Staff

Zosha Di Castri

Co-organizer, Unsung Stories

Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer/pianist/sound artist, who joined Columbia University’s composition faculty in July 2014, as the Francis Goelet Assistant Professor of Music. Her work (which has been performed in Canada, the US, South America, Asia, and Europe) extends beyond purely concert music, including projects with electronics, sound arts, and collaborations with video and dance.

Paola Cossermelli Messina

Podcast coordinator and producer

Paola Cossermelli Messina (PhD student, Ethnomusicology) is a sound designer and audio engineer with research interests that fall in the intersections between music, politics and gender. As Project Manager of Sound Thinking NYC, a program of the CUNY-Creative Arts Team, she has recently gained interest in ties between her work in music and technology to initiatives in education. She holds a B.A. in Music and Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School, with a specialization in sound. Her Master's thesis on the oral histories of Iranian women musicians received an award from the Middle East Studies Association and was later presented and published by Yale University. For the past 5 years, she has also worked as a Producer and Editor of the Arab Studies Institute podcast Status Hour.

David Adamcyk

Podcast sound engineer

Canadian composer David Adamcyk creates musical works for the concert hall as well as for the theatrical stage. He has recently completed a doctorate in composition McGill University in Montreal and has participated in Ircam’s composition cursus in Paris. His interest in technology has pushed him to explore various ways to combine electronic devices with acoustic instruments, and has also allowed him to assist or collaborate with composers such Martin Matalon, Philippe Leroux, and Denys Bouliane, in addition to working with various ensembles throughout north America. David is currently an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University.

Lauren Shepherd

Publicity & social media coordinator; symposium assistant

Lauren Shepherd (PhD student, Music Theory) recently completed her Master’s in Music Theory at the University of Arkansas where she studied with Lisa Margulis. Her thesis, Effects of Genre Tag Complexity on Popular Music Perception and Enjoyment, was completed in the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas under the direction of Dr. Margulis. Her research interests include music cognition, music theory pedagogy, emotion, timbre, embodiment, and rhythm perception, especially in post-tonal and popular music.

Diana Marcela Rodriguez

Podcast theme composer

Born and raised in Bogotá, DM R is currently based in NYC. She is a composer of electroacoustic music, a concert series curator in Columbia Composers, C3, and CanvaSound, and a 90s anime aficionado. Having its footholds in pop culture, Colombian folk, and Rock en Español, her work has been presented by artists like ICE, Yarn Wire, ECCE Ensemble, Ludovico Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva, Berrow Duo, Eric Drescher, and Josh Modney at the BANFF Centre for the Arts and Creativity, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the Boston Conservatory, University of North Colorado, the Coral Gables Museum, and the New England Conservatory. Currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, DM R holds a master’s degree from the Boston Conservatory and a bachelor’s degree from the New World School of the Arts at the University of Florida. Her ongoing projects include collaborations with TAK ensemble, Fonema Consort, and Yarn/Wire.

Gareth Cordery

Symposium assistant

Gareth Cordery (PhD student, Historical Musicology) is a graduate of Middlebury College, where he majored in Music and History and completed a joint honors thesis on the role of classical music at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. His research interests include domestic music, genre studies, and instrumental pedagogy. Gareth is also a classical concert pianist, having performed several concertos with symphonies across the United States.

Jessie Cox

Symposium assistant

Jessie Cox is a composer, drummer, educator and music theorist, currently in pursuit of his Doctorate Degree at Columbia University. He has written over 100 works for various musical ensembles including electroacoustic works, solo works, chamber- and orchestral works, works for jazz ensembles and choirs; for performers such as JACK Quartet, Claire Chase, String Noise, ICE, Rebekah Heller, Vasko Dukovski, Either/Or Ensemble, etc.

As a performer he has played in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the USA; with musicians from all over the world including Roman Filiu, Julian Shore, Mark Wade, Maher Beauroy, Weston Olencki, etc. Jessie has played at the Accra Jazz Festival and the Martinique Jazz Festival with the Maher Beauroy Trio, Rhythm and Thought Festival with High Key People, has been performed at NUNC3 at Northwestern University, New Music Gathering, Bang on a Can Music Series, Roulette Interpretation Series, OpenICE Library Festival at Lincoln Center, and won the Leroy Souther’s Award (2015) and the Bill Maloof Award (2017) for his compositions. He was a finalist in the international composition competition ALEA III with his piece Earth for two bassoons, and two of his compositions have been selected to be featured regularly on the NPR WGBH.

