Itzá García (b.1993, México) is a composer focused on time and togetherness in technology-mediated musical settings. Her music and research engage current transformations in acoustic instrumentation, from augmented instruments to the use of instrumental sound as training data. In her recent projects, she trains machine learning models with field recordings of weathered musical instruments, adding space and texture into the timbre of AI sound output.
Her music has been performed by ensembles such as JACK Quartet, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Yarn/Wire, Talea Ensemble, Ensamble CEPROMUSIC, PinkNoise, and Mise-En Ensemble, among others. She has received prizes and distinctions such as the Atlantic Center for the Arts Residence program, the ICST Artist Residency from the Zurich University of the Arts, the CONACYT Grant for Graduate Studies in Mexico 2018, and the Art Science Connect Fellowship for co-organizing the innovation:SOUND:technology series.
Itzá is currently based in New York City, pursuing a Ph.D. degree in composition at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Tobias Fandel, is a composer and visual artist working with acoustic instruments, video, and digital media, focusing on the aesthetical implications of digital culture. His interests include the reversibility of loss in the virtual, the physicality of computed materials, and various printing methods and technologies.
In his recent projects he engages the friction between current and obsolete media technologies, investigating elusive qualities and sensory artifacts across different cultural sensitivities. He has previously collaborated with Ensemble Modern, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble, Ensemble Mise-En, Soyuz21, PinkNoise Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Reactive Ensemble among others.
Tobias teaches Music at Baruch College and is currently pursuing a PhD at the CUNY Graduate Center under the guidance of Jason Eckardt, Jeff Nichols, Douglas Geers, and David Grubbs. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Tianfang Jia, composer/sound artist
He received a bachelor’s degree from the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, a master’s degree at New England Conservatory, studying under Dr. Stratis Minakakis and Dr. John Mallia, and is now pursuing a PhD at the CUNY Graduate Center under Dr. Douglas Geers. His works mostly center around the themes of death, alienation, ritual, transcendentality, and the musical concepts of microtonality, temporal expansion/contraction, and conditioned stochastic gestures affected by nuanced human physicality. He also dedicates himself to explorations of electronic sensor engineering and sonification, music gamification, and multimedia music theatre composition.
©Peter Ganushkin
Teté Leguía is a bassist, improviser, and composer from Lima, Peru. He studied music composition at La Universidad Nacional de Música del Perú and later at Hunter College in New York. His performance and composition styles have been influenced by free improvisation and noise music, and he has been active in Lima's experimental music scene since 2003, as well as New York's free improv scene since 2022. Since 2016, he has organized "Minutos para el fin," an ongoing series of experimental music concerts in Lima. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in music composition at the CUNY Graduate Center.