Behind the IcM

The IcM organizing committee would like to thank the following people for their support for the conference:

Munir Beken, Neal Boziek, Tobin Chodos, Walter Aaron Clark, Elizabeth Cuevas, Amy Cimini, Lynn Ennis, Jessica Flores, Linda Higgins, Nancy Guy, Barbara Jackson, Lei Liang, Hossein Omoumi, Jann Pasler, Rand Steiger, Jane Stevens (list to be continually updated and expanded)

Poster and logo design: Leticia Ng (www.leticiang.com)

(The list of performers and their bios will be uploaded soon!)

IcM organizing committee

Tommy Babin

Bassist Tommy Babin is a native of Nova Scotia, Canada and is currently pursuing his doctorate in double bass performance at UCSD under Mark Dresser.

A Juno award winner and recipient of multiple composition grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Le Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec, and the British Columbia Arts Council 2010 Olympic Fund, he has performed worldwide in a widely varied assortment of musical contexts.

His work as a performer, composer and arranger can be heard on some 50 albums and has been called “rugged and exact” by The Globe and Mail,  “muscular” by Signal to Noise, “inflammable” by The Village Voice, and  “virtuoso” by the San Diego Reader.

 

 

Xavier Beteta

Born in Guatemala City, Xavier studied piano at the National Conservatory of Guatemala. At age 18, he was awarded the first-prize at the Augusto Ardenois National Piano Competition and third-prize at the Rafael Alvarez Ovalle Composition Competition in Guatemala. He continued his piano studies in the United States with Argentinean pianist Sylvia Kersenbaum and with Russian pianist Sergei Polusmiak. He has attended master-classes with pianists Massimiliano Damerini and Daniel Rivera in Italy, and he has also performed as a soloist with the Guatemalan National Symphony Orchestra and the orchestra Augusto Ardenois.

As a composer, Xavier did most of his studies privately with Rodrigo Asturias. In 2013 he won the Second Place at the International Antonin Dvorak Composition Competition in Prague. Xavier studied music theory at the University of Cincinnati where his thesis was ranked no. 4 in the National Best-Seller Dissertation List and he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in composition at the University of California San Diego. Among his composition teachers are Donald Harris, Philippe Manoury, Chinary Ung and Roger Reynolds. His compositions have been performed in different venues in Italy, Guatemala and the United States. Xavier has also taught piano, harmony and counterpoint at the University of Cincinnati, Escuela Municipal de Música de Guatemala, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and San Diego State University. http://www.xavierbateta.com

 

Josh Charney

Joshua Charney is a performer, composer, and scholar, currently working towards his PhD in music – Integrative Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Most recently, he has given a lecture-recital at the Society of American Music’s annual conference, as well as presented papers at Harvard’s Hearing Landscapes Critically Conference, and AMS’ Southwest Chapter Meeting. He is currently composing an opera which takes influence from one of his research interests – Iranian ritual theater known as Ta’ziyeh. www.joshcharney.com

 

Elisabet Curbelo

Elisabet Curbelo is a Spanish composer and performer, currently pursuing a PhD in Music Composition at UC, San Diego. Her research in composition and voice involves Flamenco, Turkish and Persian Music. Moreover, the use of electronics with acoustic instruments in her compositions and performances are an important feature of her music. Nowadays she is developing the use of motion controllers in her new works. http://www.elisabetcurbelo.com

 

Siu Hei Lee

Siu Hei Lee is a pianist, musicologist, and PhD candidate at University of California San Diego. As a pianist, he is faculty at the Lyra Summer Music Workshop, and performed at Hong Kong Cultural Center, Chinese University of Hong Kong Concert Series, and various venues in San Diego and Rochester, NY. He completed his master degree in piano performance at the Eastman School of Music. In scholarship, he delivered papers on disability studies in music, Chinese popular music, and other areas of interests in conferences at University of California Riverside, San Diego State University, and Ohio University. He is now starting to write his dissertation on the pan-European musical renditions of the commedia dell’arte, an Italian puppet theater genre, at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th century. He sees puppets reflecting marginal roles in society.

A native of Hong Kong, Siu Hei studied piano with Barry Snyder, Siu Wan Chair Fang, Amelia Chan, Aleck Karis, Philip Yue, and Winnie Cheng, and had chamber music coaching with Janet Ying, Sylvie Beaudette, Susan Narucki, and the Arditti Quartet. He has served as summer course instructor and teaching assistant at UC San Diego in the Music Department and the Revelle College Writing Program.

 

Cheng-I Wang

Cheng-i Wang is a music informatics researcher and is a Ph.D candidate in computer music at UCSD. For the summer of 2015, Cheng-i works as a technical intern at the Creative Technology Lab at Adobe focusing on music visualization and segmentation. He holds a Master in Music degree from the Music Technology program in NYU. His research publications have been published in several major computer music and audio signal processing conferences. Cheng-i’s research interests concern unsupervised learning of music structures and machine improvisation.  http://chengiwang.com