John Bischoff (b. 1949, San Francisco) has been active in the experimental music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 35 years as a composer, performer, and teacher. He is known for his solo constructions in real-time synthesis and the pioneering development of computer network music. His music is built from intrinsic features of the electronic medium: high definition noise components, tonal edges, and structures derived from performance actions in the moment. He has performed in many parts of the US, and in Europe including such venues as the Festival d’Automne in Paris, Akademie der Künst in Berlin, Fylkingen in Stockholm, and T-U-B-E in Munich. He was a founding member, with Jim Horton and Rich Gold, of The League of Automatic Music Composers in 1978, considered to be the world’s first computer network band. He co-authored an article with Horton and Gold on the League’s music that was published in Foundations of Computer Music (MIT Press 1985). He is also a founding member of The Hub, a computer network band that has further expanded on the network music form since 1987. In 1999 he received a Grants to Artists award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York. In 2004, noted media theorist Douglas Kahn published A Musical Technography of John Bischoff in the Leonardo Music Journal (Vol. 14, MIT Press). Two retrospective CD packages documenting computer network music were released in 2007 and 2008: The League of Automatic Music Composers: 1978-1983 (New World Records 2007) and 3-CD set of recordings by The Hub titled Boundary Layer (Tzadik 2008). Recordings of Bischoff’s work are also available on Artifact, 23Five, and Lovely Music. A solo CD titled Audio Combine was released in 2012 on New World Records and was named one of the “Best of 2012” by WIRE magazine. He is currently an Associate Professor of Music at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Composer/performer Kyle Bruckmann’s work extends from a Western classical foundation into genre-bending gray areas encompassing free jazz, electronic music and post-punk rock. A busy and varied performance schedule and appearances on more than 60 recordings have led to his recognition as “an excellent composer, striking the right balance between form and freedom” (Signal to Noise), “a modern day renaissance musician” (Dusted) and “a seasoned improviser with impressive extended technique and peculiar artistic flair” (All Music Guide).

Shortly after moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2003, he joined forces with acclaimed new music collective sfSound and with Quinteto Latino (a woodwind quintet specializing in Latin American composers). He is now also a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Eco Ensemble, and Splinter Reeds. He has worked with the San Francisco Symphony and most of the area’s regional orchestras remaining active in an international community of improvisers and sound artists. Current local improvising working groups include Addleds, Shudder, and mchtnchts.

From 1996 until his westward relocation, he was a fixture in Chicago’s experimental music underground, with frequent collaborators Jason Ajemian, Jim Baker, Jeb Bishop, Olivia Block, Guillermo Gregorio, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Robbie Hunsinger, Bob Marsh, Weasel Walter, and Michael Zerang. Long-term affiliations include the electro-acoustic duo EKG, the “rock” monstrosity Lozenge, and the Creative Music quintet Wrack (recipient of a 2012 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works award).

Bruckmann earned undergraduate degrees in music and psychology at Rice University in Houston, studying oboe with Robert Atherholt, serving as music director of campus radio station KTRU, and achieving academic distinction as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He completed his Masters degree in 1996 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied oboe performance with Harry Sargous and contemporary improvisation with Ed Sarath.

MaryClare Brzytwa is a multi-instrumental composer/performer based in San Francisco California. Specializing in electronic music,  and flute, she draws from experimental, jazz, contemporary classical, and computer music traditions. She has toured extensively in theaters and clubs throughout Europe and US as both side-woman and soloist playing festivals such as Festival des Musiques Innovatrices, Gilles Peterson’s World Wide Festival, La Siestes Electroniques Festival, Unlimited 21 Festival, and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. MaryClare has served as producer at Radio Village Nomade and spent time in residence at both the Atlantic Center for the Arts and STEIM (Studio for Electro Acoustic Music) developing custom hardware and software for arduino modified flute and improvisational environment in Max/MSP. Her unique flute vocabulary, improvising, and composition can be heard on films such as Room 237 and This Moment is Not the Same and her recordings are available on the Ambiances Magnétiques and Setola di Miale labels. MaryClare earned her BA at Mills College where she studied composition with Fred Frith and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts where she studied with Marc Lowenstein.

Born in 1945 in Fresno, California, composer, percussionist, sound poet and radio producer Charles Amirkhanian is a leading practitioner of electroacoustic music and text-sound composition. His works Dutiful Ducks and Church Car are considered classics of the genre. He is widely known for his live and taped works utilizing speech (or sound poetry) elements in rhythmic patterns resembling percussion music. In addition he composes electronic pieces using Kurzweil and Synclavier digital sampling synthesizers, such as Walking Tune (A Room-Music for Percy Grainger), incorporating acoustical ambient sounds of Grainger’s native Australia alongside traditional musical material to create disjunct, trance-like dreamscapes.

