Canadian clarinetist Dr. Liam Hockley is a versatile performer and passionate advocate for new and experimental music. Described as “a musician for whom alternative or avant-garde approaches to his instrument are only part of the everyday tool kit” (Georgia Straight), he is equally fluent in classical and contemporary idioms, with a repertoire spanning the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries. His appearances across three continents include prize-winning performances at the Stockhausen-Konzert und Kurse Kürten.

Liam’s debut solo album Pulse-Tide was named one of The Wire’s 10 best Modern Classical releases of 2024, which praised it as “at once vigorous and forensic, grappling with this music’s overall physicality, while also paying microscopic attention to its fine details, its agitated particles and molecular trails.” Forthcoming releases include a collaborative project with composer Ray Evanoff and an EP of solo improvisations with electronics.

Liam holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of British Columbia, where his SSHRC-supported research explored performer agency in complexist music. His writing has appeared in The Clarinet and FOCI Arts/Words, and he maintains an active performing career across British Columbia, including as clarinetist with the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra.

Liam Hockley was generously supported by the Lucy and Stephen Maxym Endowment.

Amy Hillis has “a rich, warm sound and has mastered the violin with such ease, that it is impossible to ignore her passion in performance” (Ludwig Van Montréal). She challenges artistic norms to build community relationships inside and outside the concert hall. As a soloist, Amy has commissioned Canadian works by Luis Ramirez, Matt Brubeck, Fjóla Evans, Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière, Laurence Jobidon, Vincent Ho, Andrew Staniland, Jocelyn Morlock, Nicole Lizée, Carmen Braden, Randolph Peters and Jordan Pal. She is winner of the Pan-Canadian Recital Tour, the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition, the Canada Council Musical Instrument Bank competition on two occasions, an artistic residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, the McGill Concerto Competition, and the Sylva Gelber Foundation Music Award. A passionate chamber musician, she is a founding member of the meagan&amy duo with pianist, Meagan Milatz, and the Horizon String Quartet (HSQ) which has performed over 200 schools shows for young audiences across Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Amy is currently Associate Professor of Community Music at York University and the Artistic Director of the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto. amyhillis.com

Amy Hillis was generously supported by the Lewitt Family Foundation Artist Award.

Oliver Hanane is a percussionist, composer and artist from Melbourne, Australia. His creative practice takes a multidisciplinary lens to the creation of music, blending performance, composition and visual art, using this approach to illustrate his artistic intention. His work is rooted in experimental composition and performance seeking to explore textures and sonic possibilities.
Originally from a contemporary jazz background, his musical style blends pointillistic, repetitious, and metallic textures influenced by contemporary classical percussion. Oliver has been an active figure within Melbourne’s contemporary jazz music scene, playing at venues such as Jazzlab, Federation Square, The Croxton, and such festivals as Moomba, White Night, Strawberry Fields and Rainbow Serpent. Throughout his career he has collaborated with a diverse range of ensembles and individuals that have shaped his musical style including collaborations with ex-Egypt 80 member Olugbade Okunade and Melbourne based pianist Katarzyna Witorski.
During his studies in Indeterminate composition methodologies, Oliver developed a particular interest in fusing graphic scores and storytelling components inherent within music, investigating how when combined these elements can enhance the experience as a performer and as a viewer. This exploration reflects his broader impetus to test the boundaries of traditional methods of music making and performance. 

Oliver Hanane was generously supported by the Banff Centre Endowment.

Crossing boundaries is a feature of Hannah Epperson’s life and music—from residence in the US and Canada to more than 300 live performances in North America, Europe and the Middle East. Singled out by Bandcamp as “one of the most stunningly unconventional artists making music today,” renowned musicologist/critic Ted Gioia chose her debut album Upsweep as one of the Top 3 recordings of 2016, calling it “unique, haunting, addictive.” Classically trained, her genre-bending violin looping and singing was enriched by apprenticeships with the fiddler of acclaimed Deseret String Band and studio work and performances with Fleet Foxes, Dirty Projectors, Julianna Barwick and Ry X. A graduate in Human Geography, a member of Canada’s world champion Ultimate Frisbee Team, Hannah embodies music as a bridge, gathering soundscapes and people together in transfiguring moments of live and studio performances.
 

Hannah Epperson was generously supported by the Banff Centre Endowment.

Violinist and arts administrator Lauren Conroy is a New York City-based musician who is passionate about performing, programming, and producing contemporary music in dynamic, multidisciplinary contexts. An avid performer of new music, she is a member of the BlackBox Ensemble and a co-founder of the Magpie Duo. She is currently the Company Manager for Ariel Rivka Dance.  
Lauren has been invited to several festivals and residencies including Toronto Summer Music Fellowship, Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Norfolk New Music Workshop, Bowdoin International Music Festival Fellowship, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Lauren is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she completed her Master of Music and was the Departmental Assistant at The Juilliard School’s Center for Innovation in the Arts. After graduating from Juilliard, she then attended NYU and completed her Master of Arts in Contemporary Musical Arts Performance and Administration as a Koppenaal Scholar. At NYU, she was granted the Dean’s Award for Summer Research where she was a resident scholar at The John Cage Trust at Bard College.

