Michael Angell has written works in a great variety of genres, including orchestral, solo, chamber works, electro-acoustic compositions, and music for plays and multimedia installations. His works have been performed throughout the United States and Europe, including Society of Composers, SEAMUS, BAMA, and College Music Society concerts. He is the recipient of awards from the International Trumpet Guild, ASCAP, and the Hultgren Cello Biennial; and is the recipient of a fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Angell is a co-founder; and initial and current president of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. He has also served on the board of directors of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, and the Birmingham Artburst series (president, 1999-2000). Having received his training at the Oberlin Conservatory and University of Michigan, Angell joined the music faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1994; where he has taught courses in composition, theory, aural skills, and computer music; and was founder and director of the UAB Computer Music Ensemble. He has recently relocated to the Washington, DC area, where he continues his creative and organizational activity. email

Flutist, composer, and performance artist Donnie Ashworth is a strong advocate of new music and other innovative contemporary artforms. Mr. Ashworth's compositions have been performed throughout the United States. He has commissioned and premiered new works for flute, and has introduced works by many composers to the Birmingham community. Ashworth has performed at nationally recognized music conventions and festivals such as SEAMUS, CMENC, Birmingham Improv, and City Stages. His performances have been recorded on the Living Artists CD series. email

A Texas native, Craig Biondi's works for the concert hall and stage have been performed throughout the US and Europe by such notable groups as the Dallas Wind Symphony, the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra, Portugal's Coro Odyssea, and the Yale Brass Trio. He was educated at The University of Texas at Austin and the Hartt School, from which he holds a Master's degree in composition. Biondi's music displays a wide variety of styles and interests, with works for ensembles ranging from solo instruments to full orchestral forces. His piece I'll Write a Poem Called Yellow was recently named the winning brass trio for the 2008 International Brass Chamber Music Festival. His chamber piece Concertina was selected for performance at the College Music Society's 2008 National Convention in Atlanta. Biondi's Spanish-language choral piece bendici�n de paz was selected and premiered as a finalist in the 2006 "Outside the Bachs" competition for new sacred music. His works for Jazz Ensemble are performed often and are published by the FJH Music Company. Craig Biondi has studied composition with Larry Alan Smith, Joseph Turrin, Robert Carl, Stephen Gryc and Ken Steen. In addition to teaching at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, he is active as a performer, clinician and co-curator of the Connecticut based concert series Momentum, which premiered on 4.28.07. Mr. Biondi serves as Interim Minister of Music at Liberty Park Baptist Church and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife Lynsey. email | website

Robert Boury has for twenty-five years served as Resident Composer at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he has composed an opera and a musical for the Theatre Department, works for Dance, Chorus, the Community Orchestra, the Gospel Choir, and students and faculty soloists. In 2004, his work �Of History and Hope� was performed in celebration of the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library, and in 2005 C. F. Peters published his song cycle, �To Dream Again�.

Adam Bowles is becoming increasingly active on the contemporary art-music scene, performing frequently in the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, Artburst, and similar venues for new music throughout the country. Dr. Bowles received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He obtained his Bachelor of Music degree at the Eastman School of Music, and received his Master of Music at the New England Conservatory. His teachers include Milton Stern, Barry Snyder, Jacob Maxin, and Eugene and Elizabeth Pridonoff. He has also received periodic coaching with Richard Goode, Malcolm Bilson, and Seymour Lipkin. Dr. Bowles is now an instructor on the Birmingham-Southern College Conservatory faculty where he has taught the two highest levels of music theory in addition to maintaining a studio of private students. At the college level he teaches both levels of Keyboard Harmony for music majors. During the year Dr. Bowles frequently collaborates in recital with students and faculty at BSC. Dr. Bowles has also done performances, presentations, and master classes around the country as a soloist and with the new-music group Luna Nova.

Don Bowyer is Chair of the Department of Music at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where he teaches Jazz and Music Technology. Having received the Doctor of Arts in Trombone Performance and Jazz Pedagogy from the University of Northern Colorado, Bowyer has taught at every level from kindergarten through university in the United States, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Sweden. Active as a composer, Bowyer is published by Walrus Music Publishing, UNC Jazz Press, TAP Music Sales, and Cimarron Music Press. With a strong interest in computer-assisted instruction in music, he is the creator of Dolphin Don's Music School, an educational computer game that teaches music reading and ear training for children. As a trombonist, Bowyer has performed in more than 40 countries on five continents, including eleven cruise ships in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Gulf of Alaska. The first ten didn't sink.

