CURIOSITY IX | Rapture’s Abyss (2025), featuring Kendra Wheeler

Jeff Scott served as French hornist of the Oberlin-founded ensemble Imani Winds for more than 20 years, a position that took him to Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Kennedy Center, and…continue reading

CURIOSITY IX | Jim Jones Etudes (2025)

Drawing from inspirations as diverse as Medieval chant to contemporary pop, the music of composer and conductor Evan Williams (b. 1988) explores the thin lines between beauty and disquieting, joy and sorrow, and simple and complex, while often… continue reading

CURIOSITY VII | Saxophone Quartet (2024)

Hans Thomalla is a German American composer living in Chicago and Berlin. A particular focus of his work lies in music for the stage. He has written four operas, Fremd (Stuttgart Opera 2011), Kaspar Hauser (Freiburg and Augsburg Opera 2016)… continue reading

CURIOSITY VII | As Wind in Dry Grass (2024)

Darlene Castro Ortiz (b.1993) is a composer and sound artist based in Chicago. Her interest in music began at a young age with the violin, first in a youth mariachi band, then in a classical orchestra setting. Inspired by her bilingual upbringing, her creative… continue reading

CURIOSITY VI | Shelf Life (2023)

Kari Watson (they/them) is a composer, performer, and intermedia artist whose work explores the intersections of contemporary concert music, electroacoustic composition, live performance, and interactive installation. Their composition practice… continue reading

CURIOSITY VI | Spirare III (2023)

Carlos Bandera is a composer whose music explores the expressive potential of contextualization and transformation of musical materials. He often expands simple elements into large-scale, glacially unfolding musical structures, through which… continue reading

CURIOSITY VI | Shakespeare’s Jesters (2023)

The music of Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964 in New York) is nuanced, majestic, elegant, capricious, lyrical, and colorful — "it is boldly considered music that celebrates the sound of the instruments and reaffirms the vitality of orchestral music"… continue reading

CURIOSITY V | of tender creatures (2022)

Lisa Atkinson (she/her) is a Chicago-based composer whose work explores interiority through the tactile nature of live performance and the emotional context of gesture while examining issues of fragility, memory, and perception… continue reading

CURIOSITY V | The Trans-Diametric Pulse-Wave Optimizer pt. 1‍ ‍(2022)

Alex Mincek is a composer, performer, and co-director of the New York-based Wet Ink Ensemble. His work creates musical contexts in which diverse sound worlds seamlessly coexist—from raw to highly… continue reading

CURIOSITY V | alternate endings. (2022)

Aeryn Jade “AJ” Santillan (she/her) is a composer, guitarist, and bassist whose work draws from the DIY punk scene, blurring the lines between band and ensemble, song and composition. AJ currently performs in forever (bass/vox), Wellness (vox)… continue reading

CURIOSITY IV | I AM FUCKING ZEN (2021)

Osnat Netzer /osˈnat ˈnɛtsɛʁ/ is a composer, performer and educator. Osnat creates her compositions collaboratively, tailoring her work to the performer’s sensibilities, physicality and improvisational inclinations. She takes inspiration from cognitive…continue reading

CURIOSITY III | R.A.M. (2019)

Kelley Sheehan is a composer and electronic musician moving between electro-acoustic, multimedia, and performance art works. Her work has been described as "full of discovery, collaboration, and unpredictability” (Iannotta, Kyriakides, & Stäbler) and… continue reading

CURIOSITY III | I Think I Can Wait ‘til Morning (2019)

Jonathan Hannau is a Chicago-based composer and pianist devoted to the surreal, minimal, and abstract possibilities of music. He actively embraces eclecticism and explores concepts of narrative… continue reading

CURIOSITY III | Fake Fall Black Bag 38 (2019)

Sam Scranton (b. 1981) is a composer/performer working at the intersection of music, performance art, and installation. He has been described in New Music Box as "an artist taking wholehearted risks" and in the New York Times as a "killer drummer"… continue reading

CURIOSITY III | Quantum Shift (2019)

Mischa Zupko writes music for performers who seek depth, risk and mastery, creating immediate and emotionally powerful experiences for audiences. Having been described as a composer both open and exceptionally inventive… continue reading

CURIOSITY II | even the words that we are speaking now (2018)

Darcy Copeland is a composer and artist-scholar. She thinks of composition as a process of worlding, and her research and creative practice examine how sound can model interdependence and… continue reading

CURIOSITY I | Dismantle (2017)

Craig Davis Pinson is a composer, improviser, and musicologist born and currently based in Mexico City. He composes music for the screen as well as the concert hall, and is an active member of the experimental improvisation community. Most recently… continue reading

CURIOSITY I | Vaisseau Fantôme (2017)

Niki Harlafti is a Greek, Chicago-based composer and educator. Her compositional work pivots between sensitivity and violence, comedy and drama, musical and theatrical narrativity; it exists in the reflective space between the familiar and the unfamiliar… continue reading

CURIOSITY I | Apertures (2017)

A 2026 Guggenheim Fellow, Mathew Arrellín (pronounced: A-rre-yín) is a composer and cellist from El Paso, Texas, currently based in Chicago. His music has been performed by the Mivos Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, ~Nois, Fonema Consort… continue reading