Shaun Naidoo
Shaun Naidoo holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition from the University of Southern California. His music has been performed at festivals and halls throughout the United States, Europe and South Africa, including performances at the Lincoln Theater (Miami Beach, Florida), Japan America Theater (Los Angeles), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Maybeck Recital Hall (San Francisco), PianoSpheres (Pasadena, California), Ernest Bloch Music Festival (Oregon), Edinburgh Festival, Zabalaza Festival (London), Colly Soleri Music Center (Arcosanti, Arizona), SEAMUS festival (Kansas City, Missouri), Kansas City Electronic Music Festival, SCREAM festival (Los Angeles), Ussachevsky Festival (Claremont, California), Market Theater (Johannesburg, South Africa), Jazzart Center (Cape Town, South Africa), South African National Festival of the Arts, Resistance Fluctuations Festival (Los Angeles), Green Umbrella Series (Los Angeles) and the FaultLines Emergency Festival (Los Angeles). Ensembles who have performed his music include the California EAR Unit, the New World Symphony, Xtet, Ensemble Green, FearNoMusic, the Thornton Percussion Ensemble the CalArts Percussion Ensemble, Ensemble Green, and Third Angle. His music has been released by Island Records (New York), C.R.I. (New York), and Shifty Records (South Africa).
During the 1980s he composed extensively for cabaret, musical theater and modern dance in South Africa where he was commissioned by the major modern dance companies and his music received critical acclaim. In 1989 the "Johannesburg Star" described him as "South Africa's premiere composer for modern dance" and in 1990 the "Johannesburg Citizen" called him "one of the brightest lights in the South African music firmament". More recently the "Los Angeles Weekly" described his music as "a hoot and a delight" and added that he is a composer "worth watching". In 1992 his electronic Found Opera Season of Violence (a collaboration with Warrick Swinney) received an Honorable Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. He is a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, an Italian Government Scholarship, the Halsey Stevens Composition Prize, the Peter David Faith Award in Composition, grants from Meet the Composer, and numerous academic honors and awards. In 1997 he co-founded the FaultLines Contemporary Music Series (Los Angeles) which presented twenty-eight composers, performers, and performance artists from throughout the United States betwenn 1997 and 2000. He taught for six years in the Departments of theory and Composition and ElectroAcoustic Media at the University of Southern California, and is currently Assistant Professor of Music and Head of Theoretical Studies at the Chapman University School of Music.

Sean Heim
Born in Philadelphia on 27 January 1967, Sean Heim began his first serious musical training in secondary school and soon after began studies in composition with Harold Oliver at Rowan University. He then worked with Native American composer Louis W. Ballard, completed his Masters degree in composition with Chinary Ung at Arizona State University, and holds a Ph.D. from The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Seán is currently on the music faculty at Rowan University andGloucester County Community College. The primary focus of Heim's work as a composer has been to develop an expressive personal language which strongly reflects the compositional techniques and aesthetic of the Western musical tradition as well as the distillation and infusion of indigenous musics and environmental sound elements. His works "Kulbuku" for chamber ensemble, "as the breaths of flowers" for guitar solo and chamber orchestra, and "Songs From The Jade Flute" for soprano and orchestra are strongly representative of this focus and have won him recognition in the United States and abroad both as a mature and unique composer. Sean Heim has received numerous prizes, award, honors, and commissions from such prestigious institutions as the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, ASCAP, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Arizona State University, The University of Queensland, the Ethical Society of Philadelphia and most recently The ASCAP Foundation Rudolf Nissim Prize for Orchestral Composition and an ASCAP Standard Award. His music has been performed to critical acclaim throughout the United States and abroad by such distinguished performers as the California E.A.R. Unit, Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center, Perihelion, Joseph Wytko, Topology, The University of Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Helix, the Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey, Joseph Mayes, and the Settlement Contemporary Players.

Greg Genovese
Greg Genovese hails from the Garden State where his days are numbered as a student of Harold Oliver and Sean Heim in the theory/composition program of Rowan University. Among his many unrelated current interests and aspirations, he hopes to taste human flesh (dried or cooked) and study languages.