Music of Taiwanese composer Tzu-Ling Sarana Chou (b. 1980) has been described as �very clear expression, well designed, and creative.� As the first prize winner (Leo Kaplan Award) at the 2002 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, Sarana Chou�s music has been awarded for numerous prizes in the United States and abroad, including the Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prize from International Alliance for Women in Music, the winner of the USA Florida Chapter of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM) competition, a regional prize in the SCI/ASCAP commission project competition, as well as Palmer Dixon Prize from The Juilliard School, and Belle Gitelman Award from Eastman School of Music, in recognition of her excellence in musical composition. Sarana Chou�s music has been widely performed, most notably at Lincoln Center�s Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall�s Weill Recital Hall in New York City, Taiwan National Theater in Taipei, and Akademie der K�nste in Berlin, Germany; Her music has also been featured in music festivals such as The Banff Summer Arts Festival in Canada, New Music Miami Festival, June In Buffalo Festival, Taiwanese-American Heritage Festival in La Jolla, CA. She has worked with such artists as The Pacifica Quartet, conductor Jonathan Schiffman of Orchestre Lyrique de R�gion Avignon-Provence, flutist Demarre McGill of San Diego Symphony, pianist Jenny Lin, and cellist Felix Fan. Last year, her concerto for piano and orchestra Spotlight On was performed in the Composer�s Forum of Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Robert Franz. She is currently working on a chamber opera with librettist Hyejung Kook. The project is sponsored by Taiwan National Culture and Arts Foundation. email | website

Paul Clem has degrees in music from Birmingham-Southern College and Florida International University. He has composed avante-garde music in a myriad of mediums and also performs as an improviser. email

Michael Coleman received his doctorate from the University of Maryland and the M.M. and B.M. degrees from the University of New Orleans and the University of South Alabama. His principle composition teachers were Lawrence Moss, Jerry Sieg, and Carl Alette. He has participated as composer and/or pianist in numerous new music programs and festivals in the U.S., France & Russia, including the Astrakhan Contemporary Chamber Music Festival, Birmingham Art Music Alliance, Birmingham New Arts Stage, Capital Composers Alliance, Charles Ives Center, College Music Society, Delius Association of Florida, Louisiana Composers Guild, Moscow Autumn, New Music Chicago, Society of Composers, Inc., Southeastern Composers' League,and various festivals in Kolomna, Kostroma, Moscow, and Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Coleman received the Artist Fellowship grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 1994 and a Meet-the-Composer grant through the Southern Arts Federation in 1995. Other awards include first prize in both the 1991 and 1992 NFMC National Composer's Competitions and first prize in the 1989 Res Musica Baltimore Competition. Recent awards include Certificate of Excellence for Best Short Composition and First & Second Prize in the Keyboard Category of the 2001 Composer's Guild Competition held in Farmington, Utah. He is currently teaching at Pensacola Junior College and the University of West Florida. email

Josh Crowe is currently a sophomore Music Composition Major at Birmingham-Southern College, studying from Drs. Charles Norman Mason and Dorothy Hindman. Josh�s pieces have won several competitions, including the Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra Youth Composition Competition, and the 60x60: 2008 Midwest Mix. He received a commission from the Las Americas String Quartet, based out of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and a commission from young dancer/choreographer Elizabeth Grunigen for a piano solo with string orchestra accompaniment. Josh is also the composer for several short films by Knife in Knose Productions. His primary performance medium is percussion, however he also plays piano in the BSC Jazz Band, sings tenor in the college concert choir and in a church chancel choir, and also has experience playing keyboards, electric bass, and drums in numerous rock bands. email

Raphael Crystal is Director of Musical Theatre for the University of Alabama Department of Theatre and Dance. He is active professionally as a theater composer, musical director, and pianist. His composing credits include musicals (he received a New York Outer Critics Circle award for Best Off-Broadway Musical for the show Kuni-Leml), ballets, incidental music, videos, cabaret material, and concert music. Recently the Jean Cocteau Repertory in New York premiered his musical version of Moliere's The Bourgeois Gentleman, and next season Birmingham Children�s Theatre will premiere his new musical MegaHeroes. He is a member of BAMA, ASCAP, and the Dramatists Guild, and an alumnus of the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.

