Alex Braidwood
Alex Braidwood is a sound artist, media designer & design educator. He maintains a practice centered around a process of play, experimentation and research through making. His work explores methods for transforming the relationship between people and the sounds in their environment. He has been an artist in residence in an Australian National Park, on an Iowa farm and at a mid-western biological field research station exhibiting work, led creative technology workshops, lectured on his research, and performed live at a variety of events throughout the US, Europe and Asia.
He is currently Assistant Professor in the Graphic Design, Masters of Sustainable Design and Human Computer Interaction PhD programs at Iowa State University and is director of the artist-in-residence program at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory biological field research station.
William Brooks
William Brooks studied music and mathematics at Wesleyan University (BA 1965), then received degrees in musicology (MM 1971) and composition-theory (DMA 1976) from the University of Illinois. He taught at the University of California and the University of Illinois before becoming Professor of Music at the University of York, England. In 2009 he was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium, where he also serves as Editorial Officer. Brooks is active as both composer and musicologist, with the two disciplines meeting in his interest in “experimental” music and processes and in his exploration of the relationship between text and music. He has published extensively on John Cage and Charles Ives and, more broadly, on American music; his compositions often explore open form and the intersection of vernacular and cultivated idioms. Much of his music is for voice, and he is himself a singer and choral conductor. His music is published by Frog Peak Music, and he has been commissioned by The Crossing, Trio Mediaeval, The Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, and the Gulbenkian Foundation, among others.
Margaret Chase
Margaret Chase (http://www.onwavestreet.com/margaret-chase), is a performer, poet, and playwright, with a BFA from Boston University. She believes artists have a critical role in the positive evolution away from our country’s legacy of racial and social injustice. She belongs to the Socially Distant Art initiative (https://www.sociallydistantart.com/margaret-chase), and was interviewed by DisArt about disability and art amid Covid (https://www.disartnow.org/podcasts/episode-43-margaret-chase/). In 2020, NON:op open opera works, Silver Birch Press, NYSAI Press, Brooklyn Book Festival, and the new zine To Be Young (and Disabled), included her work. Margaret co-curated “Artists Undeterred” showcasing art and performances by 75 disabled artists in 2018, the same year her play “Pendulum” was produced at Manhattan Repertory Theatre. She’s now writing “Resurrecting Lady Dada,” a play for 3 women. Margaret relies on a cochlear implant and a hearing aid. She says “It’s good to be bionic!”
Theo Economides
Theo Economides is a techno-creative enabler. With over three decades’ experience in the TV and radio, higher education, telecommunications, and legal environments plus a lifetime of musical and theatrical performing, he brings an unconventional blend of expertise to telling stories through technology-enabled performances.
Theo works for the law firm, Vedder Price, as an AV Multimedia engineer. His degrees are in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University, but he is also a videographer, accomplished pianist, singer, instrumental and vocal conductor and educator. A musician since the age of eight years, he also teaches private voice and piano students, is a ten+ year member of Chicago’s "Too Hot to Handel" choir.
Harrah Friedlander
Harrah Friedlander is a soprano from Mobile, AL. She earned her Master’s degree from Northwestern University where she appeared as Amy in Little Women, Emmie Spashett in Albert Herring, Genovieffa in Suor Angelica, and Elle in a production of La voix humaine, which she produced and directed. She has premiered several works by contemporary composers, including Christophe Preissing’s Thunder, Perfect Mind. She served as the Assistant Director for Northwestern Opera’s production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and directed several productions with Northwestern’s inaugural Chamber Opera Initiative. Harrah was awarded the Dr. Gerald L. Smith Scholarship for scholastic and musical achievements and graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University in 2013 with a Bachelor of Music in Voice and Performance and an ad-hoc degree in Theatre Studies.
