Flutist Claire Chase, described as “the young star of the modern flute” by The New Yorker, is a soloist, collaborative artist, and activist for new music. Over the past decade she has given the world premieres of over 100 new works for flute, many of them tailor-made for her, and, in 2012, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2001 and, in collaboration with her creative partner Joshua Rubin, serves as the organization’s Co-Artistic Director in addition to playing over fifty concerts a year as an ensemble member. She has performed throughout the US, Europe, Asia and the Americas, and recently began Density 2036, a 23-year project to commission a new body of repertory for the flute leading up to the 100th anniversary of Edgard Varèse’s “Density 21.5” (1936). She lives in Brooklyn.
 
Claire Chase official site

(in collaboration with Brad Balliett and Doug Balliett)
 
More than an ensemble, Metropolis is a flexible performing and presenting organization dedicated to classical music in its most contemporary forms. Founded in 2006 by Grammy-nominated conductor Andrew Cyr, Metropolis Ensemble performs as a chamber orchestra as well as smaller ensembles or soloists. In any configuration, Metropolis gathers today’s most outstanding emerging composers and young artists to present newly commissioned works and produce unique musical experiences.

Violinist/violist Miranda Cuckson is in demand as soloist and chamber musician in a wide range of repertoire and styles, and has in recent years become one of the most sought-after performers of contemporary works. Downbeat magazine recently stated, “Miranda Cuckson reaffirms her standing as one of the most sensitive and electric interpreters of new music.” A favorite of audiences for her “undeniable musicality” (New York Times), “formidable technique” (Sequenza 21) and “the warmth and humanity she brings to the music” (Cultured Cleveland), she appears in major concert halls and at universities, galleries and informal spaces. She performs at such venues as the Berlin Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, Teatro Colón, Miller Theatre, 92nd Street Y, Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Museum of Modern Art, Monday Evening Concerts in LA, and the Marlboro, Bard, Lincoln Center, Bridgehampton, Music Mountain, Portland and Bodensee festivals.
 
She has performed as soloist with many orchestras in the US and abroad, including her Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium) debut in Walter Piston’s concerto with the American Symphony Orchestra. She recorded her first album for ECM Records last year, and her album of Luigi Nono’s ”La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” for violin and electronics, with Christopher Burns on Urlicht Audiovisual, was named a Best Classical Recording of 2012 by the New York Times. Her other eight acclaimed albums include the Korngold and Ponce concertos, Michael Hersch’s “the wreckage of flowers”, solo and duo music by Americans Shapey, Martino, Finney, Sessions, Carter and Eckardt, and most recently, “Melting the Darkness”, solo microtonal and electronics pieces by Xenakis, Haas, Rowe and others.
 
In the past year, her solo recital appearances have included the Liquid Music series presented by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s newly opened Met Breuer, the Strathmore Music Center and the Look and Listen Festival. She has collaborated with an array of remarkable composers including Henri Dutilleux, Elliott Carter, Thomas Adès, Salvatore Sciarrino, John Adams, Pierre Boulez, Lee Hyla, Steven Mackey, George Crumb, Vijay Iyer, Helmut Lachenmann, Kaija Saariaho, Magnus Lindberg, Mario Davidovsky, Phillipe Hurel, Derek Bermel, Yehudi Wyner, Georg Friedrich Haas, Tristan Murail, Charles Wuorinen and Sebastian Currier. In 2012, the Library of Congress commissioned a work for her by Harold Meltzer, which she premiered there in honor of Fritz Kreisler.
 
Miranda is founder/director of non-profit Nunc, guest curator at National Sawdust and a member of counter)induction. She studied at The Juilliard School, where she received her BM, MM and DMA degrees and won the Presser and Richard F. French Awards. She is on the violin faculty at the Mannes School of Music at New School University.

 
Miranda Cuckson official site
Miranda Cuckson on Twitter

“The Pianist Taka Kigawa gave an electrifying traversal of all Ligeti Études, a kaleidoscopic set of works that demands the unrelenting energy and precision that are Mr. Kigawa’s specialties.” – Allan Kozinn, The Wall Street Journal
 

Critically acclaimed pianist TAKA KIGAWA has earned outstanding international recognition as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber music artist since winning First Prize in the prestigious 1990 Japan Music Foundation Piano Competition in Tokyo, and the Diploma Prize at the 1998 Concurs Internacional Maria Canals De Barcelona in Spain, with such accolades from The New York Times as “Mr. Kigawa’s feat deserves the highest praise, especially since it was combined with such alacrity and sensitivity to the musical material. Brilliantly done, a careful and serious-minded musician, quietly poetic and considerate” and from The New Yorker “Unbelievably challenging program. Kigawa is a young artist of stature.” Kigawa’s New York City recital in 2010 was chosen as one of the best concerts of the year by The New York Times. Also his New York City recital in August 2011 was picked as one of the most notableconcerts in the first half of the 2011-2012 season by Musical America.
 
He has performed extensively as a recitalist and soloist in New York, Washington DC, Boston, Cleveland, Paris, Milan and Barcelona, with appearances in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Kosciuszko Foundation, Severance Hall in Cleveland, Cité de la Musique, and Salle Gaveau in Paris, Plau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, and Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. He frequently tours in his native Japan, appearing in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagano and Kyoto, both as a recitalist and a soloist with orchestra and in chamber music groups. He has performed with such distinguished institution as The Cleveland Orchestra. He has been a featured artist on many television and radio networks throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.
 
His repertoire is extremely large and varied, ranging from the baroque to avant-garde compositions of today. He has collaborated closely with such renowned musicians as Pierre Boulez, Myung-Whun Chung and Jonathan Nott.
 
Mr. Kigawa grew up in Nagano, Japan, where he began piano studies at the age of three, winning his first competition at the age of seven. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Shinsyu University, and his Master of Arts degree from Tokyo Gakugei (Liberal Arts) University, graduating with honors in Piano Performance. During both his undergraduate and graduate years, he also studied composition and conducting, receiving high honors in both disciplines. He furthered his studies in the United States at The Juilliard School in New York, where he earned his Master of Music degree. Mr. Kigawa currently lives in New York.
 
Taka Kigawa official site

Vasko Dukovski, is a New York based multidisciplinary artist and diverse stylistic performer of the highest caliber, one of the most-sought-after instrumentalist in his generation.
 
Even though classically trained, Dukovski sees no boundaries in music and musical styles, but embraces all of it. An avid performer and advocate of Avant-garde Free Style and Contemporary classical music, Dukovski has collaborated with some of New York’s most respected ensembles including Argento New Music Ensemble, Bang on A Can All Stars, Either/OR Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink, ECCE-East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Lost Dog Ensemble, LPR Ensemble, The Knights Orchestra and others. In addition of being a front man of his world music quartet Tavche Gravche, he is a member and a co-founder of Grneta Ensemble.
 

Dukovski has recorded for Naxos American Classics, Sono Luminous/Dorian, INNOVA Recordings, Nun Such, Deutsche Grammophon, Albany Records, New World Recordings, Evolver Records, Chicken Madness, Furious Artisans and Navona Records.
 

Born in Ohrid, in the Republic of Macedonia, Dukovski began playing with sound at age five and started his musical education at the age of eight. His dedication to music and the clarinet earned him a Fine Arts Award from the Interlochen Arts Academy, which he attended before earning a Bachelors and a Masters Degree from The Juilliard Schools of Music as a student of Charles Neidich and Ayako Oshima.