Emily M. Fincher is a graduate of Samford University with a Bachelor of Music in Theory/Composition. She has studied composition with Dr. James Jensen, and piano with Dr. Kathryn Fouse. She began composing around the age of ten, but began serious study of composition after arriving at Samford in 2004. She has studied piano since age five, flute since age thirteen, and voice since age sixteen, and is still active with those instruments in various ensembles. Emily plans to continue studying composition at the Master�s level in Fall 2008. email | MySpace

Kathryn Fouse serves on the faculty of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama where she is the Coordinator of Piano Pedagogy and Class Piano. In addition to her commitment to education, she continues to maintain an active career as a virtuoso pianist and a professional accompanist. Having developed a strong interest in contemporary music, Dr. Fouse frequently presents lecture-recitals in an effort to bring greater understanding of this music to audiences. In 1992 Kathryn was the national recipient of the Merle Montgomery Doctoral Grant awarded by Mu Phi Epsilon for her research into the Surrealist movement and its influence on American composers. Her special interest in the study and performance of American piano music of the Twentieth Century has resulted in invitations to present her research in lecture-recitals at such prestigious institutions as the University of Illinois, Baylor University, the Dallas Art Museum, Gothenburg University (Sweden) and the Norwegian State Academy of Music (Oslo). email

Monroe Golden is a freelance composer, computer programmer, and itinerant forest gardener. His compositions often explore microtonal systems, and have been broadcast on adventurous radio and performed in concerts throughout the world. Critics have called his music "delightfully disorienting" and "lovely, sumptuous, yet arcane." Awards include an artist fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and commissions from solo performers, ensembles, and the Alabama Music Teachers Association. Beyond his artistry, Golden has actively encouraged and promoted the innovative arts in his resident community. He is a founding member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, serving as President from 2003-2005. He has also headed the Birmingham Art Association and the ARTBURST Performance Series at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham. He produced the 1998 Birmingham International Improvisation Festival, and founded the New Arts Stage of Birmingham's City Stages, directing the stage from 1999-2004. He graduated from the University of Montevallo and earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois, studying composition with James A. Jensen, Ed Robertson, Ben Johnston, Aurel Stro�, and Herbert Br�n. A CD of his music A Still Subtler Spirit, is available from CD Baby and other online and independent music stores. His latest CD Alabama Places was released in August 2007 by innova Recordings. email | website

As a solo and chamber music performer, classical guitarist Alan Goldspiel has concertized throughout the United States and in the Caribbean and Europe. He has given the world premieres of From Faraway Nearby for guitar duo at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall and Rhapsody for solo guitar at New York's CAMI Hall, and has been featured on KQED (CA) radio, WNYC (NY) radio, KEDM (LA) radio, and (NY) television's News 12 Long Island. He has been a soloist with the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, Monroe Symphony Orchestra, Vermont Philharmonic, Sinfonie-by-the-Sea, and served as an Artist-in-Residence for North Carolina's prestigious Visiting Artists Program, presenting over eighty concerts throughout that state. He is Professor of Music and Chair, Department of Music at the University of Montevallo. Dr. Goldspiel was the first and only guitarist to be honored with the Marshall Dodge Award from the Performing Artists Associates of New England. He was selected for the Louisiana State Artist Roster and Touring Directory, and accepted as a touring artist on the rosters of the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. His four CDs with Richard Provost have been favorably reviewed by Fanfare, Soundboard, Classical Guitar Magazine and the American Record Guide. At Louisiana Tech University (1995-2008), he was the 2006 recipient of the James Alvey Smith Endowed Professorship for excellence in teaching, the 2002 recipient of Louisiana Tech's University Senate Chair Award for excellence in teaching, research, and service, and given the Louisiana State Arts Council's 2004-2005 Artist Fellowship Award for artistic excellence. Dr Goldspiel recently recorded a fifth duo CD entitled Latin Magic, completed a third composition for solo guitar entitled Tale of the Bird Mound, and a read his paper "Background Structure, Syntax, and Idiomatic Device in the Solo Music of Heitor Villa-Lobos" at the 2008 International Villa-Lobos Conference. email

