Biography-  Kyle Gann, born 1955 in Dallas, Texas, is a composer and was new-music critic for the Village Voice from 1986 to 2005. Since 1997 he has taught music history and theory at Bard College. He is the author of The Music of Conlon Nancarrow (Cambridge University Press, 1995), American Music in the 20th Century (Schirmer Books, 1997), and Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice (University of California Press, 2006).

Gann studied composition with Ben Johnston, Morton Feldman, and Peter Gena, and his music is often microtonal, using up to 37 pitches per octave. His rhythmic language, based on differing successive and simultaneous tempos, was developed from his study of Hopi, Zuni, and Pueblo Indian musics. His music has been performed on the New Music America, Bang on a Can, and Spoleto festivals. His major works include Sunken City, a piano concerto commissioned by the Orkest de Volharding in Amsterdam; Transcendental Sonnets, a 35-minute work for choir and orchestra commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir; The Planets, commissioned by the Relache ensemble via Music in Motion and continued under a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artists' Fellowship; and The Hudson River Trilogy, a trio of microtonal chamber operas written with librettist Jeffrey Sichel, the first of which, Cinderella's Bad Magic, was premiered in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In addition to Bard, Gann has taught at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, the School of the Art Instutute of Chicago, and Bucknell University. His writings include more than 2400 articles for more than 45 publications, including scholarly articles on La Monte Young (in Perspectives of New Music), Henry Cowell, Mikel Rouse, and other American composers. He writes the "American Composer" column for Chamber Music magazine, and he was awarded the Stagebill Award (1999) and Deems-Taylor Award (2003) for music criticism. His music is available on the New Albion, New World, Cold Blue, Lovely Music, New Tone, and Monroe Street labels. In 2003, the American Music Center awarded Gann its Letter of Distinction, along with Steve Reich, Wayne Shorter, and George Crumb.

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Kraig Grady

Website-  http://anaphoria.com/index.html

Biography-  KRAIG GRADY has presented his work at the Norton Simon Museum of Art, the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, the Pacific Asia Museum, the Chateau de la Napoule - France, California Institute of the Arts, Pomona College, Pierce College, Villa Aurora Foundation for European American Relations, the Schindler House, Beyond Baroque, the Brand Library, New Langton Arts, as well as numerous live performances on KPFK, KCRW, and KXLU. His work was also presented as part of the LA Philharmonic's American Music Weekend as well as New Music America. He has been nominated 4 times for the L. A. WEEKLY Music Award best uncategorizable artist and was chosen by BUZZ Magazine as one of the 100 coolest persons in Los Angeles.

Born in Montebello, Ca. While still in his teens, he realized he had an overwhelming urge to be a composer. After studies with Nickolas Slonimsky, Dean Drumond, Dorrance Stalvey (all briefly) and Byong-Kon Kim (longer) he produced his earliest compositions. Since meeting Erv Wilson in 1975, he has composed and performed in alternative tunings of Wilson's. In the 80's Kraig Grady (along with Keith Barefoot) became one of the first to revive the combination of live music with silent film. He was responsible for the films as well as the music. In 1990 with the opera "War and Pieces" film retreated to a background for live performers. Soon afterwards was his first exposure to the music of Anaphoria Island where he took up residence, on and off, for a period of three years. On his return he found himself being asked to act as a liaison between Anaphoria and North America. In this role he has produced numerous solo and ensemble works and nine shadow plays; TEN BLACK EYE I & II, BLACK EYE MERU, HER STIRRING STONE, THEIR VENTURES BEYOND THE HORIZONS, THE STOLEN STARS, FRENZY AT THE ROYAL THRESHOLD, THE QUIET EROW, and THE PILGRIMAGE OF MIRRORS.

Milan Gustar

Website-  www.noise.cz/summasummarum

Biography-  Milan Gustar is an interdisciplinary researcher, artist and technologist. Born in Czechoslovakia, lives in Praha. As a composer he works mostly in the areas of minimalism, microtonality and algorithmic composition.

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Alois Haba

Biography-  ALOIS HABA (born 21.6.1893 in Vizovice, died 18. ll. 1973 in Prague), Czech composer, music theoretician, teacher and organiser, is one of the creators of new tonal systems on the basis of intervals of less than a half-tone (quarter-tone, fifth-tone and sixth-tone). Haba introduced these microtonal systems into music both practically and theoretically, tying up independently with the first tentative compositional and theoretical quarter-tone attempts of Stein, Moellendorf and Mager. Haba is so far the only composer to have written microtonal compositions on a melodic-harmonic base, in all forms of modern music and for the most varied instrumental and vocal content. For this he used on the one hand traditional instruments, but he also proposed new instruments - quarter-tone pianos, the quarter-tone harmonium, quarter-tone clarinets, quarter- tone trumpets, the sixth-tone harmonium, which were manufactured by Czech and German firms of instrument- makers. Haba's microtonal systems are based on the complete utilisation of all tones of the microtonal series. Haba does not see these microtones of his as new interval values but as alterations in scale and non-scale intervals of the half-tone system by which he wishes only to emphasise the content aspect of his music. From the theoretical point of view Haba carried out the mechanical division of the octave into equal microintervals. Haba anchors this musicality inspirationally and musically in his striking native region of Moravian Wallachia, in the songs of which archaic manners of interpretation including singing in microintervals have been retained. Haba also composed in the half-tone system.

