Alumni

Azariah has had a passion for music since the age of two, when he made a habit of pulling all the pots and pans out of the cupboard to play drums on the kitchen floor. He developed his interest in music throughout his teen years, playing drums and guitar, and composing music with those instruments. Upon graduating high school, he was accepted to study Composition and Music Technology at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, where he began composing for dance, film and theatre. His current creative emphases include composition for contemporary dance, and chamber music works that draw from metal, jazz, and minimalism. His dance works have been performed in at the Venice Dance Bienalle (2018) and the Montpellier Dance Festival (2018), and in Australia and New Zealand. His research focuses on choreomusicology, and composition for dance. His current study at CalArts focuses both academically and creatively on musical texture, and using this as a means of interaction with other media.

Brian Morones is a classically trained percussionist and composer, but has recently been invested in the sounds of electronic music and synthesis using virtual, digital, and analogue synthesizers and effects. Still having a love for his acoustic and orchestral background, Brian now tries to build a bridge between the two worlds to create programmatic music and soundscapes. He hopes these compositions can create and/or inspire stories of their own, stories that can take place in a different world. Brian is currently a first-year MFA student at CalArts. He received his BA in Music Theory and Composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 2019 under the College of Creative Studies music program (CCS).

Josephine Shetty is the lo-fi experimental pop musician most commonly known as Kohinoorgasm (one word: ko-hee-noor-gasm; a playful pun on the words ‘kohinoor’ and ‘orgasm’). Shetty uses minimal dance beats and susurrate vocals to create hypnotic environments in which she hopes listeners can reflect and replenish. Between one album and two EPs, her released songs address topics ranging from war crimes and transformative justice to emotional exhaustion and body autonomy. As a self-teaching, self-managing, self-producing, and self-releasing solo artist, critical elements of Kohinoorgasm’s ethos include building support networks for marginalized artists and increasing the accessibility of arts education, as well as advancing grassroots efforts to abolish systems that terrorize and criminalize migrants and poor people, decolonize our social and economic structures, and heal the emotional and psychological wounds of living in an unjust society. As Kohinoorgasm, Shetty has performed at festivals, universities, museums, music venues, and art spaces across the US and Europe. Additionally, a strong commitment to community and collaboration has drawn Shetty to other roles and disciplines, such as workshop facilitator, organizer, sound engineer, composer, dancer, curator, and model. Shetty is born and based in Los Angeles, CA, and her music is streaming everywhere.