Artists
EVAN ADAMS
Evan Adams is an American composer and performer of electroacoustic music. He completed his undergraduate study in philosophy and electronic music at Oberlin College in Ohio. Evan is currently working on his MFA in electronic music and recording media at Mills College in Oakland, CA, where he lives happily with Alex Christie.
KAY AMBRIZ
Kay Ambriz is a sociology major from Upland, CA. She began playing percussion in the 5th grade and participated in Drumline in high school.
SHANI AVIRAM
Shani Aviram is from Jerusalem, Israel and is in her junior year at Mills. She is welcoming of any opportunity to play with a piano's insides.
DOROTHY BERRY
dorothy berry 1989 - born in the city. raised on a farm. sang the whole time.
ERNESTO CARCAMO CAVAZOS
Ernesto was born in Mexico City in 1987 and has been living in the United States since age 13. He started playing classical guitar at age 9 and began composing and performing in his High School years. Ernesto attended Brown University as an undergraduate, majoring in music composition and having studied with Gerald Shapiro and Butch Rovan in both acoustic and electronic media.
DREW CECCATO
Drew Ceccato grew up in Ann Arbor, MI where he started woodwind studies at age 10. He later attended Interlochen Arts Academy and New England Conservatory of Music where he studied saxophone performance and is currently enrolled at Mills College. Today Drew lives in Oakland, CA and is working on multiple projects across many different genres.
ALEX CHRISTIE
Alex Christie is a composer, performer, and improviser of electronic and acoustic music. His work is the hybridization of hyper-intellectualized contemporary music theory and a childish obsession with explosive sound and bright, flashing lights. He currently resides in Oakland, CA where he lives happily with Evan Adams.
RACHEL CONDRY
Rachel Condry, clarinetist, composer and improviser, is a dedicated supporter of innovative music and programming that live in the margins of genre, style and expectation. As a performer she has premiered works for solo clarinet, clarinet with tape, and clarinet with orchestra, as well as commissioning several chamber works, and she performs regularly with a wide variety of chamber ensembles and orchestras around the San Francisco Bay Area. Rachel made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2005 with The Matt Small Chamber Ensemble, a group that seamlessly blends jazz, improvised music and classical genres (www.mattsmall.org). A performing member of the San Francisco Composer's Chamber Orchestra, she is often a featured soloist and has been known to play “heavy chamber music” with the bass clarinet quartet, Edmund Welles. She is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and is currently working on an MFA in Performance with an emphasis on Improvisation at Mills College in Oakland.
MIA BELLA D’AUGELLI
Mia Bella D’Augelli endeavors to be both a musician and an undergraduate at Mills College, where she studies violin with Gloria Justen. Before going to Mills, she was from Chico, California, and played in the Paradise Symphony Orchestra and the North State Symphony Orchestra, along with other groups. What she really wants is to broaden her musical horizons and make use of all the hours in the day.
DAVID DOUGLAS
David Douglas was born in Greenville, South Carolina and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. He studied percussion at the University of North Texas, receiving a Bachelor of Music in Performance from that institution in 1999. From 1999 to 2009, he performed most notably as a drum set player with a wide variety of artists and bands including Mandarin, The Baptist Generals, Kelley Stoltz, John Vanderslice, Cursive, Tommy Guerrero, and Mark Eitzel. He has appeared on recordings for a variety of labels including Barsuk, Bella Union, 54/40 or Fight!, Two-Ohm Hop, and C-level productions. Recently, he has worked with composer Ellen Fullman on her piece Time Crossing. At Mills College since the fall of 2009, he has studied composition, percussion and improvisation with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell, Chris Brown, and William Winant.
SHAINA ELSTER
Shaina is working on her Bachelor's in Music at Mills College. She is a Junior and transferred here from Cabrillo College. She enjoys playing and writing for piano, voice, the Moog and whatever other instruments are available.