Critics have called Dr. Dorothy Hindman�s (b. 1966) work is performed extensively in the U.S., and throughout Eastern and Western Europe. Critics have called her music �intense, gripping, and frenetic�, �sonorous and affirmative� and �music of terrific romantic gesture�. Awards and recognition include 2005 Almquist Choral Composition Award, 2004 Nancy Van de Vate International Composition Prize for Opera, 2004 Winner of the International Society of Bassists Solo Composition Competition, a 2002 Alabama Music Teachers Association/MTNA Commission, the Atlanta Prize in the 2001 Hultgren Biennial Solo Cello Works Competition, an Alabama State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, the NACUSA Young Composers Competition, the Abraham Frost Composition Competition, the ASCA/National Symphony Orchestra Commission Competition, the G. Schirmer Young Americans Choral Competition, and the Percussive Arts Society�s International Solo Marimba Composition Competition. Recent commissions include Tapping the Furnace for Evelyn Glennie, Lost in Translation for saxophonist Carey Valente, Drift for the Lithium Saxophone Quartet, Taut for the Corona Guitar Kvartet, Louise: The Story of a Magdalen, a full-length opera for Alabama Operaworks, and Time Management for bassist Robert Black. A native of Miami, Florida, Hindman has taught music theory and composition at Birmingham-Southern College since 1994. This year, she is residing in Rome, Italy, as a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. email | website

For several decades, cellist Craig Hultgren has been a proponent for new music, the newly creative arts, and the avant-garde. In recent years, he has performed solo concerts and chamber music in Rome, Boston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Miami, Atlanta, Orlando, Denver, Memphis and San Antonio. A recipient of two Artist Fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, he was a member for many years of Th�myris, a contemporary chamber music ensemble in Atlanta. A cellist in the Alabama Symphony, he also plays in Luna Nova, a new music ensemble with a large repertoire of performances available as podcast downloads on iTunes. Hultgren is featured in three solo CD recordings including The Electro-Acoustic Cello Book on Living Artist Recordings. In 2004, the Birmingham Sidewalk Film Festival 48-Hour Scramble cited him for the best soundtrack creation for the film The Silent Treatment. For ten years, he produced the Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, an international competition that highlighted the best new compositions for the instrument. He teaches at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Alabama School of Fine Arts and Birmingham-Southern College where he directs the BSC New Music Ensemble. He is a founding member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance and president of the Metropolitan Youth Orchestras of Birmingham. email | MP3: Fragments by Michael Coleman

James A. Jensen is Professor of Music and Chair of Theory/Composition at Samford University, where he also teaches clarinet.  He obtained the BM and MM Degrees from Pittsburg State University, and the D. Mus. Degree from Florida State University.  His composition teachers have included John Boda, Carlisle Floyd, and David Cope.  He has written many musical compositions in a variety of genres.  His music has been performed throughout the southeast and at both regional and national conferences of SCI.  He is a member of the International Clarinet Association, International Association of Jazz Educators,  Board Member and past President of the Birmingham Chamber Music Society, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, American Federation of Musicians, Reserve Officer�s Association, Society of Composers, Inc., a founding member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance-a consortium of local composers, and currently serves as Commander of the 313th United States Army Band. email

Joseph Landers was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1965. He studied with Frederic Goossen at the University of Alabama, Lothar Klein at the University of Toronto, and Alexander Goehr at Cambridge. Landers has been awarded fellowships by the Fulbright Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, the American Music Center, and the MacDowell Colony, where he was selected as the Margaret Lee Crofts Fellow in Composition for 1995-96. His orchestral work Karangan was selected as a finalist for the 1999 Alexander Zemlinsky International Prize for Composition. In 2000 he was awarded the Thor Johnson Memorial Commission for his Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano. The works of Joseph Landers have been featured on concerts series and festivals across the U. S. and abroad including the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the AD*Evantgard Festival in Munich, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (U.K.), and the Gaudeamus Music Week (Holland), where his orchestral work Nine forty-eight was selected as a finalist for the 1997 prize in composition.  His compositions for orchestra have been performed by the Alabama Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Orchestra, the Omaha Symphony, the Tuscaloosa Symphony, and the Lincoln Symphony, and various other orchestras under conductors including Christopher Confessore, Jahja Ling, Ransom Wilson, Bruce Hangen, Adrian Gnam, and Jac Van Steen. His music has also been performed by internationally acclaimed musicians including Lucy Shelton, Richard Killmer, Mariko Anraku, and Marcel Worms. email