Charles Lawrence Gran
Charles Lawrence Gran (b. 1969) was born and raised in Southern California. A student of public schools all his life, he has a populist vision for his music. He is a PhD candidate at UCLA, and has written for chorus,and various instrumental combinations. He considers the voice his primary compositional focus and feature singing in many of his pieces.Recently he has created music for theater and video. In February of 2001 he was invited to participate in the A.S.K. Theater Projects/Nautilus Music-Theater Playwright-Composer Studio based on work produced on his opera-in-progress, HUNGRY. Multimedia theater is also an interest of his: he produced and collaborated in the creation of INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, TRUTH, BEAUTY, LOVE, MUSIC a work for dancers, singers, piano and sound design. Other compositions written and performed in the 2000-2001 season include ROUGH RIDERS, for solo piano; FANTASTIC SYMMETRY, for percussion trio; BREATHING INDIA an electronic composition for dance; JEFFREY DAHMER DRINKS A CUP OF COFFEE, a musical scene created in collaboration with playwright Bridget Carpenter. In the coming season he is composing an evening-length multimedia work, AUTHORIZED STANDARD, for dancers and singers that addresses the Waco tragedy, a rock musical, and a piece for piano-forte.He also performs as a singer and actor, often with his wife Christine for whom he composed THE DREAM OF THE ROOD (2001), a song based on the famous Anglo-Saxon poem. They live in Los Angeles.

Bruno Louchouarn
Bruno Louchouarn was born in France but spent his teens growing up in Mexico City where he formed a Latin-American folklore ensemble. He received a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science and a M.S. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Paris. He received his M.A. and is working toward a Ph.D. in composition from UCLA. He has studied with Ian Krouse, Paul Chihara, as well as Jerry Goldsmith for film scoring. He has composed for both the concert hall and film. He has scored half a dozen films including the multi-award winning "Tango Flush" , and three songs for the film "Total Recall." Recently he worked for A&E's "100 Center Street." For theater he wrote the music for "Eleemosynary," (L.A. Critics Circle Award for best production). Twice he was a finalist for the Ojai Festival "Music for Tomorrow Composer Award." His concert works include: "Time Pieces" for orchestra, "De una Piedra de Gracia" for marimba and chamber orchestra -- premiered at the Santa Monica College 75th Anniversary Ceremonies, "Flux" for flute, multi-percussion and tape, "Pearl Fog" for ninestrings and English horn, "Movement" for string quartet, "Chiaroscuro," for oboe, piano and marimba, and "Retour" for solo piano and tape. "Echanges" for guitar duo was premiered by the Elgart-Yates Guitar Duo, and "Rapprochement" for flute, viola, and harp was premiered at UCLA by the Debussy Trio. "Fiestas", for 12 percussionists was premiered at the Percussive Art Society International Conference 2000 by the USC Percussion Ensemble. "Memoires de l'eau," for eight percussionists was premiered by the UCLA Percussion Ensemble, and "Puentes," a latin overture for Brass and percussion had its first performance this spring at RoyceHall, UCLA.

Dominique Schafer
Dominique Schafer is originally from Switzerland, where he concentrated studying the piano and theory at the Conservatory of Fribourg. Because of his interest in electronic music he also pursued studies and a career in electronics. After moving to Los Angeles in 1990 he was active in recording studios as an engineer and programmer. He entered the UCLA composition program in 1993 and graduated with a BA cum laude in composition in 1997. In 1999 he entered the Masters program in composition at UCLA. His composition teachers have included Paul Reale, Ian Krouse, Paul Chihara, Elain Barkin and Jerry Goldsmith. Most recently his Three Bagatelles for piano were premiered in March this year. Also this year Eterna, a piece for string orchestra, has received second place in a composition competition of the Orchesterverein, Kempten, Germany. It will be performed there in the next season. Last May Jeu-parti a duo for violin and violoncello was premiered.

Ingrid Stolzel
Ingrid Stolzel is a native of Germany and currently resides in Kansas City, Missouri. She is a member of newEar, the contemporary music ensemble in Kansas City, and is also the program manager of the Youth Symphony. In 1997, Stolzel graduated with a Master of Music in Composition from the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, where she studied with James Sellars and Robert Carl. She earned her Bachelor of Music from the Conservatory of Music in Kansas City studying with James Mobberley and Gerald Kemner. Her music has been performed at festivals such as Music 2001, Oregon Bach Festival, James Madison Contemporary Music Festival, Ernest Bloch Festival and Indiana State Contemporary Music Festival. Thanks to Arcosanti and the California E.A.R. Unit for a great week!

Christopher Randall
Christopher Randall was born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota. He spent ten years working as a musician in Los Angeles, during which time he earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Southern California. He recently received a master's degree from the University of Oregon, and currently resides in Eugene, Oregon. Mr. Randall has performed on a variety of instruments in a wide range of styles, including folk, speed metal, orchestra, gamelan, and North Indian classical voice. As a result, much of his music works to synthesize these diverse musical cultures into a single, unified sound world.