Dierdre Harrison
Deirdre is a freelance producer, director, performer and arts administrator. Based for years in London, NYC, and Rome, she worked on new plays in development, premieres, classics and musicals at venues including The Almeida, The Royal Court, The Gate, Hampstead, Edinburgh Festival, the West End in the UK; Cucaracha, CSC, Big Dance, The Public in NYC; Portland Stage Company, New Jersey Shakespeare and Williamstown regionally; The Goodman, TUTA, Steppenwolf and Chicago Fringe in Chicago. She appeared on British TV and radio and in films including Gangs of New York, My House in Umbria, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, shot at Cinecittà. She sings on the soundtrack of Shining Through and is the voice of Athena on Pete Townsend’s Psychoderelict. In Chicago she was Music Institute of Chicago’s first Director of Community Engagement, was instrumental in launching Global Citizenship Experience High School and in turning around two newly independent progressive schools. She leads development and communications for Rush Hour Concerts/Make Music Chicago while collaborating on music theater projects with Chicago Q Ensemble and composers Jenna Lyle and Christopher Preissing, and is a member of the chamber band The Lucky Trikes.
Michael Herzovi
Michael Herzovi most recently appeared as part of Tellin’ Tales Theatre’s Hands Up: Police. Before that he was “Richard Pearish” on Fox TV’s NeXt. He is an ensemble member of Tellin’ Tales Theatre, performing with them since 2006, and performed dozens of podcasts with Small Fish Radio Theatre. His writing, acting, and voiceovers are at www.michaelherzovi.com He provided voices for Counterbalance, Hayden and her Family, Code of the Freaks, and others, and the upcoming children’s book ASL video Calvin Can’t Fly. He has performed with Here, Chicago, Is This a Thing, Write Club, NON:Op, Anytime/Anywhere, You’re Being Ridiculous, and others.
Kristina Isabelle
Kristina Isabelle is a dancer, choreographer and teacher who is passionate about exploring the physicality of the body and its story-telling potential. She creates multimedia dance productions that sometimes integrate articulate dancing on stilts. She is the artistic director of Cristina Isabelle Dance Company and director of HighJinks Productions. Kristina has performed nationally and internationally, most recently performing her work stilt dance work The Moving Target at Deventer Op Stelten Festival in The Netherlands. She has performed with Bebe Miller, Stephen Petronio, Jordan Fuchs, Bob Eisen, Earth Circus Productions, and John Jasperse. Ms. Isabelle was one of the Chicago Dance makers Forum Lab Artists for 2012-2013 and a Pentacle Help Desk/Chicago artist 2013. Since moving to Chicago in 2011 she has shown her work at Links Hall, the MCA, and the Ruth Page Dance Center. Her work has also been produced in New York, San Francisco, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Fort Worth, England, Ireland. In Poland her work was shown at the Bytom International Dance Festival. Along side her professional work, Isabelle has also taught dance, composed works, and constructed dance-related events for Joffrey Ballet, Hubbard Street, Visceral, Outer Space and Aloft Circus Arts.
Eric Leonardson
Eric Leonardson, a Chicago-based audio artist, serves as President of the World Listening Project, President of the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, and President of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. He is Associate Professor Adjunct in the Department of Sound at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). As a performer, composer, and sound designer, Leonardson created sound with the Chicago based physical theater company Plasticene (1995-2012). Leonardson performs internationally with the Springboard, a self-built instrument made in 1994 and often presents on acoustic ecology to new audiences beyond art world contexts; engaging and connecting communities in the interrelated aspects of sound, listening, and environment.
Kameron Locke
Kameron Locke (he/him) is a classical singer and research-based artist who expresses what he defines as the "facets of Blackness" through music, performance, and study.
Locke navigates cultural, community, and academic spaces as a social justice-centered creative, artistic leader, producer, educator, and musicologist. From within these spaces, he reflects on representation and inclusion, and how to engage and solve challenges that bring equality to continuously evolving communities.
Born and raised in Chicago, he recently emigrated to Berlin after a fulfilling stint in London.