Marc LeMay is a composer, performer, and educator currently pursuing an M.A. in Composition at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He composes in a variety of mediums, including orchestral, choral, and chamber works, electroacoustic pieces, jazz compositions, and music for theatre and film. Marc has performed in a variety of settings, playing everything from guitar and keyboards to clarinet and saxophone for clubs, weddings, parties, and other events. He has also taught undergraduate courses in music and music technology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, as well as private guitar lessons throughout Birmingham. Marc earned his B.A. in Music Technology from UAB, where he studied composition with Michael Angell and Ron Clemmons. email | website

Charles Norman Mason: Known for his style of music called Hyper-Connectivism, his music captures the exhilaration of disparate elements working towards a common goal at such a frenetic pace that they border chaos. In his music, the complex and elegant melodic counterpoint of Bach has been replaced with a counterpoint of timbre and color. He has been recognized for his originality and attention to color. Peter Burwasser of Fanfare wrote that Mason�s music spoke in a �boldly, original voice�. High Performance Review stated that his music was �full of invention� funky and colorful� consistently ingenious.� Katherine Porlington wrote in Upstate Music (NY) �...Mason's Senderos Que se Bifurcan... is, without doubt, one of the finest new clarinet chamber works of the past twenty years� and Nancy Raabe wrote in The Birmingham News �Mason's brilliant "From Shook Foil" occupies a class of its own... it is charged with creativity.� Mason�s awards include the 2005-06 Prix de Rome (Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellowship), International Society for Bassists Composition Competition, Premi Internacional de Composici� Musical Ciutat de Tarragona Orchestra Music prize, National Endowment of the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, Dale Warland Singers Commission Prize, BMI Young Composers Award, and Bourges Electro-Acoustic Composition Competition. His music has been performed throughout the world including the Aspen Summer Music Festival, the Foro Internacional de M�sica Nueva, and new music festivals in Prague, Bucharest, Bulgaria, and Sao Paulo. Mason is executive director of Living Music Foundation and professor of music at Birmingham-Southern College. email | website

Cynthia Miller�s music is performed throughout the United States and has been praised in the the New York Times for its �skill and lucidity.�  She has a doctorate from the City University of New York and has taught at several colleges and universities, including Minnesota State University, Ball State University, and Brooklyn College. She is the secretary of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, a composers� consortium that specializes in performing the works of Alabama composers.  She is also a founder of the New York-based composers� consortium Friends & Enemies of New Music. Dr. Miller has been composer-in residence at the Bennington College Chamber Music Conference, Clarion University, and Brooklyn College, and has received commissions from numerous soloists and groups, including the New York ensembles West Park Chamber Society, Infusion Chamber Ensemble, and the Metropolitan Trio. email

Brian Moon received his Master of Music in Composition from Birmingham-Southern College and his Bachelor of Arts in Music Technology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His composition instructors include Ron Clemmons, Jan Vicar, Traci Mendel, Charles Mason and Dorothy Hindman. For many years, Brian has been an active composer and member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, as well as an adjunct music instructor at Birmingham-Southern and UAB, where he has taught Ear Training, Computer Music, and Multimedia Productions. Brian also served as Director of the Computer Music Ensemble for the Fall 2003 semester. As for the local Birmingham band scene, Brian is singer/songwriter for the Maisleys and bassist for The Delicate Cutters. Brian currently serves as president for the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. email | website

Mary Elizabeth Neal, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, is a student at Florida State University, pursuing a Masters of Music in Composition. She received her Bachelor of Music in Composition from Birmingham-Southern College. Her teachers include Ladislav Kubick, Dorothy Hindman Charles Norman Mason, Jan Vicar, and Traci Mendel. Her music has been played by the ARA Saxophone Quartet, the Bach Festival Chamber Choir of Rollins College, the Birmingham-Southern College New Music Ensemble, the Florida State University Student Chapter of Society of Composer, Inc., guitarist Paul Bowman, and members of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance including cellist Craig Hultgren, pianist Adam Bowles, and violinist Karen Bentley Pollick. Recent achievements and awards include attending the 2005 Czech-American Summer Music Institute in Prague studying with Ladislav Kubick, second place in the Southern Division of the 2006 Music Teacher's National Association Composition Competition in the Young Artist Category, and third place in the choral division of the 2006 Orpheus Alliance Student Composition Competition with her piece Psalm 137. Her piece, Combustion for solo cello, won the 2008 Music Teacher�s National Association Composition Competition in the Young Artist Category, and was performed at the National Conference in Denver, Colorado on April 2, 2008. email | MySpace