During his time with the Universal Edition publishers (1918-1920) he became a fan of Schoenberg's harmonic radicalism with its "semitone" chords and aggressive intervals of small seconds, large sevenths and small ninths. Basically however, he rejected Schoenberg's free and organised "atonality" (with "twelve only mutually relating tones") which he replaced with the principle of tonal centrality (with the relation of the tones and chords to the tone or chord centre). In melody and rhythm Haba thinks independently of Schoenberg. He does not take so much pleasure in abrupt (unmelodic) intervals, the melody of his compositions is fluent and lyrical. Haba began both his amateur and professional careers as a musician and an instrumentalist. He played the violin and the double bass in his father's folk orchestra and in the pupils' orchestra of the teaching institute in Kromeriz (1908 -1912). Even before entering the master's class in composition of V. Novak (1914) he took, the State examination in the violin and thus gained; his first professional qualification. These first professions of Haba help to explain his life-long love of instrumental music. The instrument does not perhaps exist for which he did not write a composition or at least use it in a chamber ensemble. Instrumental chamber music also forms a landmark in Haba's creativity. Haba came from a region which is known for its melodic and expressive speech. The characteristic alternation of short and long syllables in words, the melodious vaulting of sentences and phrases became in the case of Haba, as earlier in the case of Janacek, an inseparable and constant characteristic of his verbal expression. He had a sense for the beauty and lyricism of his native language as a composer also. Haba's first great vocal work, the opera "Mother", opus 35 (1929), immediately presents him as an eager and independent follower of Janacek. Haba's airs and songs grow organically from the melodious flow of speech, which he was also able to transpose stylistically into music. After the time of his studies under V. Novak (1914 -15) and later under F. Schreker (1918 - 22) Haba educated himself musically on his own. His theoretical interest in everything new had a deeper sense.

He never ceased to ask himself questions about the sense of musical creativity, the real existence of which is created by the structural tonal components. He was musician and thinker in one person. At the time of the struggles for a socially and nationally just society this thinking of Haba's was enriched by traits which ranked him among the leading artistic supporters of socialist ideas in musical creativity and in musical life as a whole. As early as the 'twenties he was one of the supporters of "pure" music. The quarter-tone opera "Mother", opus 35, with its socially motivated glorification of the ordinary man and his faith in justice, is however the start of a line of Haba's socially and socialistically committed works, the material of which reflects the struggle of the democratic forces against fascism and the regressive aspects of the supreme capitalist society. For Haba the composer and the theorist it was typical that he did not link this humanistic mission of his work with ephemeral concessions which would have weakened the clarity and penetration of the style and language of his music.

He saw the newness of music and ideas in unity as an divisible aesthetic axiom and as the prerequisite for the lasting cultural and social effect of his work. From 1923 onwards Haba lived permanently in Prague. Through his compositions, his work as a teacher at the State Music Conservatory and the Academy of Arts and Music in Prague (up to 1950), his organisational activity in music societies (the Society for Modern Music, Pritomnost (The Present), the Syndicate of Czech Composers, the Union of Czechoslovak Composers) and his work as a director in the Great Opera of 5th May (today the Smetana Theatre) he had a penetrating effect on contemporary musical life.

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Jeff Harrington

Website- http://parnasse.com/jh/blog/

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Neil Haverstick

Website- www.microstick.net or www.myspace.com/microstick

Biography-  Neil Haverstick was born on September 22, 1951, in St. Louis, Missouri, and started playing guitar in 1965, being highly moved by the music of the Beatles, Yardbirds, Cream, and the general musical atmosphere of the 1960's. Haverstick is a guitarist, composer, author, and instructor... here's a few essentials for you press folks...

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Jeff Herriott

Website- www.myspace.com/jeffherriott

Biography- I am a composer, interested in all kinds of music, though I primarily compose concert pieces for chamber ensembles with electronics.

I have also been working extensively with video in the past couple of years as well as live electronics in performance. I have been performing live electronics with the group Sonict at UW-Whitewater for the past few years. More about Sonict can be found at http://sonictensemble.com

Additionally, I am the host of a weekly radio show that airs on 91.7 FM, WSUW, Whitewater, WI, which can also be found online at http://wsuw.org. The radio blog is hosted on this page. The show currently airs Tuesdays from 4-6 PM CST.

My professional blog can be found at http://bpretty.livejournal.com

Joel David Hickman

Website-  http://www.myspace.com/joeldavidhickman

Biography-  Joel David Hickman was born in Valparaiso, Indiana and currently lives in Hebron, Indiana. Joel has many years of composing, performing, and recording in various classical and rock ensembles. He has written many compositions for solo guitar and piano as well as compositions for various acoustic and electric ensembles and other solo instruments in the classical style. He is currently composing works for microtonal instruments and has been working/studing in different temperaments for various string and keyboard instruments. Joel has a Bachelor?s Degree in Musical Performance (Classical Guitar) from Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University and a certificate in recording engineering from The Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio. He studied classical guitar with Paul Henry and composition with Robert Lombardo at Chicago Musical College. He plans on continuing his education and will be working on his Master?s Degree in the near future. He has been teaching music privately for over 15 years and at Chantal?s Music Institute for children in Valparaiso, Indiana for over 5 years instructing guitar and piano. He taught classical guitar, basic guitar, and bass at Concordia University in River Forest, Illinois and has many private students in different styles and instruments in the Northwestern Indiana area. He started playing and performing music at the age of 10 and played the recorder and trombone in Lowell public schools. He started playing the guitar. bass, and piano at the age of 16 and was in many various progressive rock ensembles at this time. Joel is currently in the progressive rock ensemble ?Dalet-Yod? where he performs and composes on the guitar, bass, and baritone guitar. In 1992, he met Steve Piscione and formed a rock band called ?Project Arakus? They composed and performed songs and made a demo tape. Joel and Steve went on to different ensembles. In early 2000, Steve asked Joel to join ?Dalet-Yod? and he performed on the disc, ?From The Hands Of Lilith? which was released on Seraph Records in Chicago, Illinois on September 1, 2001. They are working on a new CD to be released in the near future. Go to http://www.dalet-yod.com for more band information. Joel and Steve have also performed and recorded in a progressive acoustic guitar duo called ?Nylon Steel?. They have two self-released CDs so far in this project. Joel is also in a progressive/experimental classical project with Mike Pancini simply called ?The Hickman/Pancini Project?. On their first CD release ?Voyaging Clockwise Off The Symboled Harbour? (2002), Joel performed and composed on the piano and Mike performed and composed on the violin. They are working on new CDs for 2005. They will be performing their newest compositions at weddings and other places that will have them perform. Joel has been composing and recording for the classical guitar/piano and other instruments and plans on releasing solo CDs for these works in 2005.

