities of professional ensembles. She has presented at national conferences and performed internationally. She holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, the University of Southern California, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, having studied with Donald McInnes, Jeffrey Irvine, Lynne Ramsey, Karen Ritscher, and Carol Rodland.
An American-Dutch composer who left the US in ’69 after singing in Dan Hicks and his
Hot Licks,Christina Oorebeek was briefly a singer-songwriter in London, long a dance musician and
rhythm for dance teacher at the College of Performing Arts, Amsterdam. Studying piano (in between) with Willem Brons at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, she
truly ‘heard’ new music for the first time and embarked on studying composition at 50 with Klaas de Vries at CodArts Conservatory, Rotterdam. She graduated with the Composition Prize in 1999. She has been composing ever since, working with, among others, Nieuw Ensemble, Marco Blaauw, Tomoko Mukaiyama, Phyllis Chen, Roadrunner Trio, Ensemble Modelo62,Toy Piano Ensemble Seoul, Jason Alder and Reijnier van Houdt. Her work has been performed in festivals/concerts in the Netherlands, France, South Korea, UK, Germany, Italy, Norway, Finland, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Africa, the USA and Canada.
She is a member of the Conlon Collective, formerly the Conlon Foundation, organizing
concerts, competitions and residences with/for the Disklavier, held in collaboration with
among others, the Uncaged Toy Piano festival and the Gaudeamus Music Week.
In 2023, with Boris Bezemer and Daniel Schorno, the Conlon Collective was formed. A
new collaboration with the Muziekgebouw aan het Ij was inaugurated with the
presentation concert in 2025.
Chris Storch is a Piano Technician and Acoustician from the Boston area who splits his time between a piano service clientele and acoustical consulting. In 1993, Chris earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Acoustics and Music from the University of Hartford / Hartt School of Music which he used to gain experience in room acoustics for the performing arts. Some of the venues which Chris helped to design are the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center in Appleton, WI, The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, PA, and Sibelius Hall in Lahti, Finland.
