Benjamin Champion (15) is a sophomore, studying composition and piano at Idyllwild International Arts Academy in Idyllwild, CA. Ben began his piano composition studies in 2011 with his parents, Chris and Sandy Champion. He has also studied piano with Dr. John Walker from SDSU and composition with Kevin Michael Sullivan at Idyllwild. Ben currently studies composition with Mark Carlson of UCLA, and piano with Dr. Jeanette Louise Yaryan, and Parvati Mani at Idyllwild. Under Dr. Walker’s instruction, Benjamin won first place in the 2013 Grant Piano competition and the South Dakota Music Teacher’s Association for piano and composition, Junior Division. In the summer of 2014, Benjamin was chosen to study and perform as a Young Artist at the Dakota Sky International Piano Festival. Here he studied piano with Dr. Paul Tuntland Sanchez, Jacob Ertl, Dr. Gregory DeTurck, Adam Golka, Angelina Gadeliya, and Jon Kimura Parker. Benjamin also attended the Idyllwild Summer Music Camp, where he studied with Dr. Jeanette Yaryan, Parvati Mani, and Doug Ashcraft. In the summer of 2015, Ben returned to the Young Artist program at Dakota Sky International Piano Festival. He studied with Dr. Gregory DeTurk from University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Douglas Humpherys from Eastman. Benjamin has written music for piano, string quartet, vocal and chamber ensembles, and orchestra. Benjamin aspires to pursue music composition at the conservatory level.

Robby Good (15) is a sophomore at Hart High School in Santa Clarita. Robby started his musical journey at age 6 with piano lessons, and is currently studying piano with Richard Parizer. He started playing percussion at age 9 and is currently studying under Matt Cook. At 12 years of age, Robby started taking composition, percussion, and ensemble classes at California Institute of the Arts through the Saturday CAP Program. Robby’s first original percussion composition made its debut at the Cal Arts Spring Concert in 2014. In May of 2014, Robby was recognized by Assemblyman Scott Wilk for his dedication to Music Composition. In 2016, he received an honorable mention in the ACF NextNotes High School Composition Awards. While at Hart High, Robby has had the privilege to be a part of the Hart High marching and jazz bands as well as the acclaimed Wind Ensemble under the musical direction of Anthony Bailey. Robby was selected as a percussionist to the 2015 SCSBOA All-Southern High School Honor Symphonic Band. He received a Superior Rating on marimba from the SCSBOA Solo Ensemble. He was also selected to perform in the William S. Hart High School All District Honor Band as a percussionist and pianist under the direction of Professor Sharon Lavery from USC. Robby is a member of the California Scholarship Federation and the National Jr. Honor Society. He currently studies music composition with Professor Ian Krouse of UCLA.

Sharon Hurvitz (17) has been a Composer Fellow of the LA Philharmonic since 2013. She recently won First Prize in the High School Division of the 2015 Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers, is a Music Composition Honorable Mention Winner (2016) and Merit Winner (2015) of two National YoungArts Foundation Competitions, was a 2014 Finalist in the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, and a 2015 Finalist in the National Young Composers Challenge. She also was First Place winner two years in a row at the Music Teacher’s Association of California Composers Today State Contest and has been granted its highest accolade for high school and college-age composers, a five-year (2015-2020) honorary membership in The Young Composers Guild. She also was recently commissioned by the Olympia Philharmonic Society for performance by its Youth Orchestra in June 2016. Sharon is a graduate of Yamaha’s International Junior Original Concert Program, where starting at age ten, she performed her own compositions in four U.S. National Yamaha Junior Original Concerts and two National Association of Music Merchants Conventions, including NAMM’s 2012 opening Breakfast of Champions, while studying composition with Yamaha Music Academy Director, Carlton Liu. Now taking piano repertoire lessons with Mark Richman, she has performed in four Celebration of Young Talent Concerts (2 Concerto, 2 Chamber), and numerous other recitals for solo, chamber and piano 4-hands. Sharon also studied violin for 8 years with Chyi-Yau Lee of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, and took four years of cello at public schools in San Gabriel, California, where she became Principal Cellist with the Advanced Orchestra and recipient of a 2012 U.S. National School Orchestra Award. She then enrolled in the Classical Piano Department of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, where she has won its 2014 and 2015 Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Music – Piano, and is also a 2015 College Board AP Scholar with Honor. Sharon is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, having studied at the Chinese School of San Marino for 8 years.

Though Carla Kihlstedt began her journey with music as a classical violinist, she has become equally committed to the craft of singing, songwriting, composing, and improvising. She is a founding member of a wide variety of ensembles, including Tin Hat, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Rabbit Rabbit, The Book of Knots, Minamo, and Fred Frith’s Cosa Brava.

