Krissy Bergmark (U.S.) is a tabla player, percussionist, composer, and educator. Bergmark centers her work on bringing tabla to new genres through composition and performance with a grounded understanding of the traditions of the instrument. She has received support through the Jerome Foundation, Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Cedar Cultural Center. She performs as a soloist, with Sprig of That, and with artists across the US and internationally. Bergmark is a professor at Oakton College and studies tabla with Pandit Yogesh Samsi in the Punjab Gharana.

Inga Chinilina (USSR/U.S.) is a multimedia composer. She sees music as an act of translation, a concept she explores in both her academic and creative work. Inga’s research explores how cultural context shapes our perception and representation of auditory experiences. In her creative practice, Inga transforms personal stories into sonic expressions, reflecting a wide range of societal issues, including immigration, womanhood, and the environment. Currently a PhD candidate in Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University, Inga holds a BM in Composition and Jazz Piano Performance from Berklee College of Music and an MFA in Theory and Composition from Brandeis University.

Tim Daemen (Belgium) is a trombonist whose work spans traditional and modern jazz, free improvisation, and global folk influences. He performs regularly with contemporary music ensembles, theater productions, and world-music groups, and leads the jazz quartet Dada Bölüm, known for its dynamic interplay and original compositions. Their debut album, Pre Sentiment, was released in 2017, with a new recording scheduled for late 2025. Tim’s music reflects a strong affinity for exploratory sound and rhythmic nuance. He also teaches trombone and ensemble at several conservatories.

Jonas Engel (Germany) is a saxophonist and composer exploring the intersection of acoustic and electronic sound through extended techniques, instrument building, and preparations. Active in Cologne and Copenhagen, his solo and ensemble work (ENGELTHOMSEN, Lucatelli/Engel/Mahnig, Our Hearts As Thieves) investigates the space between silence, tone, and noise to create multi-layered textures shaped by breath and electronics. He is a part of the Nica Artist Development program, the impakt collective Cologne, and curates festivals and series such as Bruitkasten (APPLAUS Award 2023/24) and KØKØ, connecting free music scenes across Europe.

Noa Fort (U.S./Israel) is an Israeli-born, Brooklyn-based vocalist, pianist, composer, and improviser. As a bandleader, she released critically acclaimed albums and performed at BRIC Jazz Fest, DC Jazz Festival, Vicenza Jazz Fest, Red Sea Jazz Fest and more. She collaborates and shares the stage with greats such as William Parker, Mat Maneri, Chad Taylor, and Satoshi Takeishi. A recipient of the Brooklyn Arts Council grant, she created a free concert series throughout Brooklyn in transitional homes for unhoused people and community gardens. Fort is also a licensed creative arts therapist, board-certified music therapist, and faculty member at the NYU Music Therapy program.

Desiré Graham (U.S.) is a submerging Artist In-Practice from Harlem, NY. Graham was a company member at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, in Italy, from 2019-2022. Graham currently works with Double Edge Theatre, VLA Dance, and Wender Collective as a recurring collaborator. Additionally, Graham curates The Black Residency and Somewhere in Between, practices for Black Queers to discover the use of communal singing, give weight to their vibrational soul, activate, and call on others to join in. Graham is a 2024 Princess Grace Foundation Award winner, having previously received other various honors from MASS MoCA, American Repertory Theater, Connecticut Office of the Arts, and other cultural organizations.

Stefano Grasso (Alum-in-Residence, Italy) is a drummer and contemporary trained percussionist devoted to improvised and creative music. He is featured in over 50 releases for European, American, and Argentine labels, encompassing improvised music, post-rock, jazz, and contemporary music. He took part in Art Omi: Music, 2023, and was artist-in-residence for the Italian Cultural Institute in Córdoba, Argentina, 2024. Grasso is co-founder of Conserere (2016, Milan) and KreativKlang (2024, Basel), collectives dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of improvised music. He is a lecturer at Conservatorio Verdi in Milan (a.y. 2022–24) and at FHNW Musik-Akademie in Basel (a.y. 2025–26).

Samantha Kochis (U.S.) is a Brooklyn-based flutist, improviser, and composer who explores various creative environments as an artist of experimental music. In her creative works, Samantha draws from the tradition of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation to engage sonic conversations with listeners and collaborators alike. Samantha is the co-founder of “Phonotonic,” an artist collective dedicated to building community among experimental and improvising artists who share the experience of gender-based oppression. Samantha has collaborated with artists such as James Newton, Luke Stewart, and gabby fluke-mogul.