Lauren Conroy was generously supported by the Banff Centre Endowment.

Rainbow Chan is an award-winning vocalist, producer and multi-disciplinary artist based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Her practice bridges popular music and contemporary visual arts, exploring themes of cultural representation, (mis)translation, matrilineal histories and diasporic heritage. Central to her work is the research and reimagining of women’s oral traditions, particularly the fading bridal laments of Weitou women, Hong Kong’s first settlers, to whom she has deep ancestral ties. Through pop music, performance and immersive installations, she translates these endangered songs into contemporary art forms, preserving their subversive feminist voices while reflecting on loss, resilience and solidarity. She is particularly interested in the power of ritual, song and performance as both a means of reclaiming agency and a living archive.

Rainbow Chan was generously supported by the Banff Centre Endowment.

Justin Wright is a composer, cellist, and multidisciplinary artist from Montreal. Wright’s music is characterized by a seamless blending of avant-garde approaches and timbral experimentation with the evocative and meditative spirit of folk and sacred music traditions. Classical concert halls, underground loft venues, art museums, pop music venues, planetariums, and the glaciers of the High Arctic have all comfortably been home to his performances, a reflection of his defiance of traditional categorization and wide-ranging artistic interests. Wright’s primary composition tools, for both electronic and acoustic music, are his cello, Ableton Live, a modular synthesizer, and a 4-track tape machine. His recent work aims to reengage with his scientific past as well as expand into other media such as film, photography, and DIY technology. Wright holds a BSc and MSc in molecular biology, and is currently a PhD candidate in music composition at Princeton University primarily studying under Tyondai Braxton and Donnach.

Justin Wright was generously supported by the Lewitt Family Foundation Artist Award.

Hillary Bonhomme is a performer and composer based in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently working on a musical trilogy and corresponding graphic notations. Her work is influenced by Nina Simone, Meredith Monk, Phillip Glass, and Beverly Glenn-Copeland.

She enjoys collaborations with choreographers, filmmakers, and podcast-makers. She aims to use music as a 'third space' and social cavern in a divided world. Hillary has participated in residencies in the US and abroad. She was a recipient of the Pablo Vela Memorial Scholarship to participate in the Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble Program, where she developed her skills in experimental composing styles and furthered her interest in cultivating community through music. Based in New York’s thriving arts and culture scene, she additionally opts to present her work in spaces not catered to live music. She has been a featured act in art exhibitions, theatre festivals, and city gardens.

As a singer and multi-instrumentalist, her original compositions are currently being performed solo with looping, vocal fx, synths, keys, hand drums, and guitar. She has created 'glacial humming,' where her pieces serve as a curriculum for a music-social experience conducted by Hillary. The mission of 'glacial humming' is to achieve higher levels of consciousness around connection through musical play.

Hillary Bonhomme was generously supported by the Banff Centre Endowment.

Highly interested in the solo and chamber repertoires of the XX and XXI centuries, the Brazilian pianist Alice Belém has already performed in Brazil, Portugal and Germany. She has recorded works of emerging and emblematic Brazilian contemporary composers for the projects ‘Brazilian Music’s Memory’, ‘Listen Here Festival’ and ‘I would like to hear...’. She has also premiered works and developed collaborations with composers from Latin America, United States and Japan.

Since 2022, Alice Belém has been developing interdisciplinary concerts joining music, video, dance and literature, aiming to rethinking the traditional concert experience. By collaborating with other performers, composers, video makers and dancers, Alice Belém aims to incorporate new creative methods and refresh her own performance skills through an interdisciplinary approach. Other key themes in her current work include the experimentation of extended piano techniques and reimagining works by other composers through contemporary lens.
Alice Belém concluded her PhD at the Music Department of the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil, and attended a Split-site doctoral program at the Cologne University of Music in Germany. She is currently a Professor at the School of Music of the State University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, where she teaches Piano, Chamber Music and Contemporary Music Performance.

Alice Belém was generously supported by the Banff Centre Endowment.

Renee Gladman is a writer and artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of writing, drawing and architecture. She is the author of numerous books, including a cycle of novels about the city-state Ravicka and its inhabitants, the Ravickians, as well as three collections of drawings, Prose Architectures (2017), One Long Black Sentence (2020), and Plans for Sentences (2022). My Lesbian Novel, a work of fiction and autobiography, was released in 2024. Recent essays and visual work have appeared in The Architectural Review, POETRY, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and e-flux, in addition to several artist monographs and exhibition catalogs. Since 2017, Gladman has exhibited her works on paper in galleries in the U.S. and across Europe. She has been awarded fellowships and artist residencies from the Menil Drawing Institute, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, among others, and received a Windham-Campbell prize in fiction in 2021. She makes her home in the Connecticut River Valley.