Bryan Page is the Director of Music at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama. He is a 2000 graduate of the University of Montevallo and a 2003 graduate of Westminster Choir College. His primary composition teachers have been Drs. Ed Robertson, Ron Hemmel & Joel Phillips and he has participated in master classes with George Crumb and David Cutler. His music has been performed in Alabama, New Jersey, New York and Boston. Bryan lives in Huntsville with his wife Suzanne and their son Jack Ezra. email

Matthew Scott Phillips is a Graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (B.A.) and is currently a graduate student and instructor at Birmingham Southern College (M.M.) He has studied composition with Michael Angell, Ronald Clemmons, Jan Vicar, Traci Mendel, Dorothy Hindman and Charles Norman Mason,and his repertoire includes works for orchestra and chamber orchestra, instrumental and vocal chamber ensembles, solo instruments, and solo instruments with piano accompaniment. In addition to compositional studies, Matthew has twice been a judge of the National Young Composers Competition, has given lectures on the music of Smetana, Chopin and Rachmaninoff, and taught classes in music fundamentals, theory, and composition. He was also among thirteen other American composers chosen in the summer of 2006, to study and compose music in the city of Prague under the tutelage of Ladislav Kubik. Matthew lives in Birmingham Alabama, email | website

Karen Bentley Pollick is a native of Palo Alto, California where she was concertmaster and conductor of the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra and studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco. She then attended Indiana University where she studied violin with Josef Gingold, coached string quartets with Rostislav Dubinsky and graduated with a Masters of Music Degree in Violin Performance in 1987. Other violin teachers include Nathan Milstein, Yuval Yaron, Glenn and Harold Dicterow, and David Balakrishnan. She has several recordings of original music, including Electric Diamond, Angel, Konzerto and Succubus, Ariel View and Dancing Suite to Suite. She has received three music awards from Just Plain Folks, including Best Instrumental Album and Best Song for Ariel View. Ms. Pollick�s latest recording amberwood was recorded in March 2007 in Birmingham, Alabama and is comprised of duo compositions for violin/viola and piano by Ivan Sokolov, Jan Vicar and Ole Saxe. Ms. Pollick was concertmaster of the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1984 and has participated in the June in Buffalo and Wellesley Composers Conferences as a champion of contemporary music. Alongside pianist/composer Ivan Sokolov, she performed compositions by Charles Norman Mason, Dorothy Hindman and Sokolov at the American Academy of Rome in May 2006. With cellist Dennis Parker she concertized throughout the Czech Republic during the 2007 and 2008 American Spring Festivals. She is a founding member of the Alys Stephens Center Chamber Players as well as the violinist in Paul Dresher�s Electro-Acoustic Band and has collaborated with the Seattle Chamber Players in their Icebreaker II: Baltic Voices Festival, and the New York based Ensemble for the Romantic Century in their staged production of The Young Arthur Rubinstein. She has performed at the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival and the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival. Ms. Pollick performs on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in 1860 and a 1987 viola by William Whedbee. For more information: www.kbentley.com.

William Price's music has been performed at many national and international events including the 2008 College Music Society South Central-Southern SuperRegional Conference, 2007 Electroacoustic Juke Joint Music Festival, the 2006 International Clarinet Association Conference, the 2005 Region IV and VIII North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) Conferences, the 2004 and 2002 NASA Biennials, the 2003 International Sonic Circuits Festival, the 2002 SEAMUS Conference, the XII World Saxophone Congress, the 12th Annual Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, and the Imagine 2 Music Festival. He has received awards and commissions from numerous organizations including ASCAP, the Percussive Arts Society, the American Composers Forum, the National Association of Composers, USA, the Alabama Music Teachers Association, the Louisiana Music Teachers Association/MTNA, and the Southeastern Composers League. William is currently Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. email | website

