De Ritis’s 2012 release Devolution with the GRAMMY® Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project and BMOP/sound, was described as a “tour de force” (Gramophone), and features three of De Ritis’ symphonic works, Chords of Dust, Legerdemain, and Devolution: a Concerto for DJ and Symphony Orchestra featuring Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky as soloist. His Pop Concerto (BMOP/sound, 2017) featuring Eliot Fisk was lauded by Classical CD Review as “a major issue of American music,” and his Electroacoustic Music – In Memoriam: David Wessel (Albany Records, 2018) as “sometimes whimsical and sometimes stark, and always interesting” (CD HotList). His third album on BMOP/sound (June 2023) features five of De Ritis’s orchestral works for Chinese traditional instruments and symphony orchestra: Zhongguo Pop for Chinese Quartet and String Orchestra; Ping-Pong, Concerto for Pipa, featuring soloist Min Xiao-Fen; The Legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl, Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, featuring soloist Beibei Wang; Plum Blossoms, and Chang’E and the Elixir of Immortality.

In 2015, De Ritis’s Melody for Peace was performed as part of UNESCO’s 70th Anniversary celebrations by the Prague Concert Philharmonic in Paris, and his work Amsterdam, which featured maestro Jung-Ho Pak controlling a Buchla Lightning wand controller manipulating the orchestra’s sound in real-time, was presented by the Hong Kong Philharmonic as part of its “Music, Science, and Technology” showcase at the Grand Hall, University of Hong Kong.

De Ritis was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China (2011) who later published his Selected Works for Pipa (2016), is appointed as a “Special Professor” in the China Conservatory of Music’s “Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Chinese National School of Music” (2016), and is on the International Editorial Board of the Journal of Global Media and China published by SAGE in collaboration with the Communications University of China, where he guest edited the special issue “The Media and Entertainment Industry: The World and China” (Volume 1, Issue 4: December 2016).

In 2018 De Ritis expanded his research and practice on the musical instruments of East Asia, with a residency at the International Gugak Center in Seoul, Korea, and a performance of his work Kamelle-on for Saenghwang and 4-speaker audio featuring virtuoso Gamin Kang at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Daegu, Korea. This builds upon his original music for KYOPO: Multiplicity (2012) conceived by Korean visual artist CYJO and at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., a project that explores the different facets of cross-cultural identity.

In Summer 2023, the Cassatt String Quartet will premiere his new work Passion’s Continuum at the Seal Bay Festival, several movements for string quartet inspired by selected lines of poetry from his father, Paul Anthony De Ritis (1922-2000). And De Ritis continues his work setting eclectic and dramatic settings of Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s book of poetry Travesty Generator, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2020 Anna Rabinowitz Prize for Interdisciplinary Work, and supported by a Boston Foundation “Live Arts Boston” (LAB 2021) grant. Travesty Generator uses algorithmic approaches to generating poetry, and deals with several subjects related to race and social justice.

De Ritis completed his Ph.D. in Music Composition at the University of California, Berkeley (1997), where he served as a teaching assistant to David Wessel at Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). He received his M.M. in Electronic Music Composition from Ohio University (1992) under Mark Phillips, and his B.A. in Music with a concentration in Business Administration from Bucknell University (1990). De Ritis engaged in summer study at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, under Philippe Manoury, Tristan Murail, and Gilbert Amy (1991, 1992), and also holds a Masters in Business Administration with an emphasis in high-tech from Northeastern University (2002).

De Ritis is co-founder of the music technology program at Northeastern University in Boston, where he is Professor and former Chair of the Music Department (2003-2015); and is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Electronic Music Foundation Institute.

His music has been internationally performed as well as in New York City by the Unheard//of Ensemble and broadcast on terrestrial and internet radio: featured on WNYC/New York Public Radio’s New Sounds program with John Schaefer and heard by millions of listeners on The Drone Zone channel at SomaFM.

Bielmeier’s work as a Recording Engineer and Record Producer has included working with Indie and startup artists for Centaur, New Amsterdam, and Iridian Arts record labels in Nashville, DC, Indianapolis, and Boston. Bielmeier designed/managed The C.L.E.A.R. Lab at the Purdue School of Engineering: a state-of-the-art facility for creating, mixing, and mastering new electronic works featuring a Phantom Focus System by Carl Tatz Design. His live sound work has included A1/A2 Engineer for Entertainment Exchange, UU Congregation of Fairfax, The Kennedy Center, and sound for former President Joe Biden.

Bielmeier lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts, where he is a Teaching Professor of Music Production in the Music Department at Northeastern University.

