Chris Castro graduated in 2018 with a doctoral degree in composition from UC Davis. He holds a bachelor’s degree in composition and double bass from the Juilliard School.
Orchestral ConductingPh.D., Composition, State University of New York at BuffaloM.A., Conducting, Pennsylvania State UniversityB.A., Conducting and Composition, Catholic University of Argentina
Jean-PaulBourelly was born in Chicago to Hatian parents and grew up on Chicago’s South Side amid an unusual blend of Haitian meringue, folkloric, and hard-edged urban blues. Along with his own musical vision, which was inspired by Howlin Wolf, Jimi Hendrix, and even Carlos Santana, Bourelly began to formulate his unique musical style. At the age of eighteen, after a one-year scholarship studying with the great alto saxophonist and educator Bunky Green, he moved to New York City.
Ph.D. Musicology, Boston University 1986Mellomfag (equivalent to M.A.), German Studies, Trondheim University, Norway 1974Staatsexamen für das Lehramt an Gymnasien (equivalent to M.A.), Music, Musikhochschule Detmold, West Germany 1971
Areas of Specialization:
Medieval, Renaissance History and Theory, Historiography, Music in African Mission Stations
Ph.D. Ethnomusicology, University of British Columbia
Juan Diego Díaz is an ethnomusicologist with a geographic research interest in Africa and its diaspora, particularly Brazil and West Africa. He is interested in how African diasporic musics circulate and transform across the Atlantic and how they serve individuals and communities in identity formation. He uses a variety of approaches including close musical analysis, timeline theory, groove analysis, phenomenology of the body, and discourse analysis. He is also a long-term Capoeira Angola practitioner and has led capoeira and samba ensembles.
Percussionist Christopher Froh specializes in promoting and influencing the creation of new music through critically acclaimed performances and dynamic lectures. To date, he has premiered over 150 chamber and solo works by composers from 17 countries. His collaborations include some of the most significant composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including Chaya Czernowin, David Lang, Steve Mackey, John Adams, George Crumb, Liza Lim, Matthias Pintcher, and Keiko Abe.
Matilda Hofman, whose conducting has been described as having “a striking sense of purpose” and “taut and finely controlled” (San Francisco Gate) has a busy and varied performance schedule. She works regularly with a wide range of groups in Europe, and in California, which she has made her home. Matilda has performed at the Salzburg Festival, Berliner Festspiele, Holland Festival and Ruhrtriennale among others.
Caleb Lewis is a young music professional interested in inspiring others toward excellence. He works primarily as a conductor with groups of people who want to be more effective performers and who enjoy making music together. He has degrees in choral music from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, and Emory University, in Atlanta. Recently, he completed coursework for his Doctor of Music degree in Choral Conducting from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.
D.M.A., Manhattan School of Music, New YorkM.M, William Paterson University, New JerseyB.MUS, QLD Conservatorium, Australia
Jazz composer/arranger, saxophonist/woodwind player and music educator Jacam Manricks has been a highly respected figure among the New York City jazz scene for over thirteen years. Manricks has released highly acclaimed albums as a leader (Labyrinth, Trigonometry, Cloud Nine, Chamber Jazz, and GilManricks) and performed as a sideman on countless other releases.
Pierpaolo Polzonetti specializes in opera and eighteenth-century music and culture. His research work has been funded by the Earhart Foundation, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Violist and composer Kurt Rohde is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, a Radcliffe-Harvard Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lydian String Quartet Commission Prize, and commission awards from the Barlow, Fromm, Hanson, and Koussevitzky Foundations, and New Music/USA. He has received the Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies.