Recent appearances include the International Poetry Festival Berlin, Beijing Contemporary Music Festival, Ars Electronica Festival/Austria, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival/England,  and the Long Arms Festival/Moscow, and Appositsia Festival/St. Petersburg.

Amirkhanian served as Music Director of KPFA Radio in Berkeley (1969-1992), Executive Director of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (1993-1997) and, since 1997, Executive & Artistic Director of Other Minds, the San Francisco-based new music organization (www.otherminds.org). He received the 2005 Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for the work of Other Minds which he co-founded, and the 1989 Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP.  He was awarded the first Ella Walker Fellowship from the Bellagio Study & Conference Center (on Lake Como, Italy) of the Rockefeller Foundation, where he was in residence for ten months in 1999-2000.

His music has been recorded on Starkland Records, Cantaloupe, Centaur, 1750 Arch Records, Other Minds, CRI, New World, Wergo (Germany), & Empreintes Digital (Canada), among others.

Thomas Dimuzio is a musician, composer, sound designer, mastering engineer, label proprietor, and music technologist residing in San Francisco, California. Inspired as much by John Cage as Led Zeppelin, Dimuzio’s music is like a sonic excursion that transports the listener into other worldly aural realms. “His work has a narrative, filmic tug that will draw you into its dark corners, ears alert… brilliant and rarely less than entertaining.” —Peter Marsh, BBC

Long regarded as a musical pioneer for his innovative use of live sampling and looping techniques, Dimuzio has earned a deserved reputation worldwide as an avant-garde sound artist in touch with the aesthetic pulse of time and technology. A true sonic alchemist who can seemingly create music events out of almost anything, Dimuzio’s listed sound sources on his various releases include everything from ‘modified 10 speed bicycle’ and ‘resonating water pipe’ to short-wave radios, loops, feedback, samplers, synthesizers and even normal instruments such as guitar, clarinet and trumpet. Dimuzio’s eclecticism bespeaks a career equally informed by a profound dedication to his craft and collaborations with friends, artists and technologists alike.

Dimuzio’s recordings have been released internationally by ReR Megacorp, Asphodel, RRRecords, No Fun Productions, Sonoris, Drone Records, Record Label Records, Odd Size, Seeland, and other independent labels. Among his collaborators are Chris Cutler, Dan Burke, Joseph Hammer, Anla Courtis, Nick Didkovsky, Due Process, Voice of Eye, Fred Frith, David Lee Myers, 5uu’s, Matmos, Wobbly and Negativland.

Eric Kuehnl is a composer, sound designer, and educator. Eric is currently the Assistant Director of the Music Technology Program at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills  CA.  Previously, Eric was an Audio Training Strategist in the Avid Education Department, and a Senior House Engineer for Sony Computer Entertainment America. His game audio credits include games for Sony Computer Entertainment, Technicolor, Namco Bandai, Ninja Theory, and Juice.  He has also worked as a supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer on a number of independent films and documentaries.

As a studio technician Eric has a worked with many of the Bay Area’s best artists including Skywalker Sound, Pixar, American Zoetrope, Fantasy Studios, One Union, Polarity Post, The Plant, The Grateful Dead, Metallica, Santana, Les Claypool, Amon Tobin, and Blackalicious.  As one of only a handful of Avid Master Instructors, Eric has trained faculty at a number of music colleges including Full Sail, Expression College, Musician’s Institute, Savannah College of Artist & Design, USC, L.A. Film School, L.A. Recording School, the Art Institutes, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and many more.   He is the primary author of Avid’s Pro Tools and Game Audiocourse, and contributes to many of the official Avid courses covering Music, Post Production, Control Surfaces, and Live Sound.

When not working as an audio guru, Eric composes and performs electro-acoustic music and plays acoustic and electric bass in a number of Bay Area bands.  Eric is the creative director of the Electroacoustica festival of experimental electronic music held at Foothill College each Spring.  He holds a Master’s degree from California Institute of the Arts, a Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin Conservatory, and studied composition at the Centre Iannis Xenakis in Paris.

