Season 1 Music

Jamie Allen

Composer's Website
Untitled work featured in Episode 1.1

Former co-director of the Dallas Recorder Society, and current member of the Rhode Island Recorder Society, the Boston Recorder Society, and the Boston Recorder Orchestra, Jamie Allen has over 30 years of experience as a composer, conductor, performer, and music educator.

He has won awards for his work, and has been a frequent presenter, educational consultant, and conductor for many arts organizations, including the Santa Fe Opera, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the Dallas Opera. Under his guidance as Education Director from 2006-2020, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s award-winning educational programs reached over 50,000 children and adults each year via concerts, innovative instruction programs, in-school & community performances, pre-concert lectures, open rehearsals, web sites, master classes and more.

Allen now composes full-time, and has recently received commissions from the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, renowned trombonist Angel Subero, the American Recorder Society, and others.

Han Chen

Artist's Websites
Performance of Aaron Copland's "Night Thoughts" in Episodes 1.2 and 1.4

Pianist Han Chen is “impressively commanding and authoritative” (Gramophone) and has “a graceful touch”, “rhythmic precision” and “hypnotic charm” (New York Times). After winning the Gold Medal at the 6th China International Piano Competition in 2013, Chen has released three solo albums under the Naxos Records (music by Liszt, Rubinstein, and Thomas Adès, respectively). These albums have won him acclaims from critics around the world. As a soloist, he has performed with numerous orchestras and worked with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Karina Canellakis, and Nicholas McGegan. As a new music advocate, Chen has premiered works by composers such as Unsuk Chin, Molly Joyce, Jonah Haven, among others. In 2021, Chen launched Migration Music, a series of interviews and performances featuring immigrant composers. Born in Taiwan, Chen now resides in New York. After graduating from The Juilliard School (with Prof. Yoheved Kaplinsky) and the New England Conservatory (with Prof. Wha Kyung Byun), he is now a doctoral candidate at The Graduate Center, CUNY under the guidance of Prof. Yoheved Kaplinsky and Prof. Ursula Oppens.

Nate Crowe

Composer's Website
"NPC Bumper 1" featured in Episode 1.6

Nathan Crowe grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago and studied music composition at St. Olaf College in southern Minnesota, continuing at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music after attending the Summer Music Institute of the European American Musical Alliance in Paris. His teachers include Edwin Childs, Justin Merritt, Reinaldo Moya, Timothy Mahr and David Conte. He enjoys a wide breadth of performing opportunities as an instrumentalist, singer, and on occasion, conductor. Nathan works for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Library, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, Blue Bear School of Music, and as a freelance tutor & recording artist. He is actively involved at St. Dominic’s Catholic Church in San Francisco where he sings for the Schola Cantorum and studies organ with Simon Berry. Aside from work, Nathan enjoys outdoor activities, reading and listening to records.

Anthony Esland

Composer's Website
Untitled work featured in Episode 1.1

Anthony is an award-winning British composer for the stage and screen. He studied composition and musicology as an organ scholar at Cambridge University, conducting at the Guildhall School of Music and has an MA in Composing for Film and TV from the National Film and Television School.

Anthony has written scores for films, TV shows and games and composed concert music for a variety of soloists, choirs and ensembles. His choral music has been performed by choirs such as the BBC Singers in the UK and Cincinnati Camerata in the USA, and his chamber music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Anthony has worked with many eminent musicians and ensembles, including Ólafur Arnalds, Judith Weir and the ORA Singers, and won prizes in international composition competitions. He has received numerous awards and bursaries for his work, from organisations such as PRS for Music, the Bliss Trust and Sound and Music.

Reverend Feedback

"Epidermo Rest" featured in Episode 1.9

Reverend Feedback formed the band BLAQ MUMMY in Prague, Czech Republic in the 1990s. Now working with noise music in the PAZVUKY (UNSOUND) project.

AJ Harbison

Composer's Website
"And See The Flaming Skies featured in Episode 1.9

AJ Harbison is a composer and singer/songwriter living with his wife and two children in Kansas City. His music lives at the intersection of concert music and vernacular music, each bringing unique vitality to the other in a language both adventurous and accessible. His compositions include solo, chamber and orchestral works, and vocal music from songs to works for mixed chorus.

Harbison’s music has been performed by ensembles including The Hutchins Consort, The Singers (Saint Paul, MN), the Kansas City Women’s Chorus, Luna Nova, and the students of Harmony Project KC, and has won awards including first prize in the 2018 Belvedere Chamber Music Festival Composition Contest. He participated in a cross-country collaboration with New York City singer/songwriter Melanie Penn and West Covina (CA) High School’s choirs, conducted by Tyler R. Wigglesworth, titled A Journey of Becoming. Following the world premiere in California, the first movement was performed in Carnegie Hall in April 2018 as part of Choirs of America’s Harmonic Convergence concert.

