Helmut Lachenmann @ 90

Rick Burkhardt is a composer, writer, and performer whose text and music compositions have been performed in over 40 US cities, as well as in Europe, Asia, Australia, Canada and Mexico. He currently teaches songwriting, and has in the past taught courses in music composition, playwriting, performance, and music history at Brown University, Harvard University, The Evergreen State College, and the University of California, San Diego, as well as workshops in colleges across the country.

Richard Carrick is a composer, conductor, pianist, and Guggenheim Fellow. Described as “organic and restless,” his music combines spatial depth with emotional intensity and includes works for solo instruments, ensemble, orchestra, and multimedia and participatory formats. He directs the composition program at Berklee College and the Either/Or ensemble in New York. His artistic career has been shaped by international teaching and concert activities, as well as studies at IRCAM and the Royal Conservatory, among others.

Stephen Drury is a pianist, conductor, and internationally sought-after performer with a repertoire ranging from Bach to contemporary music. He has performed in renowned concert halls such as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican Centre, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and has brought modern sounds to Pakistan, Greenland, and Montana. As a committed promoter of new music, he has worked closely with composers such as John Cage, György Ligeti, Frederic Rzewski, and John Zorn, given master classes worldwide, and founded the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at the New England Conservatory, where he also teaches.

Rebecca Marchand is a professor of music history at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where she has been teaching since 2009. Her teaching and research focus on contemporary and experimental music, particularly graphic notation. She was president of the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society and is a member of the national council. In addition to her teaching duties, she coordinates the music history department and directs the ETUDE program to promote diversity and inclusion in teaching.

Nima Janmohammadi is a composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist. As a performer of Persian classical music, he studied with renowned masters of Persian music including Mohammad Reza Lotfi and Hossein Alizadeh, and has since appeared in numerous concerts and recordings. As a composer of New Music, his works range from symphonic and chamber ensembles to string quartets, saxophone orchestra, and open-form graphic scores that integrate composition and improvisation. Nima is a full-time faculty member in Contemporary Musical Arts, Music Theory, and Musicology at the New England Conservatory of Music. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Persian classical music from the Tehran National School of Music, a master’s degree and graduate diploma in Contemporary Improvisation, and a doctorate in Composition with a minor in Music Theory from the New England Conservatory.

Efstratios Minakakis is a composer, conductor and educator whose work engages memory, cultural identity, and art as social testimony. It also explores the rich possibilities engendered by the interaction between arts and sciences. Described as “emotional, to the point of viscerality” (Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project) and “an alluring haze” (New York Times), his music has been commissioned and performed by leading contemporary ensembles and performers, such as the Grammy award-winning Crossing Choir, Prism Saxophone Quartet, and Partch Ensemble. Recent notable collaborations include saxophonist Don-Paul Kahl, bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward, pianists Jihye Chang and Katelyn Valhala, cellists TJ Borden and Annie Jacobs-Perkins, and violinist Gabriella Diaz. Upcoming projects include the world premiere of Vykinon, a microtonal concerto for two pianos and wind orchestra commissioned by pianists Stephen Drury and Yukiko Takagi, and a new work for the Loadbang ensemble. Efstratios is a faculty member of the Composition and Music Theory Departments at New England Conservatory.