Event Detail

Me/Monologue by Tiange Zhou
Mikrop by Elisabet Curbelo
Water Flow by Anqi Liu
Thermodynamics by Jasper Sussman
Spelunking by Caroline Miller and Alexandria Smith
A Midsize Disgrace in the Realm of People and Things by Sammi Stone
Daddy by Fernanda Aoki Navarro

Please click on the image on the left for composer and performer biographies.

Fernanda Aoki Navarro is a composer born in Brazil based in San Diego, California. 
She works with acoustic and electroacoustic music and has been exploring performance art, installations and other multimedia platforms. Fernanda doesn’t like to be reduced to a gender, doesn’t know how to samba, procrastinates to write program notes, doesn’t know how to react to compliments or critiques, goes to the cinema every week, drinks coffee every day.

Elisabet Curbelo is a Spanish composer and performer born in Gran Canaria. She studied piano pedagogy, voice and composition in her hometown, Madrid and Istanbul. Today she pursues a PhD in Composition at UC San Diego under the advisory of Roger Reynolds.

Elisabet’s work and dedication has been valued throughout her career by diverse institutions, as she has been awarded numerous grants, prizes, and commissions. Her pieces have been performed in Spain, Turkey, USA, Germany, Switzerland and Holland. Her research focuses on the use of sensors to control electronics with movement and the use of extended vocal techniques based on her research of Middle Eastern music and culture.

Anqi Liu
Arrived late to composition, mostly teaching herself to compose at age eighteen, with an even later start in formal compositional studies at the age of twenty-three. Despite this late beginning, Liu’s music has been widely admired by conductors, musicians, and composers and has been appreciated by diverse audiences. Her music has been performed worldwide through the US to Europe and China. During the years based in New York City, her works were frequently performed by various ensembles in New York City at the prestigious venues such as Le Poisson Rouge, Shapeshifter Lab, the Firehouse Space and others. Pursuing her Ph.D. at UC San Diego, Liu got bachelor degrees of law and music performance at Xiamen University and an MA in Composition from Rutgers University. Distinct from a conventional compositional training, her music degree included extensive travels throughout the Chinese hinterlands to study the folk music of Chinese minority groups. During her time in America, Liu has focused on avant-garde acoustic experiments and exploring diverse possibilities on timbre and gestures.

Caroline Louise Miller’s music explores affect, biomusic, labor, tactility, and glitch. Her latest works deal with horror and abjection, corporate discipline in late capitalism, and hybridizing popular and electronic art music. In 2014 Caroline spent 2 weeks aboard a Scripps research vessel sailing from Taiwan to Micronesia, collecting field recordings aboard the ship, lowering an expensive instrument in and out of the water with a giant winch, and interviewing members of the crew. Her music appears across the U.S. and internationally.

Alexandria Smith
Praised by the New York Times for her “appealingly melancholic sound” and “entertaining array of distortion effects,”Alexandria Smith is a trumpeter, improviser, and electronic musician/multimedia artist pursuing her DMA at the University of California, San Diego.  The objective of her practice is to use a multidisciplinary approach to explore the parallels of the theoretical concepts behind interactive software and hardware, immersive environments, and music that form a cross-wiring of sensory perceptions and involuntary synthesis. Her recent work and collaborations are currently focusing on pushing the timbral limits and vulnerability of the trumpet while representing the importance of the perspective of people that identify as female.

Sammi Stone 
Sammi Stone is an oboist, saxophonist, composer, sometime percussionist, and avid admirer of hummingbird calls. Originally from Baker City, OR, she is an alumna of Williams College in Williamstown, MA, and is currently pursuing a MA in Composition at UCSD. Her current projects take as extra-musical inspiration the unhurried lifestyle of the supercentenarian Greenland Shark and the psychoacoustics of frog choruses. As a musician, she looks for inspiration to the works of John Lurie, Alec Wilder, Olivier Messiaen, Charlie Rouse, Dolly Parton, and Alfred Schnittke, and to her friends and mentors. As a human being on a quest to live a life of balance, maturity, and positive action, she looks everywhere for clues and clarifications.

Jasper Sussman
Jasper is a composer, performer, improviser, and scholar pursuing a Ph.D. in Music: Integrative Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her current work involves discovering, archiving, mastering and composing for the myriads of expressive capabilities that the human voice possesses, and understanding these sounds musically, culturally, and anatomically.

Inspired by encounters with artists (in no particular order) Cathy Berberian, Sainkho Namtchylak, Meredith Monk, Theo Bleckmann, Bobby McFerrin, Tanya Tagaq, Ken Ueno, Paul Botelho, FKA Twigs, and Alice Babs, Jasper has spent much of the last four years exploring raw and vulnerable vocal timbres. As composer-in-residence with Gateway Opera last Spring, she had the sublime opportunity of creating her first operatic work, a Shell of a Troll, working closely with cast and crew from the show’s conception to its raucous birth. Sussman additionally wrote three new choral works last season as the Madison Choral Project’s first composer-in-residence, each piece exploring new textures for a cappella choir. Her past works span from collaborative dance pieces like Dionysian Sea, commissioned by choreographer Marlene Skog and featured at the World Dance Alliance—Americas in Honolulu, to orchestral works like Baguettelle which received 2nd place in the Austin Civic Orchestra Composition Competition in 2014.