Aaron Andrew Hunt

Website-  http://www.h-pi.com/about.html

Biography-  I am the inventor of H-Pi products and the owner of H-Pi Instruments. It has been a dream of mine to give musicians tools to explore what I believe to be the most fundamental frontier still existing in music ? pitch. I have realized this dream with the help of MIDI Gadgets Boutique (MGB), whose products I also sell through this website. I am privileged to work closely with MGB in Bulgaria, where the internal electronics of each Hp instrument are designed and manufactured. I live in Illinois, where the electronics are kept on hand to fill orders. Each order requires some lead time for manual construction of the enclosure, assembly of mechanical elements, and testing of the unit. H-Pi  instruments are made by hand, and they are also made with heart. It is my sincere hope that an H-Pi  instrument will inspire your creativity and help you to realize your art. ? Aaron Andrew Hunt

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Charles Ives

Website- www.charlesives.org

Biography-  Born in Danbury, Connecticut on 20 October 1874, Charles Ives pursued what is perhaps one of the most extraordinary and paradoxical careers in American music history. Businessman by day and composer by night, Ives's vast output has gradually brought him recognition as the most original and significant American composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, Ives sought a highly personalized musical expression through the most innovative and radical technical means possible. A fascination with bi-tonal forms, polyrhythms, and quotation was nurtured by his father who Ives would later acknowledge as the primary creative influence on his musical style. Studies at Yale with Horatio Parker guided an expert control overlarge-scale forms.

Ironically, much of Ives's work would not be heard until his virtual retirement from music and business in 1930 due to severe health problems. The conductor Nicolas Slonimsky, music critic Henry Bellamann, pianist John Kirkpatrick (who performed the Concord Sonata at its triumphant premiere in New York in 1939), and the composer Lou Harrison (who conducted the premiere of the Symphony No. 3) played a key role in introducing Ives's music to a wider audience. Henry Cowell was perhaps the most significant figure in fostering public and critical attention for Ives's music, publishing several of the composer's works in his New Music Quarterly.

In 1947, Ives was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 3, according him a much deserved modicum of international renown. Soon after, his works were taken up and championed by such leading conductors as Leonard Bernstein and, at his death in 1954, he had witnessed a rise from obscurity to a position of unsurpassed eminence among the world's leading performers and musical institutions.

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Aaron Krister Johnson

Biography-  Aaron Krister Johnson is a Chicago-based multi-keyboardist, teacher and composer. Ever eclectic and multi-faceted as a keyboard artist, Mr. Johnson's experience ranges from the Western classical keyboard tradition, to folk music and to modern electro-acoustic free improvisation. The Chicago Sun-Times called his composition 'evocative', and his keyboard improvisations with have been hailed by Keyboard Magazine as "challenging and creative". His work has been hailed by Chicagocritic.com, the Chicago Tribune, the Windy City Times, and the online music journal Tokafi.com

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Skip La Plante

Biography-  Skip La Plante invents, builds, composes for, performs on and teaches with musical instruments built from trash. Born in Boston in 1951, graduated from Princeton in 1973. Has lived in NYC since 1975 where he has composed extensively for dance and theater. With Carole Weber he founded the composers collective MUSIC FOR HOMEMADE INSTRUMENTS in 1975. Played with NY's Javanese gamelan Kusuma Laras for 20 years beginning in the mid 1980s. Lived in Java in 1989-90 mostly studying gamelan making. Has been working primarily as a teaching artist for about 15 years, specializing in making acoustics comprehensible to elementary school students. See bashthetrash.com. for more information. Has long been a member of the core ensemble of American Festival of Microtonal Music, where his role is often to constuct instruments such as Partch's kithara or Julian Carillo's 96 pitch per octave harp and then perform on these instruments. Not committed to any particular tuning system or music that even requires tuning systems, nonetheless he may well have created the most extensive body of compositions in 17 pitch per octave equal temperament.  Attempts to stay sane by backpacking extensively, eating raspberries wherever he finds them.

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Bryan Lowe

Biography-  Bryan Lowe is a classically trained musician who has worked in classical radio broadcasting since he was 15. He is currently Program Director of Seattle's Classical KING FM. His daily over-exposure to classical standards has forced his own musical explorations farther afield into the music of India and microtonal music. He is also a collector of instruments, including the Sonar Axe, Haken Continuum, Axis 64 harmonic table keyboard, the h-pi music TBX1, theremin, and theremin cello.

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Charles Lucy

Website-  http://www.lucytune.com

Biography-  During the 1980's Charles Lucy was exploring alternative musical tuning systems He wished to find a way to produce music which would sound extremely consonant and produce the harmonies, which he knew lay beyond the limits of Western twelve-noted tuning. He was directed to the writings of John 'Longitude' Harrison (1693 - 1776), by Mr. Chew, a curator at the Science Museum in South Kensington, London, England, who told Lucy that John 'Longitude' Harrison had proposed a tuning system derived from the mathematics of pi. Lucy found copies of Harrison's eighteenth-century books in the ClockMakers' Library in the City of London, and following Harrison's description modified instruments to play the tunings exactly as John Harrison proposed . Lucy continued his research with many different musical instruments and computer applications to develop a tuning system which nowadays is known as LucyTuning.