Guillermo Leonardini (Bolivia) is a composer and violinist based in La Paz. He writes for acoustic and mixed media. He holds a Master’s degree in Sound Art from the University of Barcelona. Leonardini is a member of Ensemble Inmediato and has collaborated with Ensemble Recherche (Germany), Ensemble 2e2m (France), among others. His music has been performed in Bolivia, Colombia, Germany, and the U.S. He received awards in national composition competitions, including the Adrián Patiño and Contemporary Bolivian Music prizes. His recent works include pieces for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and setups with native instruments, noisy objects, and open forms.

Jimmy Lim (Indonesia/U.S.) is a Boston-based sound artist, composer, and educator whose work explores the intersection of sound, culture, and memory. Blending elements of electronic music, ambient textures, and experimental sound design, his sonic language draws from a broad range of influences, including Javanese Folksongs, Malay Pop, Latin Jazz, and Dance, weaving in practices of visual storytelling and cultural research. Currently an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music, Lim’s creative practice centers on cross-disciplinary collaboration and intergenerational storytelling. Through performance, pedagogy, and production, he engages sound as a medium for connection across genres, cultures, communities, and the self.

Troy Rogers (U.S.) is deeply involved in the creation, performance, and dissemination of early 21st-century semi-nomadic robot herder’s music. His “Robot Rickshaw” is a human-driven cart full of musical robots designed for all-terrain performance scenarios ranging from guerrilla drive-by rapid-fire black-MIDI-burst-spewing dadaist street interventions, to extended duration post-human dronecore therapy sessions. His instruments and performances joyfully teeter between mind-bending wonder and catastrophic failure, underscoring both a skepticism for the chances of contemporary civilization surviving its technological adolescence, and yet an unwavering belief in the power and potential in humans as amplifiers of low probabilistic states.

Matthew Ryals (U.S.) is an award-winning synthesist and composer-improviser based in New York. Working primarily with a modular synthesizer, his music explores improvisation, generative composition, cybernetics, and experiments in archiving. Recognized for his tactile approach to synthesis and innovative use of esoteric techniques, Ryals’ recent accolades include a 2025 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, a 2022–23 New Music USA Award, and a 2021 IEA Electronic Media Residency. He has released music on Infrequent Seams (upcoming), Oxtail Recordings, sound as language, SØVN, 3OP, and more. He also co-curates the Brooklyn experimental music series Artifact.

Niloufar Shiri (Iran/U.S.) is a freelance kamancheh player, composer, and improviser from Tehran, Iran. Her work bridges traditional, experimental, and bedahe (بداهه) music. Her compositions have been performed by JACK Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, ICE, loadbang, Hub New Music, and San Diego Symphony musicians. She has appeared at Mostly Mozart, Ojai, HEAR NOW, Tehran Contemporary Music Festival, Banff, and Angel City Jazz Festival. As a performer and researcher, she’s held residencies at Pomona College, Stanford University, Longy School of Music, and holds degrees from UC San Diego and UC Irvine. She is pursuing her PhD at the University of Minnesota.

Abby Swidler (U.S.), violinist, vocalist, and composer, spins sound into immersive dreamscapes that invite listeners to explore and reflect upon the natural world. They create music for art installations, dance, film, and performance. Abby’s compositions and songs are immersive sonic collages of instruments, voices, earthbound materials, field recordings, and electronics. They are a founding member of the performer/composer collective Diaphanous Ensemble, perform as their solo project tonguetide, and are a member of Iron & Wine. They have been an artist in residence at Banff Center for the Arts, Antenna Cloud Farm, Subcircle Residency, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and were a JACK Quartet Studio artist and Gabriela Lena Frank Academy Bahlest Eeble Reading Fellow. Originally from Missoula, MT, they live in Brooklyn, NY.

Fan-Qi Wu (Taiwan) is an award-winning pipa player from Taiwan. Influenced and inspired by avant-garde music, Scandinavian jazz, and Asian traditional music, she has absorbed different vocabularies and developed her sound in a bold but eclectic way. Fan-Qi’s practice explores the complex interplay between tradition and innovation, identity and culture. She has also developed the pipa and electronic music project Projecting 1+1 and the avant-garde folk music group Wooli Duo for pipa and drums, based on the concept of “re-interpretation”.

Krzysztof Żelichowski (Poland) is a failed composer with many prestigious failures to his name. As a teenager, he was rejected from a public music school in Białystok, Poland, for having no aptitude for music and was told to abandon it. Since then, he wrote many unperformed compositions and, most remarkably, failed to secure a single professional composing commission to this very day. He excels in operatic failures in particular. He continues to fail, and experts agree that he might die even more failed than Vincent van Gogh. He is, without a doubt, one of the composers of the XXIst century.