KRZYSZTOF GOLINSKI
www.chrisgolinski.com
AMELIA GURLEY
Amelia Gurley is a half-giraffe, half-human, all-bassist music enthusiast. She spent her youthful years in Lafayette, California, pondering such fundamental questions as "how does one manage to play Stravinsky up to speed?" and "when, precisely, does the average person use calculus in his or her everyday life?" She is now an International Relations-interested freshwoman at Mills College and a happy one-time member of MIE 1. Musical debuts include elementary and high school orchestra, middle school band, Young People's Symphony Orchestra in Berkeley, seven years worth of private recitals, and two performances with the Green Man Group (her favorite of which involved nine identically dressed bass players collectively creating a bossa groove on a single, very badly-abused bass.)
JASON HARRIS
Jason D. Harris aka J.Blingcity (b. 1985) is an experimental hip-hop jazz vocalist, electronic audio artist, music producer, visual artist and organist from St. Louis, Missouri. His music stems from gospel, soul, hip-hop, jazz, blues and electronic music. He started playing as a gospel/jazz organist in 1997 at Celestial Temple of Peace Church in St. Louis, Missouri. He grew up with a spiritual background experience working with choir and quartet singers and large improvising ensembles in different parts of the Midwest. He received a BFA in Digital Film New Media from the Kansas City Art Institute under the instruction of Patrick Clancy, Cyan Meeks, Diana Hesie, Dwight Frizzell, and Carl Kurtz. He is co-founder of the pioneering music production company ‘Main Attractionz Musik’ and of internet radio show ‘Main Attractionz Radio’, (veradionetowork.com,) in St. Louis, Missouri. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College in Oakland, California, studying under John Bischoff, Roscoe Mitchell, and Molly Holm. J.Blingcity does inspirational speeches and community outreach performances in the state of Missouri. He is currently tutoring in an after school program called Teachbar at Redwood Elementary in Oakland, California. He helps students improve their academic skills, teaching art and music as kids “Eductainment.” J.Blingcity has received several awards in art and is well known by his peers. Occasionally, he would show off his talents as an MC. As an aspiring artist in the art industry, much of Blingcity’s artwork has been displayed around St. Louis, such as in Harris Stowe State University, Union Station (downtown St. Louis), and the St. Louis Art Museum.
SARAH HOWE
Sarah Howe is an active bay area video artist, creative music composer/performer, and sound reinforcement engineer. She studied Multi-Focused Music Technology at the California Institute of the Arts and Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College. Sarah is also currently working with Keith McMillen Instruments, helping to develop innovative controllers for musicians.
PETER JAMES
Peter James is a local artiste, specializing in fancy objects and expensive clothing. He has gmail and facebook, and his hobbies are internet and dating.
GRETCHEN JUDE
Gretchen Jude (genus homo, species sapiens) began vocalizing at birth. Soon after achieving bipedality, she began to improvise on a rubber band stretched across two chair legs. Although her first true hero was Spock, she usually ended up playing the Captain in games of astronaut. Junior high school changed all that. More recently, Gretchen can/has/will/may receive/d her MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College (where she has been striving to regress musically to pre-adolescence), as well as intermediate-level performance certification (中級) from the Sawai Koto School in Tokyo. She became half of Candy Acid in 2010.
LONA KOZIK
Lona Kozik was born in Tucson, Arizona, and grew up in multiple locations in the United States and the United Kingdom. She studied piano performance and composition at West Chester University in Pennsylvania and composition at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Upon graduating from Penn, she moved to Devon in the United Kingdom and quickly established herself as a musical presence. In addition to teaching at Plymouth and Exeter Universities and at the world-renowned Dartington College of Arts, she has performed in festivals throughout Devon and Cornwall. Performance projects include developing a program of music by 20th-century American innovators at the piano as well as a program of the music of Erik Satie featuring Dadaist film, readings and dance. She performed this program as one half of the piano duo, 4Hands, with Elie Fruchter-Murray, around Devon to audience acclaim. Other performance projects include playing as part of the improvising trio Half Moon Assemblage (with Fruchter-Murray and her husband, Sam Richards) and as a guest improviser with the laptopist Neil Rose at Café Concrete, an experimental music club in Plymouth, UK. Lona has written music for solo piano and various ensembles, including the Ten Tors Orchestra led by Simon Ible and the piano duo of Frank Denyer and Catherine Laws. In 2009 her piano suite Fast Jump was issued on the Innova label by the American pianist Danny Holt. Her compositions have been played in the UK, Europe, the US and Canada. Lona is currently studying improvisation at Mills College with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell, and Zeena Parkins.