Harbison holds degrees in composition from California State University, Fullerton and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. In addition to concert music, his compositions include pop/rock songs and music for theatre and film.

Michael Hudson-Casanova

Composer's Website
Untitled work featured in Episode 1.9

Michael Hudson-Casanova is from Sterling Heights, MI and currently resides in Chicago, IL. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music education and jazz studies from Western Michigan University and a master’s degree in jazz studies from Temple University. Hudson-Casanova is a freelance jazz saxophonist, improviser, composer, and educator who is equally passionate about music performance and education. His debut album as a leader was released in Fall 2021, and features all original compositions and a stellar band of improvisers.

Liam Hynes-Tawa

Composer's Soundcloud
Untitled work featured in Episode 1.1

Liam is a music theorist from Amherst, Massachusetts, currently teaching at Yale University, with specializations in modern Japanese and Renaissance European forms of tonality. This research usually involves trying to figure out how irreconcilable ways of thinking about pitch have dealt with each other, as well as the entertainingly vexing question of what modes and keys even are. Liam also plays cello; some amount of guitar, piano, and voice; and enjoys learning new languages and notation systems, both musical and verbal. Writing music, mostly in antiquated idioms, has been a favorite pastime ever since meeting an E-sharp in high school orchestra. Liam has publications in the Analytical Approaches to World Music and Intégral journals, and has a few translations of too-little-known old texts on the way.

Ljudevit Laušin

Artist's Facebook Page
"Wah Guitar Stinger” and “Gypsy Swing Logo MASTER” featured in Episode 1.6

Ljudevit Laušin has a Master of Music Education from the Academy of Arts Osijek (Croatia) where he was presented with the Rector’s Award for Composing Music for his work “Baron Trenk - Cabaret”.

He is a member of the classical guitar trio "Sui Generis" whose repertoire covers wide stylistic territory - from Renaissance to the 21st century - and a blues-rock band "The Red Roosters" which has performed numerous concerts across Croatia, including blues clubs and festivals. In 2009, The Red Roosters were presented "The Most Promising Young Band" award, an annual award given by the Croatian Music Union.

He is a member of the Croatian Composers Society and Croatian Musicians Union and has had his compositions broadcasted on numerous radio stations across Croatia, including Croatian National Radio, and television. He composes for guitar trio, solo classical guitar, choir, soloists, string quartet, piano solo, and theatre.

David Jason Snow

Composer's Website
Untitled work featured in Episode 1.9

The compositions of David Jason Snow have been performed in concert by the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Banda Municipal de Bilbao at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao, The New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and many other artists and ensembles internationally. His fixed media audio and visual works have been performed at the Musinfo Journées Art & Science Festival in Bourges, the Festival Exhibitronic in Strasbourg, the Festival Internacional de Video Arte y Música Visual in Mexico City, the Sound Thought Festival in Glasgow, Echofluxx in Prague, and the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium. Snow has been the recipient of awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, the ASCAP Foundation, and BMI, and he has been an artist resident at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, New York. He holds degrees in composition from the Eastman School of Music and the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Jacob Druckman, Joseph Schwantner, Warren Benson, and Samuel Adler. Snow lives in Manhattan where he is a reference librarian and special collections cataloger at The Juilliard School.

Jacob Thiede

Artist's Webpage
"wojack needs jesus" featured in Episode 1.6

Jacob Thiede is a composer and saxophonist from Murray, Kentucky, where the smell of tobacco barns and honeysuckle fill the air. His music captures a broad mix of contemporary and avant-garde styles with folk and improvisational roots. Premieres and performances of Jake’s music have taken place in England, Italy and throughout the United States.

Thiede has received awards from competitions such as the International Duo Symposium (Blue Blood Sky) and the Flute New Music Consortium (And everything in-between). Honors and festivals include the SCI National Conference, Electronic Music Midwest, NASA Biennial Conference, BGSU Graduate Music Conference, the NSEME Conference, the Electric LaTex Conference, New Music on the Point, and the HighSCORE Festival.

He received his BME at Murray State University and MM in music composition at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has studied with Mike D'Ambrosio, Brian Ciach, and John Fannin at Murray State and with Mark Engebretson, Alejandro Rutty, and Steven Bryant at UNCG. As a saxophonist, he has studied with Scott Erickson and Steven Stusek. Thiede currently studies composition with Panayiotis Kokoras, Kirsten Broberg, and Andrew May as well as saxophone with Eric Nestler at the University of North Texas. His professional affiliations include the American Society for Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), the Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI), and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS).

Rocco Tuzio

Artist's Youtube
Various performances featured in Episode 1.10

Rocco Tuzio is a clarinetist and composer from Italy.