Taurin Barrera is an American electronic musician and new media artist whose work explores the interactive connections between technology and perception. Barrera combines computer vision, noise and chance, and electroacoustic composition techniques to program audio-visual instruments and environments. Barrera uses emerging technologies to augment our sensory experiences of sound and visual art, he composes sounds and music you can see, and images you can hear. My research interests include: Algorithmic composition, creative computer languages, interactivity/HCI, machine learning, music information retrieval, networked performance, music technology, physical computing, noise, analog synthesis, DIY, molecular gastronomy.

An award-winning Bay Area actress and singer, Carey has performed leading roles with many Bay Area theatre companies including TheatreWorks, Center Repertory Theater of Walnut Creek, San Jose Repertory Theatre, American Musical Theatre of San Jose, CentralWorks and 42nd Street Moon. She was in the cast of the 25th Anniversary Broadway National Tour of Evita under the direction of Hal Prince. Carey joined the Foothill faculty in 2003 and teaches in both the Theatre and Music Departments. As a stage director, Carey has directed Foothill Music Theatre productions of All Shook Up, Spring Awakening, Little Shop of Horrors, South Pacific, Sunday in the Park with George, Working, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and most recently She Loves Me. Other recent directing credits include Kiss Me Kate at Broadway By The Bay and Almost, Maine at SFCM. She has directed projects at RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London), the A.C.T. MFA Program, Los Altos Stage Company, and Opera Academy of The West, among others. Carey is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (Acting/Stage Director), as well as a member of the MFA Faculty at A.C.T.

Recognized internationally as an outstanding performing and recording artist, a charismatic educator, and a transcriber and editor of both taste and intelligence, David Tanenbaum is one of the most admired classical guitarists of his generation. He has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, the former Soviet Union and Asia, and in 1988 he became the first American guitarist to be invited to perform in China by the Chinese government. He has been soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, the Oakland Symphony, Vienna’s ORF orchestra, with such eminent conductors as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kent Nagano and John Adams.

David Tanenbaum has been a featured soloist at many international festivals, including those of Bath, Luzern, Frankfurt, Barcelona and Vienna as well as numerous guitar festivals. In 1989, as President of the Second American Classical Guitar Congress, he commissioned five new works, including Rosewood by Henry Brant for a large guitar orchestra. He has subsequently conducted Rosewood more than a dozen times on four continents.

While his repertoire encompasses diverse styles, David Tanenbaum is recognized as one of today’s most eloquent proponents of new guitar repertoire. Among the many works written for him is Hans Werner Henze’s guitar concerto An Eine Aolsharfe, which he premiered throughout Europe and recorded with the composer conducting, Terry Riley’s first guitar piece, Ascención, four works by 1998 Pulitzer Prize winner Aaron Jay Kernis, two pieces by Roberto Sierra, and a suite by Lou Harrison. He is currently working with Terry Riley on a series of 24 guitar pieces. He has toured extensively with Steve Reich and Musicians, was invited to Japan in 1991 by Toru Takemitsu, and has had a long association with the Ensemble Modern. As a chamber musician he has collaborated with, among others, the Kronos, Shanghai, Alexander and Chester String Quartets, dancer Tandy Beal and guitarist Manuel Barrueco. He is currently a member of the Pacific Guitar Ensemble and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

David Tanenbaum’s three dozen recordings, which reflect his broad repertoire interests, can be found on New Albion, EMI, Nonesuch, Ars Musici, Rhino, GSP, Albany, Audiofon, Bayer, Acoustic Music Records, Bridge, Stradivarius and others. His 2002 recording as soloist with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in John Adam’s Naive and Sentimental Music was nominated for a Grammy as the Best New Composition. His recording of the complete guitar works of Sofia Gubaidulina will come out on Naxos in June, 2015.

He has produced many editions of guitar music, including the David Tanenbaum Concert Series for Guitar Solo Publications. He has also written a series of three books, The Essential Studies, which analyze the etudes of Sor, Carcassi and Brouwer and compliment his recordings of those works on GSP, and his chapter on the Revival of the Classical Guitar in the 20th Century appears in the Cambridge Companion to the Guitar.

David Tanenbaum is currently Chair of the Guitar Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he received the 1995 Oustanding Professor Award, and he has been Artist-In-Residence at the Manhattan School of Music. He is in demand for master classes worldwide. Mr. Tanenbaum’s students have won many international competitions, and his former students hold teaching positions internationally.

David Tanenbaum studied guitar with Rolando Valdez-Blain, Aaron Shearer and Michael Lorimer, attending the San Francisco Conservatory and Peabody Conservatory. Further studies included work with pianist Jeanne Stark-Iochmans and harpsichordist Laurette Goldberg. He participated in the 1981 New York master class with Andres Segovia.