MEAGHAN LEFERINK
Meaghan Leferink is a Junior at Mills College, majoring in Vocal Performance and minoring in Economics. She studies privately with Sara Ganz. Meaghan specializes in Classical and Romantic music, while also composing her own original vocal music. Outside of Mills, Meaghan works with the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp in their after school program, instructing youth in voice performance and band collaboration.
RALPH LEWIS
Ralph Sylvester Lewis (b. 1986) is a composer concerned with the multiple approaches to making new music today and the notion of getting beyond the safety of pre-compositional surety. There is no system, process, or style that he speaks fluently or solely, and no diagram, parable or concept he has made characterizes his work as a whole, or frequently, the piece at hand. Crushed with a high regard for various avant-garde styles, American experimentalism, minimalism, rock and roll, country music, and jazz, his music making is differentiated piece by piece. Regardless of styling, the music he works toward is visceral, taut, and frequently free from its conceptual poetry. He received a B.M. in Music Composition from Oberlin Conservatory and a B.A. in Classical Civilization from Oberlin College in 2009, and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Music Composition from Mills College. At Oberlin, he studied with Randolph Coleman, Ross Feller, and Josh Levine. He is currently studying with John Bischoff, and previously, Roscoe Mitchell, Wendy Reid, and Fred Frith. He also is an active member of the Mills Contemporary Ensemble with Steed Cowart. He has participated in residencies with Philippe Manoury, Helmut Lachenmann, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe. He is an alumnus of the New York Youth Symphony’s Making Score program and recently participated in the 13th Annual Music for People and Thingamajigs, the Oakland International Peace Day concert, and a residency at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, Canada.
ADAM LOWDERMILK
Adam Lowdermilk is an electric and double bassist, improviser, composer, arranger, and educator who demonstrates a high level of proficiency in a myriad of musical styles including avant-garde, improvisation, jazz, funk, afro-beat, rock, and various Latin styles. He is a passionate performer and educator dedicated to the enrichment of the Bay Area's Youth through music education. As a music teacher for the Bay Area NPO Heritage Foundation West, Adam is able to pass on valuable and exciting musical knowledge to students K-12 in Oakland and Richmond. Having studied Jazz (and Economics) at UC Santa Cruz, Adam is currently pursuing an MFA in Music Performance with a concentration on Improvisation at Mills College where he has been awarded the Graduate Music Alumnae Scholarship and the Hellman Award for Performance. He has also studied privately with Henry Grimes, Steven Tramontozzi, and Stan Poplin. Adam has had the honor of sharing the stage with many wonderful musicians such as Johnny 'Guitar' Carson, Karlton Hester, Tammi Brown and William Winant, to name a few. Current affiliations include The Mills Sextet, The Committee, and The Adelic Trio.
DIERDRE LYNDS
Deirdre Lynds is a guitarist/composer who has been playing in bands professionally since age 15. She received her undergraduate degree in composition and classical guitar from the UC Santa Barbara and her Master’s in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is currently performing, composing and recording with Headshear, a San Francisco-based four-piece instrumental rock band.
LYDIA MARTIN
Lydia Martín graduated from CalArts in percussion performance. She is currently a member of the local Balinese Gamelan ensembles Sekar Jaya and Gadung Kasturi.
PETE “RAT” MARTIN
Pete "Rat" Martin is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and teacher. He primarily writes percussion-based music. He has collaborated with such diverse artists as Negativland, dancer Didik Nini Thowok, the SoCal Red Devils Drum Corps, and members of Deerhoof. He is also leader of the experimental rock band Eddie the Rat, and rotating member of Big City Orchestra, one of the oldest and most notorious noise bands in the Bay Area. He is currently pursuing his MA in Composition from Mills.
