Michael J Brady (he/him) is a Sydney-based musician who traverses jazz, folk and indie music making. Working primarily a guitarist; he draws on effects, voice, and multiple instruments as a means of exploring and sharing sound. 

Since 2016 he has led the Michael J Brady Trio, exploring shifting textures within the improvised trio format. The group have toured the Australian East Coast four times, collaborating with artists including Sandy Evans, Sasha Gavlek, and Flora Carbo. Michael released his debut album ‘Brady//Donkin//Phipps’ with the group in late 2023. He is also a founding member in indie-rock outfit Jackie Brown Jr, working as a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and songwriter. He has completed four tours with the group, releasing two Eps.

Michael holds a Bachelor of Music (honours)/Bachelor of Education having studied at the University of New South Wales (2018) and completed an exchange semester at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University (2015). Since his studies he has taken part in the Australian Art Orchestra’s 2021 Creative Music Intensive and the 2023 Siena Jazz University International Jazz Workshop. In 2023 Michael and his trio were artists in residence at the University of New South Wales Creative Practice lab.

Michael Brady was generously supported by the Repsol Emerging Artists Award.

tUkU is a composer, singer, and performance artist, exploring the relationship between words and melody; voice as archive to sonically weave community. A Dora-nominated theatre composer and a poetic songwriter who excels at uniting text with complex harmonic songlines, tUkU honours the place singing takes in black woman culture. ‘I come to music through a powerful musical lineage, from the Bey family of artists, in Canada and the US, prominently rooted in jazz culture. ‘I have been singing with my mother and sister since I was a child.’ The recipient of a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, tUkU created a project titled diary of a salt. eater, to set to melody select poems from nayyirah waheed’s salt. for black woman chorus. In research into ways of being, tUkU recently participated in collective process work facilitated byphilosopher/writer/activist Bayo Akomolafe. tUkU is currently composing and recording her solo song set entitled luna’s re-. ‘More than anything, the experience of listening shapes my choices of expression as an artist and inspires my day-to-day movements as a human being.’ CATEGORY:WOMAN is tUkU’s debut as a film composer.

tUkU was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards and the Denis Jackson Memorial Scholarship Endowment.

Harrison Argatoff is a Toronto-based saxophonist and composer. His music, described as “Somewhere between Bach, BL!NDMAN and Mark Turner” (Jazz Halo, 2020), strives to combine the study of free-improvised, jazz, and classical music to cultivate an enthusiastically eclectic, yet distinctly personal sound. Since graduating from the University of Toronto’s jazz program in 2018, Harrison has performed across Canada and released four innovative albums, most notably with intergenerational jazz quartet “Harrison Squared”, which features Canadian greats Mike Murley and Steve Wallace.

Harrison was raised a Doukhobour in the interior of British Columbia, surrounded by teachings of pacifism, communal music making, and a wide sweeping respect for life and nature. After years spent stubbornly resisting piano lessons to embrace long haired rock-and-roll guitar, at age ten he discovered, and was immediately captivated by, the saxophone.

At present, Harrison’s is primarily focused on musical development. He is currently a student of Wallace Halladay, studying classical saxophone; Sasha Rapoport, studying classical composition; and John Hollenbeck, studying contemporary composition. These mentorships, initiated in 2020 with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, have inspired a new sense of aliveness and curiosity in Harrison’s artistic practice, while continually challenging his patience and humility.

Harrison Argatoff was generously supported by the Lockwood Family Endowment Fund for Music.

Ethan Cohn is a bass player, composer, improvisor, and educator born and raised in New York City. Known for his versatility across genres and his love of musical cross-pollination, his work reflects his sponge-like capacity to absorb and integrate his many interests into one unified voice. Holding collaboration as a central tenet of his practice, he frequently fuses worlds of jazz and rock, composition and improvisation, acoustic and electric, tradition and invention, and is interested in the potential of electronics as both a compositional tool and an interface for live performers and improvisors.