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Rick McGowan

Website-  http://rm-and-jo.laughingsquid.org

Biography-  Rick McGowan was raised in Washington state. He studied under William O Smith and Alan Dorsey at the University of Washington, 1976-78. Moved to Berkeley California in 1978. Has been a software engineer since 1983, with a 5 year stint in Japan 1986-1990. Currently lives in San Jose. 

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Brian McLaren

UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!

Shahin Mohajeri

Website-  http://240edo.googlepages.com/mymusic

Biography-  Shaahin mohajeri or Shahin mohajeri, born 26 july 1971 in Tehran, Iran is a Tombak player, Tombak Researcher and microtonal composer.He has B.A in geology from tehran university.He began studying tombak under supervision of Nasser Farhangfar,master of tombak,but His Studies of tombak sound and fingering,tombak musical analysis and his arrhythmic musical ideas have led him to a different musical world of tombak and tombak playing. He composes music for solo of tombak and tombak group with different pitches , ranging from traditional to his personal style. He is working on a new notation system for tombak as a result of acoustical parameters and a system of fingering classification for this drum . On 23 Dec 2006 Shaahin mohajeri lectured on tombak history,organology,acoustics and tunable tombak of Dr.Hossein omoumi in the Tehran Conservatory of Music.

As a microtonalist , he works on different tuning systems such as :

• Equal divisions of length(EDL)
• Arithmetic irrational divisions of octave AIDO(or nonoctave,interval)
• Arithmetic rational divisions of octave ARDO(or nonoctave,interval)
• Equal divisions of octave
• Arithmetic divisions of length (ADL)

Shaahin mohajeri believes that 96-EDO is a good system for intervallic structure of persian music with more accurate estimation than ali naqi vaziri's 24-EDO system.Now,He is working on a microtonal notation system based on 96-EDO for persian music and on a model for tuning systems classification based on divisions of octavic or nonoctavic musical scales and systems.

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Ron Nagorcka

Website-  http://www.ronnagorcka.id.au/

Biography-  Composer, performer, and naturalist Ron Nagorcka (born 1948) spent much of his childhood exploring music and the natural world on a sheep farm in Western Victoria (Australia). He went on to study history, pipe organ with Sergio de Pieri, harpsichord with Max Cooke, and composition with Keith Humble, Ian Bonighton and Jean-Charles Francois at Melbourne University and then composition and electronic music at the University of California San Diego, where his teachers included Kenneth Gaburo, Pauline Oliveros, Bob Ericson, and John Silber. During the 1970s he was active as a composer in Melbourne where he founded the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre - providing a venue of considerable importance to many emerging composers and musicians of the time - and taught composition at the Melbourne State College. 

In 1986 he visited Tasmania as a tutor at the National Young Composers School in Hobart, and decided to move to the island. Since 1988 he has been living and working in a remote forest in northern Tasmania, where he has built his own house and solar-powered studio. 

As an active Field Naturalist, he takes a keen interest in the science, as well as the aesthetics of the Australian bush and along with David Stewart of ?Naturesound Australia? has produced a comprehensive identification CD for Tasmanian birds. He has also made several camping trips to inland Australia to collect the sounds of Australian wildlife.

His recordings of nature also become the basis for many of his compositions. The melodies, rhythms, even the instrumental quality of the music are generated by painstaking listening and analysis of natural Australian soundscapes.

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Pauline Oliveros

Website-  http://www.deeplistening.org/pauline/

Biography-  "Through Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening I finally know what harmony is....It's about the pleasure of making music." John Cage 1989 

Pauline Oliveros' life as a composer, performer and humanitarian is about opening her own and others' sensibilities it the many facets of sound. Since the 1960's she has influenced American Music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. Many credit her with being the founder of present day meditative music. All of Oliveros' work emphasizes musicianship, attention strategies, and improvisational skills.  

She has been celebrated worldwide. During the 1960's John Rockwell named her work Bye Bye Butterfly as one of the most significant of that decade. In the 70's she represented the U.S. at the World's Fair in Osaka, Japan; during the 80's she was honored with a retrospective at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.: the 1990's began with a letter of distinction from the American Music Center presented at Lincoln Center in New York: In 2000 the 50th anniversary of her work was celebrated with the commissioning and performance of her Lunar Opera:Deep Listening For_tunes. Oliveros work is available on numerous recordings produced by companies internationally. Sounding the Margins (as it was) - a forty year retrospective will be released soon in a six CD boxed set from Deep Listening.

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Frank J. Oteri

Website- http://www.newmusicbox.org/

Biography-  Frank J. Oteri's voracious musical appetite finds many avenues of expression, but ultimately all lead back to his musical compositions which range from full-evening stage works to chamber and solo compositions. In all of these works, Oteri (b. May 12, 1964) combines emotional directness with an obsession for formal processes incorporating techniques from styles of music as seemingly-unrelated as minimalism, serialism, Broadway show music and bluegrass. His music has been performed in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall and the Knitting Factory in New York City to the Theatre Royal in Bath, England, and the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art to a Baptist church in the middle of Emanuel County, Georgia. MACHUNAS (http://www.machunas.com/), a "performance oratorio in four colors" created in collaboration with Lucio Pozzi and inspired by the life of Fluxus-founder George Maciunas, received its world premiere in August 2005 at the Contemporary Arts Center in Vilnius, Lithuania as part of the International Christopher Summer Festival conducted by Donatas Katkus.  

