Alumni

Erin Demastes is a composer, pianist and keyboardist from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Before coming to Los Angeles, Erin worked as a jazz and classical pianist, composer, and arranger for 10 years in the New Orleans area. Erin specializes in improvised music and is interested in the intersection of science and art. Her current work involves performing on synthesizers, laptop, toys, found objects, and homemade instruments and electronics.  

Wesley Hicks is an artist and experimental musical instrument maker from Los Angeles, CA. He creates cacophonous, dissident, and glitchy music with a broken down quality to it. Tempo, musical progression, and harmony are often left unstructured and sometimes barely coherent. He creates ensembles of constructed musical instruments that are intended for live performances in public spaces and museums. He often works with the public, who play the role as performers working off his generative scores.

Evan Schaaf (b. 1994) is a composer and audio engineer based in Los Angeles, California. After composing pieces for acoustic arrangements for over a decade, Schaaf developed an interest in electronic music. He is now known for his unique style of beat-based glitch and noise music, featuring samples from a variety of artists ranging from Bela Bartok to Kanye West. His interests include alternative tuning systems, linear and nonlinear forms, emergent patterns, and the use of curved temporal planes to create illusive musical content.

Iris Sidikman is a word composer, music author and cellist from Madison, WI. Her work incorporates spoken and written word with both through-composed and improvised music. Her work is informed by her background in gender studies and takes a self-conscious look at her identity as a woman, as an artist and as a person on Earth in general. Her influences include minimalism, minimalism, minimalism, minimalism and minimalism.

Breana Tavaglione is a 22-year old musician and sound artist from Riverside, California, whose primary musical interest is recording and experimenting with sound.  Breana graduated from Mills College ‘16 BA Music Composition with an Emphasis in Media Technology and Electronic Music.  Originally trained on piano, Breana studied voice with Molly Holm at Mills College. Breana enjoys songwriting and accompanying herself on guitar. She utilizes recording as a means to paint with sound, creating an immersive sensory experience in which she deconstructs conceptual themes in order to convey a specific mood or aesthetic and to transport listeners to an alternative sonic landscape.