Tiange Zhou (1990) is a composer, writer, designer and improvisational dancer. Her music is performed across Asia, Europe, and American. Tiange was awarded a prize in the Second Sorodha International Composer’s Competition in Belgium and was a finalist for the American Prize in the chorus music division. Her solo violin piece “A Mirror for a Dream” was chosen as one of the contemporary pieces for the Musical Summer Malaga 2016 6th International Solo Violin Competition. Her chamber work” hEArT” for soprano and piano is awarded the first prize at  Kirkoskammer Composition Competition in Ireland. Besides composition, Tiange studies contemporary dance and theatre design in the UCSD theatre and dance department at the same time with her Ph.D. of Music journey.

Performer Bios

Kyle Adam Blair is an active pianist, vocal coach, and music director in the San Diego area, specializing in the performance of American contemporary music.  His focuses include the performance of new works in collaboration with composers and the performance of works from the middle-to-late 20th century. As a soloist, Blair is set to release his first solo album soon, entitled Palm Sunday. The album consists of five solo piano works by noted American composer Stuart Saunders Smith; one of which, the title track Palm Sunday, was commissioned by Blair in 2012. Blair also recently premiered and recorded all twelve of Bruno Ruviaro’s Pós-Tudos, a set of piano etudes combining musical and technical challenges with extensive musical borrowing.  Blair is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Contemporary Music Performance at UC San Diego under the mentorship of Aleck Karis.

T.J. Borden is a musician working in and around the constraints of the cello. Formerly from Western NY, he is now based in San Diego, where he spends much of his time finding ways to exploit the strengths and failures of himself and his instrument.  Thus far, this has encompassed explorations of interference, limitations, and self-restraint (or the lack thereof). These explorations have either accrued with the practice of or have been pursued through multiple approaches/styles, including improvisation, noise, western art music, drone, and performance art.  www.tylerjborden.com

Chris Clarino currently performs with red fish blue fish. He has previously performed with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, Eastman Percussion Ensemble, the La Jolla Symphony, OSSIA and the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players.Chris has performed as soloist with the USMA Concert Band at West Point and the Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestra. He has studied with John Beck, Steve Schick, Michael Burritt, Bill Cahn, Eduardo Leandro, Charles “Chip” Ross and Rich Thompson.

Shayla James 
Shayla James balances her time as a Music Teaching Artist and Music Researcher in the non-profit sector. Since leaving UCSD, she has established an energetic piano and string studio in the San Diego area, with students of various ages and musical backgrounds. Her teaching and performance repertoire includes classical, orchestral and chamber, contemporary, and popular styles. She believes in being an advocate for arts/music education for all ages and exploring flexible ways of teaching to meet the creative needs of her students. Her research interests include arts accessibility, education and cultural policy. She aims to interweave these interests into her performance and teaching practice.

Dmitri Yevstifeev has performed as both a chamber musician and soloist across the United States and Internationally, having played and worked with many highly respected musicians including members of the Alban Berg Quartett, the Juilliard String Quartet, the Guarneri String Quartet, Quartour Ebene, Robert Chen-Concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony, and Paul Coletti, virtuoso violist, among many others. During his time in Los Angeles, Dmitri has played in a number of studio sessions for film productions and local Los Angeles Artists including Judith Hill, BBC’s Planet earth II, and Netflix’s Chef’s Table. Starting violin at the age of 5 in his hometown of Rochester NY, Dmitri grew up playing both classical and traditional folk music, and was also part of the Rochester Boy’s Choir for many years, where he served as Head Chorister. After switching to viola at age 14, Dmitri took his studies to Cleveland (Cleveland Institute of Music), Baltimore (Peabody Conservatory), and finally to Los Angeles (Colburn Conservatory of Music). In addition to a variety of formal performances, Dmitri often gives street performances in a wide range of locations around the L.A. area, and frequently performs at various open mic events. Dmitri will soon be working with RWS Entertainment Group’s Lincoln Center Stage, performing in a piano quintet aboard a Holland America Cruise vessel, traveling the world.

Robert Zelickman, clarinetist, has been teaching and performing in San Diego since 1982.  He is a member of the bass clarinet quartet JAMB and co-director of Second Avenue Klezmer Ensemble.  Robert was a member of Orchestra Nova for 23 seasons and has performed with the San Diego Symphony and the San Diego Opera.

Recently, Robert retired from UC San Diego (1983-2015) where he lectured on Jewish Music, conducted the Wind Ensemble and performed regularly, premiering many new compositions.  He currently performs in recitals and chamber music concerts throughout San Diego.

Zelickman earned his BA at UCLA and a MFA at Cal Arts. He studied with Hugo Raimondi, Michele Zukovsky and Ronald Rueben.