An accomplished sound designer, composer, recording engineer, and educator, Darling fell in love with electronic music and sound creation at an early age. She worked for many years as part of an Emmy Award–winning production team at Sesame Workshop, where she composed music, worked on sound design, and recorded voice work for Muppets characters. Her career highlights include sound work for several animated television shows, such as Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!; online media; games; and applications for clients such as 4Kids Entertainment, HBO Family, the Learning Channel, Moshi Monsters, and Toca Boca, among many others.

Darling joined the faculty at Long Island University as an area head and associate professor of audio before moving into the director of education role at the pioneering electronic music school Dubspot. While there, she helped advance innovative approaches to music tech education, managing music production and DJ teachers. Currently, she is a member of the Ableton sound design team, making Ableton Live sound presets for multigenre music producers worldwide.

Darling holds a Bachelor of Science in music from Indiana University School of Music and a Master of Music in music technology from New York University. She is a founding member of Aerostatic, where she, along with Terry Golob, composes and designs audio environments for films, installations, and music performances featured in galleries and festivals around the world. She is also the founder of the New York–based performance collective Girls Like Bass, a house- and funk-influenced band that collaborates with musicians, dancers, and visual artists.

He spent another three years in the San Francisco Bay Area working at Apple Computers Inc. as well as remaining affiliated with the C.R.E.A.M. Studios at SJSU as a Research Scientist. Mike completed his M.A. in electroacoustic music composition at the Bregman Studios at Dartmouth College in 1999 under the tutelage of Jon Appleton, Charles Dodge, Larry Polansky, and Christian Wolff.

He completed his Ph.D. at City University, London, where he studied composition with Denis Smalley. His works have been included on the Sonic Circuits VII, ICMC’95, CDCM Vol.26, 2000 Luigi Russolo and ICMC 2009 compact discs and are performed at music events around the world. Mike is currently on the faculty of the music departments at Northeastern University and Boston Conservatory, where he teaches courses in music technology and composition. His recently completed book, The Unorthodox Guitar: A Guide to Alternative Performance Practice, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.

Both his acoustic and electronic works have been performed throughout the United States and abroad by ensembles and prominent soloists, such as: Boston Modern Orchestra Project, String Noise, Left Coast Ensemble, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Interensemble,  Brave New Works, Ecce Ensemble, Ian Pace, Winston Choi, Orlando Cela, Geoffrey Burleson, Ashleigh Gordon, Sarah Brady and Firebird Ensemble. With works featured on concert events of: League-ISCM, SEAMUS, ICMC, Boston Cyberarts and the ComputerArts Festival (Padova, It). Mr. Hurst and his creative work has received several awards, honors and distinctions including: Fromm Foundation Commission, Jebediah Foundation Commission for new Music, two Artist’s Fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Wayne Peterson Prize, and awards and fellowships from the Wellesley Composer’s Conference (2), Sacher Grant for Study Abroad, The Copland House Residency and the Irving Fine Fellowship for Music Composition. As a new music advocate he also has developed, directed and curated numerous concerts of new acoustic and electroacoustic music and was the lead Cohost for SEAMUS’ 2019 National Conference.

Derek is Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music and currently teaches courses in electronic music, theory, counterpoint, composition, contemporary music history at Berklee College and Boston Conservatory. He was Visiting Associate Professor at Brandeis University for the Fall, 2016 semester, and Boston Conservatory for the 2016-17 academic year. He has additional past visiting appointments at Brown University, Brandeis University, Wheaton College, Central Connecticut University and Northeastern University. He has degrees in composition / theory classical, guitar performance and teaching, earned his PhD in Composition / Theory from Brandeis University in 2007. Major teachers include David Rakowski, Eric Chasalow, Martin Boykan, Yehudi Wyner and John Melby. His dissertation on Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto (op. 42) is now published by Verlag, D.M.

Her research connects various fields, including human-computer interaction, computer science, music technology, digital signal processing, wearable computing, AI, neurology, psychology, and animal-computer interaction. She aims to raise awareness of the richness of the voice beyond words and the potential of using the voice to access the mind.

After completing her Ph.D. at the MIT Media Lab on the future of voice technology, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, developing music-based voice feedback systems for creative and therapeutic applications. She also holds a Master in Engineering from École National des Arts et Métiers Paris, a Master in Computer Graphics from UCL, and a Master in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT.

