Ben Finley is a performer-composer specializing in acoustic bass and electric bass (in multiple tunings and with effects). He grew up on a music festival farm, witnessing many ecosystems of music making. The seeds of co-creative agency were sewn; Ben aims to cultivate music that embraces the unique individual life experiences of its participants. This often manifests through improvisation, text, the human voice, electro-acoustic worlds, learning from the biosphere, and exploring multi-stylistic compositional frameworks. Ben founded and facilitates the Westben Centre for Connection & Creativity’s international/multi-generational Performer-Composer Residency. He is a graduate of the Performer-Composer program at CalArts, and is a current PhD candidate of Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph, studying music festivals as sites of environmental and existential stewardship.

www.benfinley.ca

Davy Sumner is an installation artist, composer, improviser, and Maker based in Los Angeles. His creative works are spawned out of physics, biology, and sensory perception, often utilizing electromechanical sound devices, spatialized audio, vintage recording hardware, and feedback-based systems as key elements. He specializes in devising atypical, unpredictable instruments that incite interpersonal interaction between audience and performer. Davy’s work has been featured at Disney Concert Hall, The Eaux Claires Music Festival, and in the US National Parks.

A fiercely active and diverse collaborator, he has worked as an arranger with Grammy winning artists Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Sean Carey (S. Carey), and Rob Moose (yMusic, Ben Folds). As a consultant Sound Mixer for Disney Imagineering, he mixed the THEA award-winning Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Lands and the 2019 edition of Star Tours (coinciding with the release of the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker film).

As a Special Faculty Member at CalArts, he has designed curriculum and taught Low-Tech Prototyping, Graduate Electroacoustic Seminar, and Composition. Davy holds a Bachelor's in Music Composition from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and an MFA in Experimental Sound Practices from CalArts.

www.davysumner.com

Sarah Belle Reid is a Canadian performer-composer, active in the fields of electroacoustic trumpet performance, intermedia arts, music technology, and improvisation. She is a co-developer of the Minimally Invasive Gesture Sensing Interface (MIGSI) for trumpet: an open-source, wireless interface that captures performance data and provides real-time extended sonic and visual control for improvisation. Reid has presented and performed with MIGSI at institutions and festivals around the world including Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), the International Conference of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2015: Brisbane, Australia), New Media Art & Sound Summit (NMASS 2017: Austin, TX), University of Oregon, UT Austin, and UC Irvine's Women in Music Technology Symposium (2016), among others.

As a composer, Reid’s work focuses on time and memory imprints both in sound and physical performance—a fascination inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s writings on infrathin—as well as the integration of electronics, hybrid/new instruments, and found objects. Her compositions have been premiered and performed by renowned musicians and ensembles around the world, most recently pianist Vicki Ray, Caution Tape Sound Collective (supported by Association of Canadian Women Composers and SOCAN), Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, and Vinny Golia. In 2017 her composition “Flux” for amplified percussion quartet won the Grammy-nominated Los Angeles Percussion Quartet’s Next Wave Composer Initiative.

www.sarahbellereid.com