Among Oteri's other compositions are: In Watermelon Sugar (a Richard Brautigan opera in 31-tone equal temperament); The Return of the Rivers (a Brautigan cycle for solo voice and keyboards); Two Transfers (a Brautigan cycle for tenor and string quartet); Pity The Morning Light That Refuses to Wait for Dawn (a Brautigan requiem for soloists, chorus and orchestra); if by yes His most recent completed composition is Imagined Overtures (2005) for rock band in 36-tone equal temperament which was first performed by Capital M on March 21, 2006 at the Cutting Room as part of their World Premieres Extravaganza; the group has subsequently performed the piece at Galapagos and Tonic as part of FULL FORCE: The New Rock Complexity Festival. 

Other musicians who have performed Oteri's works include pianists by Sarah Cahill, Jenny Lin and Guy Livingston, guitarist Dominic Frasca, Pentasonic Winds, Sylvan Winds, the Roebling String Quartet and the Magellan String Quartet. His Just Salsa, for microtonal salsa band in just intonation premiered at the American Festival of Microtonal Music, will be issued on a forthcoming CD released by the PITCH label. 

In addition to his activities as a composer, Oteri is a frequently published music journalist, a pre-concert lecturer at venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Columbia University's Miller Theatre, and the Editor of NewMusicBox (http://www.newmusicbox.org/), the Web magazine from the American Music Center. Described as "passionate and knowledgeable" in the San Francisco Chronicle, Oteri is an outspoken crusader for new music who has given presentations about the importance of contemporary music and the breaking down of musical barriers on television and radio talk shows as well as in conferences of musical organizations around the world. His musical articles have appeared in BBC Music, Chamber Music, Ear Magazine, Stagebill/Playbill, Symphony, Time Out New York and the Revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and his comments about music have been quoted in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Billboard, the Guardian (U.K.) and Jazz Times, among other publications. He has served as the Master of Ceremonies for ASCAP's Thru The Walls showcase in New York City and Meet The Composer's The Works in Minneapolis. Oteri holds a B.A. and a M.A. (in Ethnomusicology) from Columbia University where he served as Classical Music Director and World Music Director for WKCR-FM. 

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Harry Partch

Website-  www.harrypartch.com

Biography-  Harry Partch (1901-1974), one of the greatest and most individualistic composers of all time, was not only a great composer, but an innovative theorist who broke through the shackles of many centuries of one tuning system for all of Western music, a music instrument inventor who created dozens of incredible instruments for the performance of his music, and a musical dramatist who created his own texts and dance/theatre extravaganzas based on everything from Greek mythology to his own experiences as a hobo. Between 1930 and 1972, he created one of the most amazing bodies of sensually alluring and emotionally powerful music of the 20th century: music dramas, dance theater, multi-media extravaganzas, vocal music and chamber music---mostly all performed on the instruments he built himself.  

With parents who were former missionaries to China, living in isolated areas of the American southwest, Partch, as a child, was exposed to a variety of influences from Asian to Native American. After dropping out of the University of Southern California, he began to study on his own and to question the tuning and philosophical foundations of Western music. During and after the Great Depression, he was a hobo and itinerant worker and rode the trains, keeping a musical notebook of his experiences, which he later set to music. 

In 1930 Partch broke with Western European tradition and forged a new music based on a more primal, corporeal integration of the elements of speech with music, using principles of natural acoustic resonance (just intobnation) and expanded melodic and harmonic possibilities. He began to first adapt guitars and violas to play his music, and then began to build new instruments in a new microtonal tuning system. He built over 25 instruments, plus numerous small hand instruments, and became a brilliant spokesman for his ideas. Largely ignored by the standard musical institutions during his lifetime, he criticized concert traditions, the roles of the performer and composer, the role of music in society, the 12-tone equal-temperament scale and the concept of "pure" or abstract music. To explain his philosophical and intonational ideas, he wrote a treatise, Genesis of a Music, which has served as a primary source of information and inspiration to many musicians for the last half century.

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Joseph Pehrson

Website-  http://users.rcn.com/jpehrson/JosephPehrson.html; http://www.soundclick.com/josephpehrson 

Biography-  Composer-pianist (b. Detroit, 1950) has written works for a wide variety of media including orchestra and chamber works. They have been performed at numerous venues including Merkin Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Symphony Space in New York and throughout the U.S., Eastern Europe and Russia. Since 1983 Mr. Pehrson has been co-director of the Composers Concordance in New York. He studied at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan (DMA 1981). Pehrson's teachers included composers Leslie Bassett, Joseph Schwantner, and, informally, Otto Luening and Elie Siegmeister in New York. As of 2007, he has written more than 14 hours of music.

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Samuel Pellman

Website-  http://www.musicfromspace.com

Bio-  Samuel Pellman was born in 1953 in Sidney, Ohio. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he studied composition with David Cope, and an M.F.A. and D.M.A. from Cornell University, where he studied with Karel Husa and Robert Palmer. Many of his works may be heard on recordings by the Musical Heritage Society, the Cornell University Wind Ensemble, Move Records, and innova Records, and much of his music is published by the Continental Music Press and Wesleyan Music Press. He is also the author of An Introduction to the Creation of Electroacoustic Music, a widely-adopted textbook published by Wadsworth, Inc. Presently he is a Professor of Music at Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York, where he teaches theory and composition and is director of the Studio for Digital Music.