She has collaborated with various research and corporate institutions from the San Diego Zoo, to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Microsoft Research, Google Magenta, Google Arts and Culture, HARMAN, and Bose. Rébecca has published in leading academic venues, including CHI, SIGGRAPH, UIST, NIME, and TEI. She is part of the OtherAbility artist collective working on assistive technology for museums. Her installation works have appeared at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, Le Laboratoire Paris, and Harvard Divinity School. Her research has also been deployed as part of large-scale musical productions and novel esthetic experiences at Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Symphony, the Maison Symphonique de Montreal, the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, and the Winspear Opera House in Dallas. Her work has also been featured in media channels such as TED.com, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Engadget, Financial Times Magazine, and 60 Minutes.

What happens in the brain when we create music? What gives some people a chill when they are moved by music? Can music be used to help with psychiatric and neurological disorders? These are questions that Loui tackles in the lab. Director of the MIND Lab (Music, Imaging and Neural Dynamics) at Northeastern University, Loui has published in the journals Current Biology, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, NeuroImage, Frontiers in Psychology, Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports, Music Perception, Annuals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and others.

For her research on music and the brain, Loui has been interviewed by the Associated Press, CNN, WNYC, the Boston Globe, BBC Radio 4, NBC news and CBS radio, and the Scientist magazine. Loui graduated the University of California, Berkeley with her PhD in Psychology (Specialization: Cognition, Brain and Behavior) and attended Duke University as an undergraduate graduating with degrees in Psychology and Music and a certificate in Neuroscience. She has since held faculty positions in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Integrative Sciences at Wesleyan University, and in Neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School.

His music has been performed throughout the U.S. and internationally by organizations such as Musicacoustica (Beijing, China), MediaMix (Monterrey, Mexico), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), RAMA Festival (Aarhus, Denmark), L.A. Freewaves (CA), ZeroOne New Media festival (CA), Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center (NY), Gaudeamus (The Netherlands), International Computer Music Association (Huddersfield, UK), Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, Zeppelin Festival of Sound Art (Barcelona, Spain), Festival Synthèse (Bourges, France), Interensemble’s Computer Arts Festival (Padova, Italy), Barbican Centre (London, U.K.), and Medi@terra`s Travelling Mikromuseum (Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, Slovenia).

He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI) at the University of North Texas (2004-5) and was composer-in-residence at the Institut de Musique Electroacoustique (Bourges, France; 1993, 2002). Additionally, he is a member of the Composition Faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and has taught composition, electroacoustic music, and sound art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, College of the Holy Cross, Northeastern University, Clark University, Brandeis University, and Franklin Pierce College.

Smith’s music has been described as “fresh and lustrous” (The New York Times); “seductive and unique” (Ottawa Citizen); “filling in silences blank canvas with the delicacy of an impressionist’s brush” (Vancouver Sun); “wonderfully evocative”; and “intriguing, lovely and seductive” (San Francisco Chronicle); “a highly charged sonic space, fresh and enigmatic” (Los Angeles Times); “sophisticated and ambitious – fascinating and satisfying” (San Francisco Classical Voice); and as “showing a remarkable sensitivity to tone colors” (Toronto Globe and Mail).

He has received commissions funded by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Manhattan School of Music, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and CNMAT, University of California, Berkeley. Performers of his works include guitarist David Tanenbaum, pianist Vicki Chow, clarinetist Laura Carmichael, the Arraymusic Ensemble, California E.A.R. Unit, Cikada, Columbia Sinfonietta, Continuum Ensemble (Toronto), Del Sol String Quartet, Earplay, New Music Concerts Ensemble (Toronto), Pierrot Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Vancouver New Music Ensemble, Verge Ensemble, Xanthos Ensemble, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. He has been a featured composer at Other Minds 12 in San Francisco, the Festival of the Sound, Open Ears and the Banff Festival of the Arts.

Continuum, Arraymusic, the Del Sol String Quartet, Stenberg/Zimmermann Duo, Laura Carmichael and the Evergreen Club Gamelan have recorded his music to CDs on Other Minds Records, Karnatic Labs Records and Artifact Music.

VanHassel has been the recipient of a Live Arts Boston grant from the Boston Foundation, and he has received commissions funded by Chamber Music America, the Barlow Endowment, and the Johnstone Fund for New Music. As an electric guitarist, VanHassel has performed with leading contemporary ensembles including the Callithumpian Consort, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Multiverse Concert Series, Castle of Our Skins, and Kadence Arts. He was a founding member and artistic director of contemporary chamber ensemble Wild Rumpus in San Francisco until 2016, and is the founder, artistic director, and guitarist of the Hinge Quartet.

VanHassel received degrees in composition from the University of California, Berkeley, New England Conservatory, and Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught composition and electronic music at MIT, Brandeis University, UC Berkeley, Clark University, and Connecticut College and is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

VanHassel’s compositions have been featured at top national and international contemporary music festivals, including the MATA Festival, Gaudeamus Music Week, International Computer Music Conference, Bowling Green New Music Festival, UnCaged Toy Piano Festival, Shanghai Conservatory Electronic Music Week, and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. He has been commissioned by Wild Rumpus, Dinosaur Annex, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Now Hear Ensemble, Ignition Duo, Transient Canvas, Keuris Quartet, UnCages Toy Piano Festival, pianists Keith Kirchoff, Angela Kim, and Jihye Chang, the Splice Ensemble, Joseph Van Hassel, and the UC Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble. Recordings of his works are featured on albums by the Now Hear Ensemble and Ignition Duo, as well as releases on the New Focus, Soundset, and Thinking OutLoud labels.

VanHassel has been the recipient of a Live Arts Boston grant from the Boston Foundation, and he has received commissions  funded by Chamber Music America, the Barlow Endowment, and the Johnstone Fund for New Music. As an electric guitarist, VanHassel has performed with leading contemporary ensembles including the Callithumpian Consort, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Multiverse Concert Series, Castle of Our Skins, and Kadence Arts. He was a founding member and artistic director of contemporary chamber ensemble Wild Rumpus in San Francisco until 2016, and is the founder, artistic director, and guitarist of the Hinge Quartet.

VanHassel received degrees in composition from the University of California, Berkeley, New England Conservatory, and Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught composition and electronic music at MIT, Brandeis University, UC Berkeley, Clark University, and Connecticut College and is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

Dr. van Troyer accomplishes his research through innovations in musical instrument design, music production, performance, and audience participation. He obtained his Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab in 2018, creating innovative interactive music systems that inspire people to discover their unique musical language. Dr. van Troyer previously completed his master’s through the MIT Media Lab in 2012, designing new performance systems that encourage audience participation and augment the experience of audience members through interconnected networks. He also earned a master’s degree in 2010 from the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, building computer-based live performance platforms for laptop orchestras.

Their style is defined by the juxtaposition of a visceral gestural vocabulary alongside evocative textural constructions; cross-cutting registers from the autonomic to the atmospheric. This highly tactile approach to composition works to unearth invisible events, networks, and histories by introducing expressive imperfections—dysfluencies—into the musical sentence. These sites of rupture (a suspended trill, stutter, or broken-record loop) expose the submerged complexities of sound, the labor of its production, and its fragility.

Amber has recently had the pleasure of composing for the International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Chartreuse, Ensemble Dal Niente, Russel Greenberg of Yarn/Wire, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. She created site-specific sound installations for the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA and collaborated with video artist Justice to present the multi-media work Landscapes at the Peabody Essex Museum. They were an artist-in-residence with ArtsIceland in Ísafjörður, Iceland. And participated in NYU’s Summer Film Scoring Workshop, EMPAC’s Spatial Audio Workshop, and soundSCAPE composer-performer exchange in Cesena, Italy (2019).

From 2017-19 Amber was a Composition Fellow with the American Opera Project’s Composers and the Voice program. They were commissioned by the Washington National Opera to compose a 20-minute chamber opera in collaboration with librettist Rebecca Hart as part of the American Opera Initiative program. This work, entitled The Barrens, premiered at the Kennedy Center in April 2021. Man Will Not Outlive the Weather—Amber’s first chamber opera for mezzo-soprano, ensemble and electronics—premiered in 2017. Amber is also a 2022 recipient of the Discovery Grant from Opera America in support of their first full-length opera, Dark Exhalation, for four voices, ensemble, and electronics; a lab production is planned for 2023.

Amber holds a B.A. in Music & Philosophy from New College of Florida and an MFA in Sonic Arts from Massachusetts College of Art. They recently completed their PhD in Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University, where their scholarly research focuses on sonic materiality, embodiment, post-humanism, temporality, vocality, and affect theory.

Victor holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science Engineering from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia/Università degli studi di Genova [2012], with a dissertation on the exploration of Virtual Reality technologies in the context of music and performance. After the conclusion of his Ph.D., he continued working on immersive musical technologies at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, Paris [France], as a member of the Sound Music Movement Interaction team. In 2013 he joined the Augmented Instruments Lab, at Queen Mary University of London [UK], where he specialized in digital musical instrument design and started to study the psycho-physiological phenomena that characterize the process of music making. Between 2015 and 2017, he worked as a research fellow at the Human Communication Technologies Lab, University of British Columbia in Vancouver [Canada]; here he focused on articulatory vocal synthesis and on the design of digital musical instruments powered by innovative physical models that blend audio and visuals.