Arlene Malinowski
As actor, playwright, and teaching, artist Arlene views her solo work as an artistic extension of the social justice work she has been committed to for the last 30 years. She has toured work across the US and internationally. Arlene is recipient of Fellowship at University Illinois Chicago Department of Disability in the Arts. Finalist in the New Plays From the Heartland, semi-finalist the O’Neill and Blue Ink Award. Nominated for LA Theater Ovations, LA Garland Award. As an actor she has worked in film, television and theater. She is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists where she developed and teaches the Solo/Story curriculum. She is touring with Little Bit Not Normal, a solo play intended to create dialogue around the subject of mental illness.
A.J. McClenon
Born and raised in “DC proper,” A.J. McClenon studied art and creative writing at the University of Maryland and The New School prior to receiving a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. Alongside artistic experiences, A.J. is passionate about teaching and community collaborations with that goal that all the memories and histories that are said to have “too many Black people,” are told and retold again. As a means to uphold these stories A.J. creates performances, installations, objects, sounds, visuals, and writings. These creations often revolve around an interest in water and aquatic life, escapism, Blackness, science, grief, US history, and the global future. A.J. is deeply invested in leveling the hierarchies of truth and using personal narrative to speak on political and cultural amnesia and their absurdities.
Ilse Miller
Ilse Miller is an artist and educator working in the nonprofit sector. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2014 with a BA in Film Studies. She currently works with Chicago HOPES for kids to provide after school programming to two homeless shelters on the north side of Chicago. When not working with youth, she spends her time painting. She is passionate about supporting students to succeed and breaking down boundaries in obtaining educational resources.
Allen Moore
Allen Moore is a Black American Interdisciplinary Painter, Experimental Sound Artist, Educator, Youth Mentor and Curator born and raised in the Historic Village of Robbins IL. His work examines both visual and experimental music, emphasizing the importance of nurturing the Black Imagination with social representation and converses with the signifiers of African American and popular culture, bringing to view the underlying themes of racial, emotional and socioeconomic conditions. Moore has exhibited and performed across Chicago and the greater Midwest, including exhibitions Experimental Sound Studio, Elastic Arts, Threewalls, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Science and Industry Chicago. His work is featured in the Netflix Original Series “Easy” Seasons 1 and 2.
Expressive Resonance, Keith Moore & Bourema “Ibrahim” Ouedraogo
Keith Moore is a composer and sound artist, writer, curator, and community-media maker currently based in Urbana, Illinois. Keith uses the fields of acoustics and psychoacoustics to compose expressive and conceptually rich works that compel listeners to consider the beauty and breadth of perception itself. He has collaborated with numerous distinguished organizations such as musikFabrik WDR (Cologne), Ensemble de l’itinéraire (Paris), Ensemble Modern and the International Ensemble Modern Academy (Frankfurt), PRISM Quartet (NYC), Talujon Percussion (NYC), Ensemble 21 (NYC), and soloists including Tomas Bächli (Berlin), Karen Bentley Pollick (CO), Kevin Boyer (London), Maja Cerar (NYC), Juliana Snapper (LA), Taimur Sullivan (Chicago) and Kelland Thomas (Hoboken). In addition to creating original compositions Keith Moore pursues his research through writing, performance, curating and teaching.
Jay Needham
Jay Needham is an artist, musician, writer-editor and cultural producer who utilizes multiple creative platforms to produce his works, many of which have a focus on sound and site specific field research. As a hearing-divergent person, Needham makes work that often involves sensing and experiencing sound across many modalities. His sound art, works for radio, visual art, performances and installations have appeared at museums, festivals and on the airwaves, worldwide. Needham is the founding co-editor of Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, published by The University of California Press. He is a Professor in the Department of Radio, Television and Digital Media at Southern Illinois University and he received his MFA from The School of Art at California Institute of the Arts.
Expressive Resonance, Bourema “Ibrahim” Ouedraogo & Keith Moore
Bourema "Ibrahim” Ouedraogo is a founder of VVAM! (Vision and Voice Amplified through Media), on the production team of Urbana Public Television, and the owner of Global Visual Media Studio. He is married with two children and has lived in the US for the past ten years. He began engaged-community building in his home country of Burkina Faso, where he worked in community, arts, and cultural preservation; and he has continued that effort in Illinois as a board member and now active volunteer at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center.