DANIEL MCANULTY
Grew up in a bookstore, five years MIT undergrad, four years salt of the earth, two years Mills grad - listens, speaks, laughs. Shoots nikon, strums martin, eats, sleeps, drinks earth, breathes water slowly, takes time in good company. Quietly maintains best of best wishes for best of best worlds.
FARLEY MILLER
Farley Miller is a music researcher, recordist, performer, and composer. His current research interests include institutionalized avant-garde musical culture in France and the propagation and reception of the works of Alexander Scriabin. His scholarly work is informed by his participation in emergent music practices, including computer-aided improvisation, live-coding, and computer network music. He holds a BSc in Audio Technology from American University, where he studied with Fernando Benadon and Paul Oehlers. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Electronic Music & Recording Media at Mills College where he has been studying with Nalini Ghuman (musicology), John Bischoff (composition), and David Bernstein (counterpoint).
YAMAN PALAK
Yaman Palak was born in 1983 in Zug, Switzerland. He studied guitar and composition at Hochschule Luzern Musik (Gerry Hemingway; BA), at the School for Improvisational Music NYC (Tim Berne, Jim Black), and at the Academy for Contemporary Music England (BTEC Music Diploma). As a composer he is exploring the integral process of sound, combined with his involvement in contemporary social as well as political tendencies. As a guitarist he specializes in forms of Improvisation (performed with et al.: Hildegard Kleeb, Gerry Hemingway, Charbel Ackermann). He is currently a Master of Fine Arts student at Mills College, Oakland, California, USA.
LEE PEMBLETON
Lee Pembleton has been composing and performing music and art for over twenty years. The bulk of that time has been spent investigating sound environments and creating performative installations. He has been a member of several contemporary music/performance ensembles & jazz bands along with the occasional rock, psychedelic & folk groups. He has performed his works at a variety of venues, ranging from the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to Chicago's infamous punk club, the Czar Bar. His installations have been featured in museums, galleries and clubs in America and Europe.
http://www.vime.org/
http://earthboundmoon.com
http://23estudios.com
LAURIE POLSTER
Laurie Polster is a cross-disciplinary artist, vocalist/musician and educator. Her work in installation, sculpture, video, performance, audio and visual/textual pieces parallels her engagement in social justice and ecological issues. Her projects have been exhibited nationally, including San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, CA), Judah L. Magnes Museum (Berkeley, CA), and Seattle Art Museum Gallery. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections. She has received grants, awards and residencies, including a Jerome Foundation Fellowship and Visiting Artist Residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. As a vocalist, she has performed with Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Aswat (Arabic Voices) Choir, and as a cantorial soloist specializing in Judeo-Arabic music. She holds an M.F.A. in Visual Art from Massachusetts College of Art, and is completing an M.F.A. in Electronic Music at Mills College.
SEAN PRICE
Sean Price is a composer and improviser based in Oakland CA. While studying electronic music composition at California Institute of the Arts, Sean discovered a deep connection to Javanese Gamelan music. These two musical traditions have shaped and informed the aesthetic put forward in most of his compositions.
JOSEPH ROSENZWEIG
Joseph Rosenzweig is an artist, composer, and performer whose works for performance and installation broadly concern the material pathways through which information propagates. His work particularly focuses on the interaction between communication systems associated with speech, text, and sound. He has most recently performed sets for solo voice and electronics at the Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco; his work is currently included in Eb/N0 at MacArthur B Arthur, Oakland and will be included in the upcoming exhibition A Floorless Room Without Walls at The Lab, San Francisco. Joseph is a second-year graduate student at Mills College working towards his MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media. http://www.rosenklang.com.