Ed Robertson is Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Montevallo, where he was Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Theory and Composition. He earned his Doctor of Music at Florida State University, where he was a student of John Boda. He has also studied with Thea Musgrave, David Davis, and Jack Jarrett. Prior to his graduate work at Florida State University, he served as Director of Choral Activities at the University of Richmond. His works have been performed on five continents and in venues such as the Metropolitan Opera House, Carnegie Hall, and Symphony Hall in Atlanta. Robertson's compositions have received positive reviews in Fanfare magazine, the Oxford American, and numerous other publications. His instrumental, vocal, and choral compositions are available on compact disc, and he has been the recipient of a number of commissions. His music has been published by Carl Fischer, Hinshaw, Willis, Belwin-Mills, Shawnee, and others. A winner of multiple ASCAP awards, he has been recognized by the University of Richmond for "outstanding achievement in the arts". Dr. Robertson was three times been named Distinguished Teacher of the Year in the University of Montevallo College of Fine Arts. Also at UM he was twice been selected as University Scholar, and the UM Alumni Association granted him its Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award. He was the Carnegie Foundation/Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Alabama Professor of the Year in 2004. email

Lester Seigel is the Joseph Hugh Thomas Professor of Music at Birmingham-Southern College. Since 1995 he has been Choirmaster and Organist at Canterbury United Methodist Church. At the College he is conductor of the Concert Choir, Hilltop Singers, Alumni Choir and Opera Workshop Productions. He is also Choirmaster and Organist at Canterbury United Methodist Church in Mountain Brook. He holds degrees in organ performance from Birmingham-Southern College (BM), and the MM and DMA in Orchestral Conducting and Literature from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He also holds the Associateship Certificate from the American Guild of Organists. He is active as an arranger, and as a composer recently completed scoring and conducting original music for an audio book, The Diaries of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain, released in fall 1999 by Fair Oaks Press, San Francisco, and featuring the voice talents of Betty Buckley, Mandy Patinkin, and Walter Cronkite, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. In 2006 his new select choral ensemble, Sursum Corda, made its debut in two programs. His choral arrangements are available through Oxford University Press. email

LaDonna Smith, a native of Birmingham, is an artist of many dimensions, and an active practitioner in both the visual and the musical arts.  A pioneer of free improvisation in America, as performer and educator, she has toured the world from USA to Europe to China, Japan and Siberia.  As a visual artist in ceramic sculpture and linear drawing, her work has been represented in galleries in the South as well as Chicago, Milwaukee, Paris, France and Stockholm, Sweden--and is documented in a number of international Surrealist publications.  She is the editor of The Improvisor, the international journal of free improvisation, a publication which now lives on the web at www.the-improvisor.com.  She loves toning, ceramic sculpture and practicing yoga--and believes the mind, body, spirit connection is the basis of her work. email | website

Prof. PhDr. Jan Vicar, CSc. (born on 5 May 1949 in Olomouc, Czech Republic) studied music education and Czech in Olomouc and composition in Brno and Prague. He was editor-in-chief of the leading Czech music journal Hudebni rozhledy [Music Review] from 1986 to 1989, and head of the Department of Musicology of Palacky University in Olomouc (1990�1998; 2000�2003). As a Fulbright/CIES scholar-in-residence, he lectured in 1998�1999 at eight U. S. universities, including St. Cloud State University, the University of Iowa, Florida State University, Wake Forest University, American University, and the University of New Mexico. As a visiting professor, he taught composition and music theory at Birmingham-Southern College, Alabama, USA (2005). He was a member of the Steering Committee of the European Science Foundation Humanities Program Musical Life in Europe, 1600�1900. He has published five books: Accordion (1981), Vaclav Trojan (1989), Music Criticism and the Popularization of Music (1997), Musical Aesthetics (1998; co-author R. Dykast), and Imprints: Essays on Czech Music and Aesthetics (2005; in English). He is a prolific composer whose compositions are performed and recorded by leading Czech soloists, orchestras and choirs, and released on CDs, Vivat Universitas!, We Sing and Fortissimo. He is a professor at the Faculty of Music of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, and at the Department of Musicology of Palacky University in Olomouc. He became a member of Birmingham Art Music Alliance, Alabama in 2006. email