Jessie graduated from the Berklee College of Music on scholarship in 2017, with a degree in composition.

Suzanne Thorpe

Symposium assistant

Suzanne Thorpe is a composer-performer, researcher and educator. She creates compositions with a variety of media and technology, and performs electroacoustic flute. Her career as a professional recording artist initiated as a founding member of the critically acclaimed band Mercury Rev with whom she produced numerous recordings for major and indie labels. As an electro-acoustic improvisor she’s performed with a wide array of inspiring musicians, and has appeared internationally. Her research attends to her interest in sound and listening contributions to our knowledge of each other and our environments, and takes place in a variety of forms, including performance, installation and text. She has been awarded several residencies and awards for her research, and published and presented her work in various settings, including journals, conferences and lectures, visiting scholar and artistic residencies, museum and gallery exhibitions. Thorpe holds an MFA in Electronic Music & Media from Mills College, a Ph.D. in Integrative Studies from the University of California, San Diego, and is a Deep Listening instructor, having studied in depth with American composer and Deep Listening founder Pauline Oliveros. Thorpe is currently a Mellon Teaching Fellow/Lecturer in Music at Columbia University, and co-founder/co-director of TECHNE, an arts-education nonprofit dedicated to nurturing generous practices in creative technology fields.

Fjóla Evans

Current CMC Work coordinator

Fjóla Evans is a Canadian/Icelandic composer and cellist. Her work explores the visceral physicality of sound while drawing inspiration from patterns of natural phenomena. Commissions and performances have come from musicians such as Bang on a Can All-Stars pianist Vicky Chow, Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird, and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Her work has been featured on the MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, Gaudeamus Music Week, Ung Nordisk Musik, and the American Composers Orchestra’s SONiC Festival. In September 2019 she began doctoral studies in composition at Columbia University where her research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Fjóla is the 2017 winner of the Robert Fleming Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Nina Fukuoka

Current CMC Work coordinator

Nina Fukuoka is a composer and performer born in Osaka, Japan. She graduated from the Grazyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Lodz, Poland and the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Belgium. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in Music Composition at Columbia University in New York.

Nina’s focuses center on the intricacies of the modern reality and the Internet. Her works inhabit a number of contemporary and experimental settings such as video scores and performance pieces with multimedia and live electronics, as well as orchestra and ensemble works. She has collaborated with many new music ensembles, lately including Ensemble Adapter, Hashtag Ensemble, and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble. Nina’s works have been premiered at numerous festivals and venues in Europe, North America, and Japan; recently featured at Klangwerkstatt festival in Berlin, Warsaw Autumn, and Sacrum Profanum in Krakow.

Anthony Sertel Dean

Current Sound Art Work coordinator

Anthony Sertel Dean (they/he) is an artist using sound and media to elicit, enhance, and explore stories of self. This is achieved through an embrace of openness and experimentation, thriving when intimate connections are made internally and collectively - communicating through technology and culture. These works can exist as publicly as radio broadcasts and as privately as personal messages sent through a telephone, but they are all intended to bring listeners together. Anthony’s sound work has been heard at The Kennedy Center, Busan International Film Festival, WNYC, The New Victory Theater, The Kitchen, but mostly with The New York Neo-Futurists.

John Levee

Current Sound Art Work coordinator

John Levee (b. 1998, Jacksonville, FL) is a multimedia artist, researcher, field recordist, and composer. In many instances, through the use of multichannel speaker arrays, he aims to immerse his audience into the piece, which he believes allows them to relate more personally to the work, understand its meaning, and ultimately find enjoyment in experiencing it. Thematically, he often highlights the relationship between humans and the natural world, which allows him to spend large amounts of time field recording. He hopes that increased audience relation to his work surrounding this theme also forces audiences to examine their own relationship with nature. Levee also explores the relationship between audio and a variety of visual mediums, including film, video games, and virtual reality.