Kari Besharse is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music, a guitarist, an educator, a sci-fi nut, and an outdoors enthusiast. Her works, which incorporate sounds from acoustic instruments, found objects, the natural world, and synthesis, are often generated from a group of sonic objects or material archetypes that undergo processes of rupture, degradation, alternation, expansion, and distortion. Currently a lecturer at Southeastern Louisiana University, Dr. Besharse has also taught music theory, music history, and electronic music courses at Illinois Wesleyan and University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.

Kari’s education includes undergraduate studies at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Besharse’s dissertation research examined the role of texture in French spectral music through the works of Gérard Grisey, Philippe Hurel, Kaija Saariaho, and Tristan Murail. She studied composition with Stephen Andrew Taylor, Guy Garnett, Russell Pinkston, Donald Grantham, Robert Cooper, Rick Taube, and James Mobberly.

Dr. Besharse’s compositional output spans various facets within the field of contemporary music, and she is equally compelled to write music for mediums such as laptop ensemble, orchestra, and fixed electroacoustic music. Kari was awarded a Bourges Residence Prize for Small Things, an electroacoustic work written in Csound and Protools, which uses the sounds of the frogs and insects of Austin, Texas as its source material. Additional honors have come from the Look and Listen Festival Prize, the ASCAP Young Composers Competition, and the INMC Competition. Recent projects include Luminous Flux for the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble that premiered at the Etchings Festival at Auvilar, France in July 2010 and Embers, a work for saxophone and piano commissioned by Richard Schwartz, which premiered in March 2011. Her music has been presented around the world by venues and organizations such as The California Ear Unit, Society of

Composers, Inc., Texas Computer Musicians Network, The LaTex Festival, The Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest, ICMC, SEAMUS, Bourges, Elektrophonie, Third Practice, 60X60, The Electroacoustic Juke Joint Festival, New Music Forum, Pulse Field, and the Art of Sounds Festival at Belgrade, Serbia.

Kari Besharse currently lives in Covington, Louisiana with her husband, composer Philip Schuessler.

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Nicholas Deyoe was born in 1981 in Boulder, Colorado. He attended the University of Northern Colorado from 1999 – 2006, receiving a B.M. in Music Theory/Composition and an M.M. in Orchestral conducting. In 2004, Nicholas spent four months in Oldenburg, Germany studying composition with Violeta Dinescu. Deyoe holds a Ph.D. in Composition from UCSD, and is currently acting as an assistant conductor for the La Jolla Symphony under Steve Schick. Nicholas has conducted Red Fish Blue Fish, Ensemble Ascolta, The Darmstadt Preisträgerensemble, Noise, The University of Northern Colorado Symphony, Chamber, and Sinfonietta Orchestras, and several ad hoc ensembles in Colorado, California, and Germany. Nicholas’s music works with noise, delicacy, drama, and flexible intonation. His music has been performed in the United States, Canada, Germany, Iceland, and Japan. Nicholas recently moved to Los Angeles and has started the wasteLAnd concert series dedicated to experimental music.

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As a composer of electronic and acoustic music Rick Snow seeks intersections between dimension, expression, metaphor, and process. His music has been performed in many venues in the United States as well as selectively in Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, and the Czech Republic. A few of his most recent works include Iris/Shiver -a performance work for custom audio/visual computer instrument, Old Windows, New Worlds -a performance work for midi keyboard controlled, surround sound computer instrument, Postcards, Islands, Elegy, Distance -an orchestra piece commissioned by the La Jolla Symphony commemorating Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, and Fenceless Fields of Grain -a percussion 12tet commissioned by Pierre Boulez and the Lucerne Festival Academy Percussion Ensemble. As an educator he has taught music theory, history, technology and composition courses at Tulane University, The University of California, San Diego, and the University of Alabama. His primary mentors have been Craig First, Chaya Czernowin, and Philippe Manoury. He holds a Ph.D. From the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Snow is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Newcomb Department of Music at Tulane University where he teaches Music Technology and Composition courses.

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Peter Leonard is a composer, multimedia artist, and musical instrument designer. Leonard’s compositions have been performed in the United States and abroad at the International Computer Music Conference, the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the US Conference, and the Electric LaTex Festival. In his home, New Orleans, Leonard frequently creates interactive video projection works for art galleries and for collaborative works with dancers. Leonard has received awards and recognition from the American Composers Forum, the French Ministry of Culture, and the Taos Community Foundation.

In 2011, he received an MA in Music Science and Technology from Tulane University. He holds a BA in Integrative Arts from Penn State University, a certificate in electronic music composition from the Centre de Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis, and studied Hindustani Classical Music with sarod maestro Atish Mukhopadhyay in Kolkata, India.

Leonard’s scholarly research focuses on electronic instrument development, microtonality, ethnomusicology, and electro- acoustic music analysis. His articles have recently been featured in the Journal SEAMUS. In addition to working as a web developer and performing musician, Leonard is a passionate educator who has taught at Tulane University and numerous high schools; he has also created and led a large number of community workshops on various topics including homemade instrument building, World Music, music theory, and robotics. Peter's most recent work includes an interactive video projection realized for the performance of Monteverdi's “Vespers” at the Marigny Operahouse in New Orleans.