Ethan is an alumnus of McGill University, and spent several years immersing himself in Montreal's rich music scene before moving to Switzerland to participate in Focusyear Basel, a year-long jazz residency. He returned to his home of New York in 2021 and completed his master's studies at The New School’s Performer-Composer program. 

Ethan Cohn was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards and the John Linn Memorial Scholarship.

Born in Crete, Greece, I started playing the violin when I was six. At the age of 18, I moved to Athens, where I continued my studies of classical violin and got my bachelor's degree in Biology.  At the age of 25, my urge to discover more free and liberating ways to approach music, led me to relocate to Germany in order to study jazz violin at the HMT Leipzig. Since then, I've been trying to explore my desire to redefine the role of the violin in contemporary music, venturing beyond its traditional confines.

With my band Shejust_Left, an all-female band dedicated to musical experimentation and empowerment, we have toured through Europe, and recently released our first album. Beyond Shejust_Left, I co-founded the jazz and improvising string quartet “Aloú”, I am a member of the improvising orchestra “Ideal Orchester” and I am currently working on my solo project and my jazz quartet.

My inspiration comes from the avant-garde movements of the 20th century, as well as the aesthetics of pop and electronic music, which form a part of my musical background. At the same time, I have found, sometimes to my surprise, that traditional Greek music is often present, no matter how imperceptibly. With this eclectic mixture of sounds and cultures as part of my musical personality, I continually seek to untangle the constraints of the violin in jazz, and other forms of improvisational music.

Myrsini Bekakou was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards and the Cyril and Elizabeth Challice Fund for Musicians.

Alex Chang is an electric acoustic harpist. She experiments with the diversity and sweep of resonances of the electric harp — from astral tones to wailing walls of distortion. Her musical practice finds its foundations in free jazz, indie rock, Celtic and new music, and her classical training. She explores entanglements and embodied practices through the concepts of free jazz and improvisation and the ways in which music moves through us and puts us in relation and dialogue with others. Her interest in interdisciplinary collaborative practices attends to how improvisation opens up our sentience, our emotional and empathic relations around us and beyond as intertwined beings for connection and healing. Within her interdisciplinary practice, she focuses on the arts and environment and centering BIPOC communities.

She is also the co-director of Improv Spaces and runs the Improv Spaces Music Festival with creative partner percussionist Adam Forman. Improv Spaces is based in upstate New York in Saratoga County and Capital Region, developing projects that can help to serve as a hub in the region and provide resources for new music with a community of interdisciplinary collaborators locally and beyond.

Alex Chang was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards and the John W. Kieley Endowment for Emerging Musicians.

With a passion for the unorthodox and a knack for cultivating unique ensemble identities, Melbourne-based saxophonist, improviser and composer Andrew Saragossi has established himself across several and varied creative outlets as a chameleon with a wind instrument - not bound by genre or personal taste, but by a relentless search for deeper musical meaning.

Whilst firmly grounded in the jazz tradition, his curiosity, and his deeply personal approach to improvisation and extended instrumental techniques (honed during his Master of Music studies in the Netherlands/Germany (2018-20)), has evolved to broaden his sonic palette beyond the stereotypical function of the saxophone.  His creative work sits equally in the abstract as it does in the conventional, achieving an honest balance between raw spontaneous expression and refined execution – always in service of the music at hand.

Saragossi has released 12 albums with his diverse and critically recognised original projects including; MEATSHELL (2020 Maastricht Jazz Awards), Milton Man Gogh (finalists 2020 B-Jazz International Competition) and Loose Leaf.  In 2022, Saragossi was nominated for the prestigious Freedman Jazz Fellowship and is currently undertaking the Bespoke Artist professional development program with Speak Percussion. 

Andrew Saragossi was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards.
 

Stella Anning (she/her) has had a versatile career performing with a variety of artists and has established herself as a guitarist, singer, composer, bandleader, improviser and performer.