Tania León is highly regarded as a composer and conductor, and for her accomplishments as an educator and advisor to arts organizations. A founding member of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, León instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series and co-founded the Sonidos de las Américas festivals with the American Composers Orchestra. In 2010 she launched the organization “Composers Now” and the month-long Composers Now Festival, celebrating living composers of all genres throughout New York City.

Born in Beirut in 1949, Amin Maalouf has lived in France since 1976. After studying sociology and economics, Maalouf joined the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, for which he travelled the world covering numerous events, from the fall of the Ethiopian monarchy to the last battle of Saigon. Forced to emigrate by the war in Lebanon, he settled in Paris, where he resumed journalism, and from where he started to travel again, from Mozambique to Iran and from Argentina to the Balkans. He became editor of the international edition of An-Nahar, then editor-in-chief of the weekly Jeune Afrique, before giving up all his posts to dedicate himself to literature.

Luca Mendoza (17) a junior at Crossroads School, studies Jazz piano with Alan Pasqua, classical piano with Rina Dokshitsky and plays in Lee Secard’s Colburn Jazz ensembles and Evan Avery’s Crossroads A Band. Luca is the 2016 National YoungArts Finalist for Jazz piano and Merit Jazz composition winner. Also this year, Luca won the Jazz performance LA Music Center Spotlight Award after being the Honorable Mention Spotlight recipient in 2015. He received an Outstanding Solo Award at the Monterey NextGen Jazz Festival and four Downbeat Magazine Student Music Awards for composition. He has been chosen for the 2016 Monterey NextGen Jazz Orchestra, and was a participant in the Vail Jazz Workshop and Brubeck Jazz Colony. Luca has also been a part of the Colburn Musical Encounters for five years, fostering music education throughout Los Angeles inner city schools. His other awards include first or honorable mentions in the Southwest Youth Music Festival and Glendale classical competitions as well as a solo award and first place in the Fullerton Jazz Festival. He has also recently performed at the Panama Jazz Festival and chamber music with the Elizabeth Mandell Music Institute during a live radio broadcast.

Andrew Moses (17) is a composer and clarinetist from Los Angeles. Hailed at age 13 as “an artist to watch” and “a musician of enormous talent”, his compositions have been performed, premiered, and read by groups such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Calder Quartet, and the Argus Quartet. Andrew has been a Composer Fellow with LA Phil since 2013, and continues in 2016-2017 as an LA Phil Senior Fellow. His chamber works have been performed in concert as part of the 2015 Hear Now Festival of New Music in Los Angeles, by wild Up at the Regent Theater as part of the LA Phil’s “Next on Grand” Festival, as part of the Yellow Barn Young Artists Program in Vermont, and in readings by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Los Angeles Philharmonic Chamber Ensembles. The LA Phil premiered two short symphonic works of his at Walt Disney Concert Hall in the past two seasons. Upcoming projects include a commission by the LA Phil for their groundbreaking Green Umbrella new music series to be premiered in October and conducted by John Adams. He has participated in masterclasses with composers such as Kaija Saariaho, John Corigliano, Magnus Lindberg, Christopher Theofanidis, and Esa-Pekka Salonen; and he is currently a student of Andrew Norman. As a clarinet student of Dr. Margaret Thornhill, Andrew made his solo New York City recital debut last year at the home of Charles and Susan Avery Fischer as part of iPalpiti Musicales. He has been featured twice on From the Top on NPR and is a recipient of From the Top’s Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award. He was a winner of the 2014 Young Musicians Foundation National Debut Concerto Competition, the Torrance Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition, the Beverly Hills Auditions, and the Midland National Young Artist Competition. Andrew has thrice participated in the Yellow Barn Young Artists Festival in Vermont; and he is a Junior of iPalpiti Artists International. Andrew has appeared as a concerto soloist with several area orchestras, having performed as concerto soloist in the Walt Disney Concert Hall at the age of 11. Committed to serving the community through Arts Leadership Initiatives, the California Senate joined in recognizing his contributions to the local arts and presented Andrew with the “Making a Difference Award”. In his spare time, he enjoys taekwondo (he is a third degree black belt), poetry, and his community of faith.

Pauline Oliveros, composer, performer and humanitarian is an important pioneer in American Music. Acclaimed internationally, for four decades she has explored sound — forging new ground for herself and others.

Through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation she has created a body of work with such breadth of vision that it profoundly effects those who experience it and eludes many who try to write about it.

Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; numerous video collaborations, and is the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind.For her book Citizen, Rankine won both the PEN Open Book Award and the Pen Literary Award, the NAACP Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Citizen was the first book ever to be named a finalist in both the poetry and criticism categories and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Citizen also holds the distinction of being the only poetry book to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category.

Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. She lives in California and is the Aerol Arnold Chair in the University of Southern California English Department.