ROB SEABACK
Robert Seaback (b. 1985) is a guitarist and composer who has worked in a variety of styles. He received a B.S. in Music Technology from Northeastern University, Boston, where he studied composition with Ron Bruce Smith and Mike Frengel, and classical guitar with Robert Ward. He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Composition at Mills College in Oakland, CA. His work has been presented at national and international festivals such as the ICMC, the ISCM World New Music Days, the SEAMUS Conference, and the EMUfest of the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, Rome. Rob was recently awarded first place in the ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition at the 2011 Conference in Miami.
CHRISTINA STANLEY
Christina Stanley is a violinist, composer and candidate for the MFA in improvisation at Mills College. She has studied violin with David Abel and Daniel Kobialka and composition with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell and John Bischoff. Inspired by metaphor, memory and psyche as well as the world of the physically tangible, her compositions explore memory, intuition and color, both aural and visual.
DANIEL STEFFEY
Daniel Steffey has just released a new album of electronic works titled "Chloros" available on Edgetone Records. His website is http://www.noisefromtheunderground.com.
MOLLY TASCONE
Molly Tascone has been an actor and vocalist for over 15 years. She received her undergraduate degree in Theater from Ohio Wesleyan, and her Master’s in InterArts from SF State. She is currently lead vocalist for Eddie the Rat.
MICHAEL WALKER
Born and raised in Des Moines, IA (Iowa). Studied Music at Wesleyan University. Studies Music at Mills College.
CARSON WHITLEY
Encephalous, absurdist, plunderphonic musician, media mangler, and spatial audio diffusionist. Carson Whitley is a composer/performer/programmer of electronic music. He holds a BA in Music Synthesis from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA and is currently in the process of completing an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College. His music has been described as “never static, always evolving, while simultaneously riding the edge of madness and terror”.
ANDREA WILLIAMS
Andrea Williams is an artist and composer currently living in Oakland, CA. She utilizes site-specific elements and perceptual cues to reveal the unseen connections between people and their environment. Her compositions make use of field recordings, instruments, computer technologies and the sounds of the performance space itself. She has led numerous soundwalks in New York City and the Bay Area, and has shown and performed both solo and with various musicians at galleries and alternative spaces, most recently the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, Diapason Gallery, NPR, Fountain Miami Art Fair, and the Mamori sound artist residency in the Amazon rainforest. Andrea is a founding member of the New York Society for Acoustic Ecology and is currently working towards her MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College. www.listeninglistening.com
JENNIFER WILSEY
Jennifer Wilsey performs, composes and teaches music with a focus on improvisation, polyrhythm, and Deep Listening® practices. In addition to being active as a concert percussionist, Jennifer has performed with diverse artists and ensembles including Timeless Pulse (with Pauline Oliveros, Thomas Buckner, George Marsh, and David Wessel), The Good Sound Band (Loren Rush, Janis Mattox and others), Petr Kotik and the SEM Ensemble, W. Allaudin Mathieu, Anna Halprin, and Stuart Dempster. Jennifer’s recent recordings include: Timeless Pulse Live at CNMAT, 2002 (Deep Listening); Timeless Pulse Quintet (Mutable, 2007); Timeless Pulse Trio (2x vinyl LP on Taiga Records, 2010); and The Bloom (Cold Mountain Music, 2011). As an educator, Jennifer teaches percussion, percussion pedagogy, and directs the Improvisation and Percussion Ensembles at Sonoma State University.
PETER WONG
peterwong releases under the name “amateur sonic laboratory” ( http://asl.hapahaus.com ), and has recently performed as one half of the noise improvisation duo TELEPHARB.
ANNA WRAY
Anna Wray, percussionist, is a sophomore at Mills College where she is a Provost Scholar and recipient of the Carroll Donner Commemorative Scholarship. Anna has participated in the United Nations Youth Orchestra (NYC), Westchester (NY) All-County Band, and the Hudson Valley Symphonic Wind Ensemble. She is currently working on “Cordelia” a premiere by the NOH Theatre in San Francisco and is a member of the Willie Winant Percussion Group.
GREG ZIFCAK
Greg Zifcak is a San Francisco sound and video artist currently pursuing an MFA in Electronic Music at Mills College.