In 2022 Stella released her second album, an EP of her most recent project ‘STAT’ (Stella Anning Trio), performing all Stella’s original instrumental compositions. The trio performed for Melbourne International Jazz Festival in 2023 and have performed at venues around the country including Lazybones (SYD) and the Ellington Jazz Club (PERTH). 2024 has been a pivotal year for the band, with the addition of a pianist and Stella taking on a new role as songwriter/vocalist. The group have been performing an immense catalogue of new compositions around Melbourne as they prepare to head to the studio in July.

Stella is currently the guitarist and backing vocalist for John Flanagan, Sal Kimber, ISEULA and is guitarist for the Jazzlab Orchestra and Women of Soul.

Some notable performances include: Castlemaine Jazz Festival 2024 (Stella Anning), Bluesfest 2024 (Women of Soul), the National folk festival (John Flanagan, Canberra), Dashville Skyline (John Flanagan, NSW), the Corner Hotel (WOS, Melbourne) and Echuca Winter Blues Festival (ISEULA).

Stella received mentorship from Aaron Choulai in 2023 through the Australian Art Orchestra. Stella is endorsed by Cole Clark Guitars as of 2023.

Stella Anning was generously supported by the Jenny Belzberg Endowment.

Snow is a Chinese-Canadian composer from Burnaby who is pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in composition at the University of British Columbia. As a composer, a pianist, and someone who loves visual arts, Snow has directed her focus toward the integration of visual arts and music, particularly in the creation of graphic scores and entirely art-based compositions. Beyond visual arts, she is drawn to various art forms, having created works for interactive dance with electroacoustic music, live instruments, and visual design. In terms of sonic exploration, Snow concentrates on the sound itself and the combination of sounds as a whole. She aims to find all the subtle sounds an instrument, or unconventional ones like a household item, can produce. She then creates a unique sound world that depicts her view of the surrounding world.

She is also interested in the intercultural aspects of combining Chinese traditional instruments with Western instruments, and collaborated with the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra’s wind quintet in the summer of 2023. Recently, she has collaborated with UBC Contemporary Players Ensemble and premiered at the West Coast Composer Symposium; Currently, she’s working with Allegra Chamber Orchestra and will have her piece premiered in June 2024.

Snow Diao was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards and the Judith Anne LaRoque Scholarship Endowment.

Olivia is an experimental improviser, clarinettist and composer who has performed with International Contemporary Ensemble (NYC), SoundSCAPE New Music Festival (Europe) & Ensemble Evolution (NYC), has been an Ensemble Mise-En resident composer (NYC) and has composed numerous electroacoustic works including with the Center for Computer Research in Music & Acoustics, Stanford (California).

In 2023, Olivia’s projects included their NYC-based commissioning project for underrepresented voices Shrew Brew, their duo project Eunoia with Argentinian vibraphonist Pauline Roberts, and composition commissions with both SoundSCAPE New Music Festival for pierrot + percussion and American Modern Ensemble (NYC) for wind quartet + harp. In September Olivia attended the Australian Art Orchestra’s Creative Music Intensive for experimental improvisers. In December, they curated two nights of experimental music at Arts on Site (NYC) for their project !$@%! supported by a grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

In 2024, Olivia has an upcoming two-week residency with their improvised electronic music duo at Billilla Estate (Melbourne, Australia) in which the musicians will respond sonically to the environmental contexts of the historic grounds. 2024 commission premiere performances for Olivia include new compositions for Horizons Ensemble (Boston), Dior Quartet (New York), and Neave Trio (Netherlands) and Sydney Contemporary Orchestra (Sydney). Olivia’s work on themes of motherhood, mental health and identity continue in 2024 with the premiere presentation of :: Leo :: an electroacoustic piece from their 2022 album :: MXM :: in Sioux Falls.

At the Melbourne University (Australia) School of Jazz and Improvisation, Olivia holds a PhD stipend to experiment with handmade Arduino synthesizers, clarinet processing and Ableton. This is part of their doctoral research on the history and sociology of improvised computer music seen through a Queer, Feminist and Anti-racist lens. In addition to PhD candidature Olivia holds their Master of Music: Performer-Composer from The New School (NYC).

Olivia Jones was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards.