Born and raised in the city of Chicago, Noah Meites (b. 1982) writes dramatic, rhythmically-charged music that draws upon his wide-ranging interests in literature, visual art, and the natural world. Noah’s music has been recognized nationally in the United States by BMI, NewMusic USA, SCI/ASCAP and has been featured at the LAPhil’s Noon to Midnight Festival, June in Buffalo, the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music, the DiMenna Center, Tuesdays@Monk Space, the Carlsbad Music Festival, the Pacific Rim Music Festival, and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague’s Spring Festival. His past residencies include the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Banff Centre, and the Avaloch Farm Music Institute. Noah’s recent commissions include works for Brightwork New Music, Aperture Duo, Arkora, Maggie Hasspacher, and Ensemble Modelo62.
Also active as a trumpet player and producer, Noah is a co-founder of LA Signal Lab -- a creative music collective dedicated to composing, performing, and recording new works at the intersection of improvised and pre-composed music.
Noah’s major teachers include Louis Andriessen (with whom he worked closely during a year of intensive postdoctoral study), Diderik Wagenaar and Martijn Padding (the Royal Conservatory of The Hague), and Paul Nauert and Hi Kyung Kim (the University of California Santa Cruz).
Noah lives in Los Angeles where he serves on the faculties of the UCLA
Herb Alpert School of Music and the Colburn Conservatory of Music.
Clara Iannotta is an Italian composer and curator based in Berlin.
Her music is commissioned and performed by renowned ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, including Quatuor Diotima, Ensemble Intercontemporain, JACK, Klangforum Wien, Neue Vocalsolisten, Münchener Kammerorchester, Nikel, and WDR Orchestra.
Iannotta has been a fellow of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD in 2013, Villa Médicis (Académie de France à Rome) in 2018–19, and the recipient of several prizes including the Ernst von Siemens Composers’ Prize and Hindemith-Preis 2018, Una Vita nella Musica Giovani 2019, Bestenliste 2/2016 and 4/2020 der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics’ Award) for her portrait albums A Failed Entertainment, and Earthing.
Since 2014, Iannotta has been the artistic director of the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, and from 2022 will be the co-artistic director of the festival Klangspuren Schwaz. Her music is published by Edition Peters.
Derek Tywoniuk (he/him) is a composer and percussionist based in Los Angeles. His music has been performed internationally, recorded on the Bridge and Yarlung labels, and published by Edition Peters. Recent projects include pieces for Synchromy/Brightwork, Spectrum Ensemble, HOCKET, and Aperture Duo. As a percussionist, he has performed with Wild Up, Monday Evening Concerts, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Spoleto Festival USA, the Lucerne Festival Academy, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Smoke and Mirrors Ensemble, the last of which recorded two albums with Yarlung Records. He has also appeared as a guest artist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performing music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Ryoji Ikeda.
Derek holds a PhD in music composition and theory from UCLA, and also studied percussion performance at the Colburn School (MM, AD) and the Cleveland Institute of Music (BM). In his spare time he is an avid reader; his favorite authors include Maggie Nelson, James Baldwin, and José Muñoz, and in 2021 he read Proust’s complete In Search of Lost Time. He lives with his partner Ted and their two tuxedo cats, Bob and Kip.
Andrew Tholl is a composer, violinist, and improvisor. Hailed by the LA Times as “vigorously virtuosic,” his compositions and performances have been heard across the United States and Europe. As a composer, Tholl’s conceptual interest lies in the exploration of the passage of time, the physicality of making music, noise, nostalgia, and memory. His style is heavily informed by a synthesis of musical influences, the integration of improvisation, and the development of innovative instrumental techniques through a practice-led approach. As a soloist and chamber musician, he is dedicated to the performance of new music and the collaborative process between composer and performer. Tholl is a member and co-founder of the “superb” (LA Times) Formalist Quartet, a new-music-focused string quartet dedicated to presenting challenging new repertoire and close collaboration with composers. Tholl is also a member of the Grammy-nominated, Los Angeles based new music ensemble Wild Up, whose unique programming juxtaposes works across genres, to create visceral, thought-provoking performances.
Aside from his work as a “classical” musician and composer, Tholl maintains a second musical life writing and performing pop, rock, punk, noise and improvisational music as a violinist, drummer, and guitarist. Additionally, he has worked extensively in scoring for film, dance, and theater as both a performer and composer. He teaches at UC Santa Barbara and Ventura College and lives in Los Angeles where he continues to be involved with music for concert halls, art galleries, films, puppet shows, bars, garages, bedrooms, and coat closets.
Carolyn Chen has made music for supermarket, demolition district, and the dark. Her work reconfigures the everyday to retune habits of our ears through sound, text, light, and movement. Her studies of the guqin, a Chinese zither traditionally played for private meditation in nature, have informed her thinking on listening in social spaces. Recent projects include an audio essay on a scream and commissions for Klangforum Wien and the LA Phil.
Described by The New York Times as “the evening’s most consistently alluring … a quiet but lush meditation,” Chen’s work has been supported by the Berlin Prize, Fulbright, ASCAP’s Fred Ho Award, Soros Fellowships for New Americans, Stanford University Sudler Prize, and commissions from Green Umbrella, MATA Festival, and impuls Festival. The work has been presented at festivals and exhibitions in 25 countries, at venues including Carnegie Hall, the Kitchen, Disney Hall (Los Angeles), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Institute for Provocation (Beijing). Writing and recordings are available in MusikTexte, Experimental Music Yearbook, The New Centennial Review, Leonardo Music Journal, and the wulf. Chen earned a Ph.D. in music from UC San Diego, and a M.A. in Modern Thought and Literature and B.A. in music from Stanford University, with an honors thesis on free improvisation and radical politics. She lives in Los Angeles.