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Larry Polansky

Website-  http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~larry/ 

Biography-  New York City native Larry Polansky is a composer of stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, piano, and electroacoustic works that have been heard throughout the Americas and in Europe. In describing his range of musical activity, he says, ?I work in instrumental and electronic musics. I write scores, software, and perform frequently in a wide variety of styles, contexts.? He is an innovator in the way he incorporates technology into his music-making, ??the unique thing that I?m known for is using Artificial Intelligence as a compositional partner? or getting the computer to do something a human would do.? Polansky is one of three co-authors (with Phil Burk and David Rosenboom) of the widely used computer music language HMSL (Hierarchical Music Specification Language), and his writings on music theory have appeared in numerous journals. 

Polansky has recorded six compact disks of his original compositions and appears on many others as accompanist and in anthologies. In 2002, Polansky released the recording ?Four Voice Canons? and in 2004 ?Trios,? a collaboration with Douglas Repetto, Tom Eribe, Chris Mann and Christian Wolff. His works can be heard on the web at: http://ea.music.dartmouth.edu/~larry/archive.recordings.html

Polansky also publishes, produces and distributes experimental and unusual works of other composers through Frog Peak Music, a composer?s collective that he co-founded in 1982. Frog Peak has produced a great many books, CDs, scores, and projects for over 100 composers and has become the main experimental music producer in the world, publishing both established and unknown composers. 

As a performer he conducts and plays guitar, mandolin, electronics, gend?art of gamelan) and many other instruments. Although passionate about exploring the new, he holds a deep interest in traditional music. He sings with his family in the Enfield Shaker Choir, which performs all over the world. He believes, ?you should dig as deep as possible and try to glean the most beautiful features of where you are.? Polansky values the strong cultural identity of the people in his adopted state. ?NH?s virtue is in its extraordinary deep-thinking people who feel very rooted here,? he explains. ??being in New Hampshire for so long has informed, nuanced, and deeply affected my work, not just the environment, but the people, the ideas I?ve found here, and much of the culture.?

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Brian Redfern

Website-

Bio-

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Johnny Reinhard

Website-  http://www.afmm.org/

Biography-  Johnny Reinhard, composer, conductor, bassoonist, director and founder of the American Festival of Microtonal Music (AFMM), is a native New Yorker specializing in all manner of microtonal performance. Additionally, Reinhard performs on the recorder, and is a vocalist specializing in the works of American microtonal pioneer Harry Partch. He has given numerous full recitals, in New York, Seattle, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Montreal, Amsterdam, Sapporo, Moscow, and Kazan.

Of particular interest is his finishing important works of composers in exemplary performance. These include his realization and subsequent premiere performance of Charles Ives?s ?Universe Symphony? in 1996 in New York?s Lincoln Center, and the premiere in of Edgard Varٷ?s ?Graphs and Time? in 1987 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Reinhard?s transcription of Ivan Wyschnegradsky?s ?Meditation sur deux themes? (1917) for bassoon and piano was recorded on ?Between the Keys? for Newport Classic (now Sony), and has been re-recorded for Solyd Records (Russia). Among his world premieres are Lou Harrison?s ?Simfony in Free Style,? Terry Riley?s ?In C in Just Intonation,? Percey Grainger?s ?Free Music? for 4 Theremin, the original version of Harry Partch?s ?Ulysses Departs From the Edge of the World? for trumpet, double bass and boobams, and Mordecai Sandberg?s orchestral ?Psalm 51.? 

Johnny Reinhard?s original compositions feature polymicrotonality ? either the active mixing of microtonal tunings in a single composition, or the invention of brand new pitch relationships (e.g., harmonic 17, quadratic prime just intonation, collapsed just intonation). Among his works are a symphony (?Middle-earth?), cello concerto (?Odysseus?), string quartet (?Cosmic Rays?), a large number of virtuoso solo pieces for different instruments in distinctive tunings, and numerous works featuring unusual timbres and requiring different degrees of improvisation. Johnny Reinhard?s compositions can be heard on the ?Raven? album, available from www.stereosociety.com. He has just completed three new works for bass trombonist Dave Taylor.

Reinhard has performed as a soloist throughout Europe and the United States, Japan, Canada, and Russia. He has played with such international virtuosi as kavalist Theodossii Spassov (Bulgaria), oboist Bram Kreeftmeijer (The Netherlands), saxophonist John Butcher (London), percussionist Rashied Ali (NYC), and Thereminist Lydia Kavina (Russia). In 2002 he was featured on bassoon to critical acclaim by Ornette Coleman for the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival. 

Reinhard is professor of bassoon at New York University, while teaching The Arithmetic of Listening at Bard College. Previously, he taught music composition and theory at C.W. Post, Long Island University, and before that, taught Western Art Music at Columbia University. He has guest lectured on tuning related subjects at Columbia University, New York University, Manhattan School of Music, Hunter College/CUNY, CalArts, San Jose State University, Indiana University, South Dakota State University, the Hamburg Hochschule in Germany, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, and York University in England. Reinhard introduced first performances of Harry Partch?s 43-tone just intonation works in Norway (International Bergen Festival), France (M.A.N.C.A.), Switzerland (RoteFabrik), Italy (Teatro la Fenice), Canada (Toronto, Winnipeg, and St. John?s), and England (London?s Barbican). 

In the early ?90s he published PITCH for the International Microtonalist as a 4-issue set for musicians working independently. In 2004, the AFMM launched its first three PITCH CD titles, available at www.afmm.org. Reinhard?s CD-length cello concerto ?Odysseus.? The second CD features Reinhard playing Bach period works in historic Werckmeister III tuning. And the third features Reinhard conducting original compositions by JuliᮠCarrillo, Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, and Iannis Xenakis. Since, there have been five new titles, featuring Reinhard as thereminst, electric bassoonist, and composer.

