Composer Paola Prestini has cultivated a uniquely expansive and humanistic musical voice, through pieces that transcend genre and discipline, and projects whose global impact reverberates beyond the walls of the concert hall. Far more than just notes on a page, Prestini's works give voice to those whom society has silenced, and offer a platform for the causes that are most vital to us all. Prestini has been named one of the Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music by the Washington Post, one of the top 100 Composers in the World by National Public Radio, and one of the Top 30 Professionals of the Year by Musical America. As Co-Founder of National Sawdust, she has collaborated with luminaries like poet Robin Coste Lewis, visual artists Julie Mehretu and Nick Cave, and musical legends David Byrne, Philip Glass and Renée Fleming, and her works have been performed throughout the world with leading institutions like the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Dallas Opera, London's Barbican Center, Mexico's Bellas Artes, and many more.

Acclaimed as one of the “contemporary masters of the medium” by MIT Press’s Computer Music Journal, Elainie Lillios creates works that reflect her fascination with listening, sound, space, time, immersion, and anecdote. Her compositions include stereo, multi-channel, and Ambisonic fixed media works, instrument(s) with live electronics, collaborative experimental audio/visual animations, and installations. She also performs live electronics with ESC Trio collaborators Chris Biggs and Scott Deal and with Origami Sound Society collaborator Mark Nagy.

 Elainie’s work has been recognized internationally and nationally through awards, grants, and commissions, including a 2020 Johnstone Foundation commission, 2018 Fromm Foundation Commission, 2016 Barlow Endowment Commission, and 2013 Fulbright Scholar Award. She won First Prize in the Concours Internationale de Bourges, Areon Flutes International Composition Competition, Electroacoustic Piano International Competition, and Medea Electronique “Saxotronics” Competition. She has also received awards from the Destellos International Electroacoustic Competition, Concurso Internacional de Música Electroacústica de São Paulo, Concorso Internazionale Russolo, Pierre Schaeffer Competition, and others.

She has received grants/commissions from INA/GRM, Rèseaux, International Computer Music Association, La Muse en Circuit, New Adventures in Sound Art, ASCAP/SEAMUS, LSU’s Center for Computation and Technology, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Ohio Arts Council, and National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts. She has been a special guest at the Groupe de Recherche Musicales, Rien à Voir, festival l’espace du son, June in Buffalo, and at other locations in the United States and abroad.  

Reviews of Elainie’s compact disc Entre Espaces (available on Empreintes DIGITALes at electrocd.com) praise her work for being “… elegantly assembled, and immersive enough to stand the test of deep listening” and as “…a journey not to be missed.” Other works are published by Centaur, Innova, MSR Classics, Ravello, StudioPANaroma, Musiques et recherches, La Muse en Circuit, New Adventures in Sound Art, SEAMUS, Irritable Hedgehog and Leonardo Music Journal.

Elainie serves as Director of Composition Activities for SPLICE (www.splicemusic.org) and as Professor of Creative Arts Excellence at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Time Lapse
"Time-lapse is a cinematographic technique that decouples capture rate (the rate at which photographs are shot) from playback rate. Time-lapse photography creates the illusion of high-speed movement — manipulating time to make it seem as if a subject is moving rapidly. Time-lapse photography is most commonly used to capture very slow processes that might not otherwise appear interesting, such as plants growing, stars moving through the night sky, etc. It can also be used to capture fast movements, such as traffic or crowded city sidewalks, making them seem even faster. Time-Lapse (2021) for amplified vibraphone and fixed media, employs a similar technique using a set of gestural, harmonic, and rhythmic cells, or snap-shots. Their movement through the piece shifts focus and changes speed, sometimes creating a sense of increasing speed, while other times portraying the materials in their original form. Time-Lapse was commissioned as as part of the Electronic Integration Project by Jordan Walsh and Consortium Members. Time-Lapse is dedicated to my many former students who over the years have opened my ears to a broader musical world. Their willingness and desire to question norms, explore beyond the obvious, and take musical risks continues to challenge and inspire me. You know who you are."
- Elainie Lillios

An avid collaborator, Camila Agosto is an electroacoustic composer and interdisciplinary artist currently based in New York City. Camila seeks to discover intersections of her work with additional artistic fields through partnerships with other musicians, visual artists, choreographers, instrument builders, and creators. Her projects range from acoustic and electroacoustic concert works and orchestral scores to interdisciplinary projects incorporating visual media and dance, and from solo instruments and larger ensembles to fixed media works. Her music is both fully notated and improvisational and often employs extended instrumental techniques, exhibiting a particular emphasis on the exploration of different timbral and textural elements. Within her works, Camila is interested in uncovering the sonic potentialities of acoustic instruments through highlighting and exposing the human element of live performance.