Liviu Pasare
Liviu has a Chicago-based practice creating works and visual experiences using new media and technology. He works as a video designer, cinematographer, editor, and animator and has produced, directed and performed for live multi-media events. He has been affiliated with theaters and artists Luftwerk, Redmoon, Chicago Children’s Theater, Blue Man Group, and Collaboraction Theater, among others. He holds an MFA degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently advancing an approach to video for performance as a faculty member at DePaul University.
Christophe Preissing
Christophe has a 30-year practice in sound, intermedia, and music composition with fellowships and support from the Pritzker Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Meet the Composer, American Music Center, Beloit College, Indiana University‘s Latin American Music Center, VCCA/VCCA France, Ragdale, Millay Colony, PLAYA, Djerassi, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Recent work includes sound in Samuel Beckett’s radio play, Cascando (2018), is SI ng, a performance with artist Matt Bodett at Victory Gardens (2017), sound for Journeying La Divina Commedia, the University of Notre Dame’s adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedia (2016), the opera-installation Thunder, Perfect Mind (2015), and sound installations SUS: the long thin wire (Harold Washington Public Library, 2017), Street Sheets (National Museum of Mexican Art, Columbia University, NY, 2017), Blood Lines: remembering the 1919 Chicago race riot (Augustana Lutheran Church, 2019).
Kyle Gregory Price
Kyle Gregory Price is a critically acclaimed, genre-fluid composer, percussionist, turntablist, and stop-motion animator. Following a decade in the east coast punk, noise, and new music scenes, he moved to Chicago in 2010. He has worked with local artists including Ben Lamar Gay, Mabel Kwan, and Sara Zalek and Third Coast Percussion, the Merce Cunningham Dance Troupe, NON:op Open Opera Works, and Theater Y, among others. Kyle has performed at the MCA, Art Institute of Chicago, The Newberry, Thirsty Ears Festival, and Experimental Sound Studio’s 2018 Oscillations solo and Florasonic Series with Stephan Moore. Currently he is working on a commission from Access Contemporary Music for the Sound of Silent Film Festival. In 2014 Kyle co-founded the intergenerational literacy chamber band, The Lucky Trikes, who have recorded two albums at ESS.
Lynette Quek
Lynette Quek is an audiovisual maker from Singapore. Incarnations of her work include audiovisual installations, composition through sound manipulation, as well as cross-disciplinary performance with the computer. Her current work examines the synchronisation and interaction within audiovisuality, challenging the notion of the heard/unheard, seen/unseen. This varies across the medium of video, performance, sculpture, and expanding.
Carrie Sandahl
Carrie Sandahl is Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Department of Disability and Human Development. She directs Chicago’s Bodies of Work, an organization that supports the development of disability arts and culture, through festivals, advocacy, and an artist residency program. Her research and creative activity focus on disability identity in live performance and film. Sandahl’s publications include a co-edited an anthology, Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance, which garnered the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s award for Outstanding Book in Theatre Practice and Pedagogy (2006). Sandahl frequently travels nationally and internationally to speak about her research and arts advocacy initiatives. She collaborated on a documentary, Code of the Freaks, a critique of disability representations in cinema, which premiered in 2020.
Hugh Sato
Hugh Sato is an artist and designer, working at the intersection between interactive experience design and installation art. He graduated with high honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a BA in New Media from the School of Art and Design. He has developed numerous 2D and 3D animations for theater as a freelance motion designer and has taught young audiences about tornados and electricity at the Museum of Science and Industry. Son of a puppeteer turned social worker and a mime turned chef, he grew up surrounded by theater, and people bridging creative gaps between various disciplines. Inspired by interactive museum learning environments, as well as artists working with coding and technology as a medium, Hugh works with diverse collaborators to innovate in fantastic large-scale experiences.
