2020 Artist Scholarships

Miguel Frasconi is a composer and improviser whose instrumentarium includes glass objects, electronics, and instruments of his own design. His array of activities includes collaborations with the Balinese composer Dewa Berata on music for a large-scale shadowplay, with operatic tenor John Duykers on unique music/theater events, with the Tibetan songwriter Techung, with whom he has toured throughout India, and has worked closely with composers John Cage, Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, James Tenney and Jon Hassell. He was a founding member of The Glass Orchestra, the internationally renowned ensemble featuring all glass instruments (1977-86), and the sound-sculpture band Möbius Operandi (1990-95) ) and has performed as a keyboardist with the Paul Dresher Ensemble (1988-95) and the Philip Glass Ensemble (1992).

Volker Goetze is a composer and filmmaker. His time in Africa inspired him to direct a feature-documentary about the oral history, extending the work into a live-performance-documentary recounting the creation of the African harp. His trumpet-kora duo transcends geographic and musical boundaries resulting in a unique musical synthesis that fused the timeless tradition of the storyteller/griot with a modern perspective, which addresses themes of our ancient spiritual roots, and our hurried, dehumanized modern strife. This making him a specialist working and supporting oral cultures creating new narratives transmitting the culture into the 21st century.

Muyassar Kurdi (b. 1989 in Chicago) is a New York City-based interdisciplinary artist. Her work encompasses sound art, extended vocal technique, performance art, movement, analog photography and film. She has toured extensively in the U.S. and throughout Europe. She currently focuses her attention to interweaving homemade electronic instruments into her vocal and dance performances, stirring a plethora of emotions from her audience members through vicious noise, ritualistic chants, and meditative movements.