​Camila is a recipient of the Fall 2023 Berlin Prize and Deutsche Bank Fellowship in Music Composition from the American Academy in Berlin and will be featured in a concert premiering new works in Berlin this Fall. Her music has also been featured at venues and festivals in the United States and abroad, and has been performed by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Quartet 121, the Semiosis Quartet, Berrow Duo, Ensemble Échappé. A finalist in the Los Angeles Philharmonic National Composer Intensive, her music has been featured at the Walt Disney Concert Hall during the LA Phil's Noon to Midnight Series, in addition to the Miller Theatre Pop-Up Series at Columbia University, National Sawdust, Symphony Space Bar Thalia Series, 2018 New Latin Wave Festival, the FETA FM Festival, Sala Neumann, and the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity. Camila often works with visual artists, choreographers, and film directors on a variety of multimedia projects. Past collaborations include imprint, an electroacoustic installation piece commissioned by Berrow Duo, featuring projected visual media and artwork created by artists from the Maryland Institute College of Art. 

In recent projects, Camila has designed and constructed various instruments and performative installation pieces to use in her compositional work.  Upcoming projects include a new work for voice, viola, cello and electronics exploring the integration of text, live composition, improvisation, and custom instruments, and new works for fixed media fusing field recordings, acoustic and electronic music. 

In the summer of 2020, Camila became a certified yoga instructor and created the Meristem Artist Retreat, a virtual space for artists of marginalized genders including women, trans individuals, femme-identifying, and nonbinary folks, to meet a variety of artists across different disciplines while learning holistic and balanced practices to help them sustain a healthy artistic life. Since then,  Camila has founded Meristem Artists, an arts community continuing the work of the retreat to support artists of marginalized genders and create a welcoming, supportive, and trustworthy atmosphere in which to connect, learn, share and work. Through her work with Meristem Artists, she has directed a series of artist retreats and community events including open discussions surrounding topics central to creating arts today, artist talks with invited guests across the contemporary music community, yoga and meditation sessions, and additional holistic activities to stimulate healthy and positive creative practices. Camila has led various wellness workshop series through the Columbia University Computer Music Center and was an invited guest presenter at the Ensemble Evolution 2022 summer sessions led by the International Contemporary Ensemble. 

Camila is currently an ABD doctoral candidate at Columbia University in Music Composition. She holds a Master’s degree from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelors in Music from Montclair State University. Her teachers include Zosha Di Castri, Seth Cluett, Brad Garton, George Lewis, Oscar Bettison, Marcos Balter and Du Yun. She has also worked with Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Sabrina Schroeder, Amy Williams, and Juraj Kojs. Camila was a composition fellow at the New Music on the Point Festival, the Cortona Sessions for New Music, and the Summer Music programs at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity. A recipient of the Randolph S. Rothschild Scholarship, Camila has also received awards and scholarships from the Marshall M. Williams Endowment and Sorel Organization.

Listen to me as one listens to the rain
Influenced by a poem written by Mexican poet, Octavio Paz, Listen to me as one listens to the rain depicts the internal conflict of a person as they gradually lose their ability to communicate their thoughts and interact with the world around them.

The percussive instrument used in this piece is something I call a “soft-board”. It is constructed from various materials including bubble wrap, metallic wrappers, and different textured papers attached to a flat board to create sounds that fit within the overall texture. Through the combination of sounds emanating from these three instruments, the performers are able to create an atmosphere that demonstrates the quiet, tentative nature of human fragility and the role that communication plays in our lives.

The music of composer Marilyn Shrude is characterized by its warmth and lyricism, rich timbre, multi-layered constructions, and complex blend of tonality and atonality. The result is a bright, shimmering and delicately wrought sound world that is at once both powerful and fragile. Her concentration on color and the natural resonance of spaces, as well as her strong background in Pre-Vatican II liturgical music, give the music its linear, spiritual, and quasi-improvisational qualities.