Andy Slater
Andy Slater is a Chicago based media artist and disability advocate. Founder of the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists and director of the Sound as Sight accessible field recording project, his current work features the sounds of antiquated assistive technology, field recordings, spatial audio design for virtual and augmented reality, video games, and film. Andy has a Masters in Sound Arts and Industries from Northwestern University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has performed and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, University of Chicago, Contemporary Jewish Museum San Francisco, Ian Potter Museum of Art Melbourne, Australia, Critical Distance Toronto, Flux Factory New York City, Art Institute of Chicago, Experimental Sound Studios, and others. Andy was a 2018 3Arts/Bodies of Work fellow at the university of Illinois Chicago and High Concept Labs artist in residence 2016-2020.
Linda Solotaire
Jay Strommen
Jay Strommen received his MFA degree in ceramics from The School of the Art Institute (2000). After his graduation he was a resident artist at The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural in Japan from 2001 – 2002 and has been a teacher at Park West Ceramics and Lillstreet Art Center for the past 10 years. His work has been featured throughout the United States in association with wood fired ceramics. He was the recipient of The Oppenheimer Family Foundation Teacher Incentive Grant in 2003 and 2004. Jay fires his work and orchestrates instructional workshops in Galena, Il. On December 3, 2010, Pass Through Fire, a documentary that covers the life, work, and philosophies of Jay and the people that have crossed his paths, premiered in Chicago. Over the past two years (2014-15) Jay has been engineering, designing and building the Chicago Ceramic Center in conjunction with the Bridgeport Art Center, with the expected completion and classes beginning in fall, 2015. Currently Jay lives and has a studio in the south side of Chicago, Illinois.
David Sundry
Carmen-Helena Téllez
Carmen-Helena Téllez has earned a reputation nationally and internationally for her inventive support of living com-posers, Latin American music, and new modes of concert presentation involving music, the arts and the humanities. She is responsible for the commission, premiere and recording of many landmark works, such as Gabriela Ortiz’s opera Unicamente la verdad, the choral suite Sun-Dogs by James MacMillan and the Missa ad Consolationes Dominam Nostram by Mario Lavista. Upcoming commissions include works by Robert Kyr, Sven-David Sandström and Gabriela Lena Frank. She is also responsible for the Midwest premieres of John Adams’ oratorio El Niño and Osvaldo Golijov’s opera Ainadamar. She has performed in Chicago as the former resident conductor of the University of Chicago’s Contempo, and as the music director of Aguavá New Music Studio, the Pocket Opera Players and Indiana University’s Contemporary Vocal Ensemble. In that capacity she conducted the American premiere of Ralph Shapey’s oratorio
Praise dedicated to the anniversary of the foundation of Israel, and the world premiere of the full version of Shulamit Ran’s Credo/Ani ma’ amin. As a founder and co-director of Aguavá New Music Studio she has recorded works by Mario Lavista, Cary Boyce, John Eaton, James MacMillan, and Menachem Zur. She has recently initiated the project Kosmologia to engage in inter-artistic collaborations in Chicago.
Honna Veerkamp
Honna Veerkamp is a community-oriented artist and educator. Her specialties include audio and video documentary, painting, and socially engaged art. Honna’s work explores natural and human-made environments and celebrates creative resistance—from tiny interventions to grassroots social justice movements, and the stories in between. Honna earned a Media Arts MFA at Southern Illinois University in 2015 and a diploma in Audio Engineering at the Institute for Audio Research in 2002. She was a CAT fellow in 2017-2018 and currently serves on the alumni advisory board. She has taught audio, video, writing, and fine art at university and community settings.
Ann Warde
Ann Warde is a composer, sound installation artist, and independent scholar. A recent NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Music/Sound from The New York Foundation for the Arts, her experimental projects frequently combine animal vocalizations and instruments, suggesting and investigating alternative forms of communication. Following a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in music at Cornell University, her work with sound focused for the next decade on applications of audio technology to the analysis of whale sounds at Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology. Subsequently, as a US-UK Fulbright Researcher at the University of York, she developed interests in American philosophy alongside work with spatial audio techniques in music composition and bioacoustics.