Johnny Reinhard hosts New York-based WKCR-FM radio?s popular four-hour Christmas Day ?Microtonal Bach? segment in their annual 10-day Bach Festival. He is an annual guest on John Schaefer?s New Sounds show on WNYC-FM. He was featured in radio programs by radio interviewers Anatol Vieru (Bucharest), Laurie Schwartz (Berlin/RIAS & Sender Frei), PILOTA radio (Bergen), and John Schneider (KPFK Los Angeles).

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Robert Rich

For more information about Robert Rich, visit his website at www.robertrich.com

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Prent Rodgers

Website- http://prodgers13.home.comcast.net/ 

Biography-  I compose and realize microtonal music using the program Csound. Back in the 1970's, I built musical instruments in unusual tuning systems out of metal, wood and balloons. Recently, I began using Csound (info here) on a laptop computer while I travelled. Csound is a terrific tool for working with microtonality, because it allows composers to specify all aspects of each sound, without the limitations of MIDI. I use Csound to assemble samples of conventional instruments with unconventional tunings, but it is also able to work with many different synthesis techniques, including additive synthesis, physical modeling, frequency modulation synthesis, and others. 

Some might say the music is fake but accurate. That is, I take musical instrument samples, and manipulate them on a computer, to product music that could possibly be played by real musicians with real instruments. Lately I've tried to make the illusion as real as possible, while still exploring tuning concepts that would be nearly impossible to play in real life.

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James Sanger

Website-  http://web.mac.com/jamessanger1/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html

Biography-  Having been involved in twelve top 10 single hits and six top 10 albums Writer / Producer James Sanger has worked with some of the biggest selling acts in the past decade.  

James developed, co-wrote, programmed and produced Keane at his rural residential studio over a period of six months after which they got a publishing deal with BMG and were later signed by Ferdy Unger-Hamilton to Universal / Island releasing their debut album ?Hopes and Fears?. Keane has been a top 10 album since going in at No. 1 twelve weeks ago with sales in excess of 2 million so far. James has also co-written eight further tracks, four of which have been released as b-sides and four more due for release on Keane?s next album, the album has since won the Q Award for ?Best Album? and was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.

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Margo Schulter

Biography-  Born in Los Angeles, California, USA, in 1950, Margo Schulter has since 1967 been composing and improvising in medieval and Renaissance European styles. It started when she fell in love with the 16th-century madrigal in a high school music appreciation class, and the teacher invited her to do an independent study on early music. 

However, it was not until 1997-1998 that she took a focused interest in historical tuning systems and began exploring them on a Yahama TX-802 synthesizer. By the year 2000, she was enthusiastically designing "neo-Gothic" or "neomedieval" systems with all regular fifths tempered wide of pure to provide a modern and accentuated variation on medieval Pythagorean tuning. 

This direction led her to a most fruitful musical dialogue of 2001-2002 with veteran microtonalist George Secor concerning his 17-tone well-temperament of 1978. This dialogue included a consideration of neomedieval "fusion" styles drawing on European and Near Eastern tunings and modes, an ongoing theme in her music. 

As both Secor and composer/scholar Daniel Wolf have written, she sees composition or improvisation as a kind of "alternative history" where byroads of creativity not previously taken may be revealed, placing familiar historical landmarks in a new and richer perspective.

She also writes on topics related to music history and tuning systems, for example for the printed publications _1/1_ and _Xenharmonikon_, and as a contributor to the Early Music FAQ edited by Todd McComb of the Medieval Music and Arts Foundation, http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/.  Since 1984, she has lived in Sacramento, California.

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X. J. Scott

Website-  http://www.nonoctave.com/

Biography-  "Once there was a red-headed rodeo queen, a proud, tough hardworking and self-sufficient descendent of Thomas Jefferson who grew up in a primitive shack with no electricity or running water on an isolated cattle ranch in northeastern New Mexico. She was good at math and found her way to working on the Atlas missile project in San Diego where she met another rocket scientist, a wild Kiowa Indian warrior from Texas. They couldn't stand each other, so they resolved this by marriage and also joined the Apollo moon project. Hence was born X. J. Scott, who grew up under nomadic circumstances. By age 10 he was forced to fight bands of savage pirates to the death in hand to hand combat on the high seas. His life ranges from quixotically variegated to stunningly dull with a preference for the latter.  He tends to goats and chickens, doing organic farming because you can't trust the tasteless genetically altered corporate stuff at the supermarket, nor is petroleum based farming sustainable. He speculates that some of the aliens that have bothered him have their provenance in secret government experiments. He's designed VLSI music synthesis chips, invented positional audio processors, and is the force behind the well known Macintosh tuning software "Li'l Miss' Scale Oven (LMSO)". He has a particular attachment to nonoctave tunings and is interested in space and timbre."

Secret 49

Website-  http://secret49.com

Biography-  Two spirits from the swirled realm of Los Angeles. A common interest in all things arcane shimmers throughout the music. The members of Secret 49 met at Dung Mummy, which is a series of Audio-Visual concerts hosted by the groovy Hop-Frog Kollectiv in the Los Angeles area.

Frater Krishna Hermes has performed solo at Dung Mummy as well as shows with Adam of the Macro-Eden Records music label. He played guitar with Wadada Leo Smith's group Nda Kulture while taking his MFA at CalArts, and before that was the guitarist for seminal instrumental jam band, Los Hermanos de Jazz. He's an intiate of the OTO and a Scottish Rite freemason, as well as a practitioner of kundalini yoga.

Blake Thee Honey Twin has performed with the Master Musicians of Hop-Frog, Refrigerator Mothers, Hop-Frog's Drum Jester Devotional, and Catastrophic Mermaids On Parade. His lyrics are inspired by the stories of his ancient, pre-Christian ancestors and the realm of dreams or surrealism.