Shrude received degrees from Alverno College and Northwestern University, where she studied with Alan Stout and M. William Karlins. Among her more prestigious honors are those from the Guggenheim Foundation (2011 Fellow), American Academy of Arts and Letters, Rockefeller Foundation, Chamber Music America/ASCAP, Meet the Composer, Sorel Foundation (Medallion Winner for Choral Music 2011), and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was the first woman to receive the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for Orchestral Music (1984) and the Cleveland Arts Prize for Music (1998). Her work for saxophone and piano, Renewing the Myth, was the required piece for the 150 participants of the 3rd International Adolphe Sax Concours in Belgium (2002).

Active as a composer, pianist, teacher, and contemporary music advocate, Shrude has consistently promoted American music through her many years as founder and director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music (1987-99) and as chair of the Department of Musicology/Composition/Theory at Bowling Green State University (1998-2011). She joined the faculty of BGSU in 1977, has served as Visiting Professor of Music at Indiana University, Oberlin Conservatory and Heidelberg College, and was a faculty member and chair of the Composition and Theory Department at the Interlochen Arts Camp (1990-97). She has received four Dean’s Awards for Service and for the Promotion of Contemporary Music on the Campus of BGSU (1994, 1999, 2005, 2011) and a 2008 BGSU Chair/Director Leadership Award. In 2001 she was named a Distinguished Artist Professor of Music. Together with saxophonist, John Sampen, she has premiered, recorded and presented hundreds of works by living composers both in the United States and abroad.

Shrude’s compositions have been recorded for New World, Albany, Azica, MMC, Capstone, Orion, Centaur, Neuma, Access, and Ohio Brassworks, and are published by C. F. Peters, Editions Henry Lemoine (Paris), American Composers Alliance, Neue Musik Verlag Berlin, Southern Music, and Thomas House. She has had the honor to work with the impressive musicians of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Fromm Music Series, St. Louis Orchestra Chamber Series, Brave New Works, Contemporary Directions Ensemble, Icicle Creek Trio, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Ravenna Festival, Music Today, Spectrum Trio, Lost Dog Ensemble, Ryoanji Duo, Studio for New Music of the Moscow Conservatory, Flexible Music, CORE Ensemble, Duo Montagnard, Azmari String Quartet, Chicago Saxophone Quartet, New Music Chicago, Quatuor Apollinaire, Tower Brass, Masterworks Choral and Voices of Ascension. Her works for orchestra, wind symphony and choir have led to collaborations with conductors such as Emily Freeman Brown, Yuval Zaliouk, Stefan Sanderling, Andrew Massey, John Paynter, Robert Spano, Henry Charles Smith, Christophe Changnard, Kate Tamarkin, Steven Smith, Ed London, Bruce Moss, Mark Kelly, Steven Gage, Octavio Mas-Arocas, Grzegorz Nowak, Janna Himes, Robert Fitzpatrick, Vladimir Valek and Dennis Keene. Works featuring soloists have lead to rich opportunities with distinguished leaders in the field: saxophonists John Sampen, Frederick Hemke, Donald Sinta, Jean-Marie Londeix, Jean-Michel Goury (to mention but a few); sopranos Julia Bentley, Ekaterina Kicheegina, Ann Corrigan, Dawn Padula; violinists Maria Sampen, Stephen Miahky, Timothy Christie, Miranda Cuckson, Movses Pogossian, Jennifer Caine, Ioana Galu; flutists Judith Bentley, Nina Assimakopoulos; oboist Jacqueline Leclair; tubists Velvet Brown, Ben Pierce, Charles Guy; organists Karel Paukert, Emma Lou Diemer; pianists Robert Satterlee, Winston Choi, Hugh Hinton, Anne-Marie McDermott, Joan Tower; cellists Katri Ervamaa, Norbert Lewandowski, Andrea Yun, Andrew Mark; and percussionist Michael Parola. Guest appearances as a pianist and composer include tours to Russia, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Canada, South America, and Armenia, as well as numerous performances in the United States.

Within Silence (2012) celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Cage (2012) and Shrude’s meeting with György and Marta Kurtág in the same year.