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Dave Seidel

Website- http://mysterybear.net

Biography- I studied music theory and composition in the mid-70s with Larry Wallach and Thom Lipiczky at Simon's Rock College, and classical guitar with Edward Flower.  I spent the 80s on New York, where I played electric guitar in the downtown new-music scene, most notably for composers Scott Johnson, Guy Klusevcek, and Lois V Vierk.  I made several recordings for Lois, including the premiere recording of her piece "Go Guitars" for five microtonally-tuned electric guitars on her record Simoom on Phill Niblock's XI label.

These days, I live in New Hampshire where I work as a software engineer, compose and publish ambient microtonal electronic music at http://mysterybear.net, and play electric bass with the free-improvisation band Sisters & Brothers.

For a more complete music bio, see http://mysterybear.net/about/5/bio. For my discography (such as it is) see http://superluminal.com/dave/discography.html 

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Carlo Serafini

Website-   http://www.seraph.it/home.html

Biography-  I was born in Florence, Italy in 1957, started studying pop and jazz music in 1973 with private piano teachers.  Attended the Conservatory of Music of Florence studying percussion and computer music for five years.  In the meantime started working as a pianist and keyboard player around my hometown with jazz and pop bands, working also as piano teacher and jingles writer.  In 1986 won a scholarship to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA, moving over there.  Studied harmony, arranging, composition, acoustics and electronic music.  In 1989 received a diploma "summa cum laude" in Music Synthesis. Afterward worked one year as a lab monitor in the same department from which I had graduated.  In 1990 moved back to Italy working as assistant for Joe Zawinul and David Mash during the "Berklee Summer School at Umbria Jazz Festival" 

Since then I have dedicated myself mostly to electronic music as composer, arranger and sound designer in many different styles of music ranging from jazz to classical, from children songs to new age. See the music page.  I work mostly in my home recording studio, writing and recording my music. 

In 2007 I have been awarded my Master's Degree from the Conservatory of Music of Florence, Italy in Music and New Technology presenting a dissertation on "Technology and Temperament: Hardware, Software and Online Resources for Microtonal Music"

William Sethares (Bill)

Website- http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/index.html

Biography-  Each of us plays several roles in life. Some of my favorite are: researcher, teacher, and musician.

Researcher

"Making noise has always been one of my favorite pastimes, and becoming a grown-up doesn't seem to have changed things much. Being able to combine my love of sound with my official work has been very exciting. You can hear my latest efforts on the "soundtrack" to my book Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale as well as on my CDs XENTONALITY and EXOMUSICOLOGY. I have dabbled in algorithmic music composition, and am particularly interested in alternate tunings. So many tunings, so little time! Or, join us Beyond the Spectrum for a peek at Berg's Angel Concerto. And here are a few of my favorite audio processing algorithms such as a Phase Vocoder and a Channel Vocoder, both in Matlab..." - Bill Sethares 

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Ezra Sims

Website- www.ezrasims.com

Biography-  Ezra Sims is known mainly as a composer of microtonal music. He made his professional debut (with his earlier twelve-note music) on a Composers Forum program, in New York, in 1959. In 1960, he found himself compelled by his ear to begin writing microtonal music, which he has done almost exclusively since then ? aside from several years when he made tape music for dancers, musicians at the time being generally even more afraid of microtones than they are now. His music has been performed from Tokyo to Salzburg. 

He has received various awards ? Guggenheim Fellowship, Koussevitzky commission, Ameri­can Academy of Arts and Letters Award, etc. He has lectured on his music in the US and abroad, most notably at the Hamb?Musikgespr䣨, 1994; the second Naturton Symposium in Heidelberg, 1992; and the 3rd and 4th Symposium, Mikrot?und Ekmelische Musik, at the Hochsch?r Musik und Darstel­lende Kunst Mozarteum, Salzburg, in 1989 & 1991. In 1992-93, he was guest lecturer in the Richter Herf Institut f?ikalische Grundlagenforschung in the Mozarteum. 

He has published articles on his tech­nique in Computer Music Journal, Mikrot?III, Mikrot?IV, Perspectives of New Music, and Ex Tem­pore. 

With Ted Mook, he designed a font, for use with computer printing programs, for his set of accidentals sufficient for 72-note music that has been widely adopted in the field (http://www.mindeartheart.org/MWFS.html). 

He was co-founder -- with Rodney Lister and Scott Wheeler -- of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, of which he was President from 1977-1981, and on its Board of Directors from that time to 2003.

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John Starrett

Website-  http://infohost.nmt.edu/~jstarret/microtone.html

Biography- 

Nicola Visalli

Website-  http://xoomer.virgilio.it/nvisalli 

Biography-  composer nicola visalli meets microtonality in 2002. After first attemps with electronic sounds, he focuses his work on classical instruments, at first string, piano, guita, flute.  His works are performed by the most famous ukranian performers, among them the famous violinist ostap shhutko, really a very talented microtonal performer. his premiere took place at kiev international contemporary music festival in april 2007. His works had good acceptance by ukranian music critics. 

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Randy Winchester

Website-  http://web.mit.edu/randy/www/

Biography- 

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Erling Wold

Composers, send your microtonal works and we will play them!  Student composers are also welcome-

Send your work to jarod.dcamp@cbfgroup.net and give a brief explanation of your piece.  Students please send a brief description of yourself, as well as your piece and who you are studying with. 

Any ideas for the station or the homepage or other suggestions just go ahead and fill out the info below and remember to tell your friends!!!

Once again, here is the link to Microtonal-Radio

Thanks and enjoy!

Jarod DCamp
Fargo, North Dakota