Corey Chang, described as “a major composer…of his generation” by The Millbrook Independent, is an award-winning American composer, pianist and educator currently based in Bloomington, Indiana. As the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Morton Gould Young Composer Award from ASCAP, and the New Music Ensemble Commission Award from Indiana University, among other accolades, Chang’s music has been performed by many top musicians and ensembles, both nationally and internationally.

His music has received performances in highly acclaimed spaces such as Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, Sprague Hall, Vienna’s Ehrbar Hall, the Cité de la Musique, Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Arts On Site, The Center at West Park, the Avaloch Farm Music Institute in New Hampshire, and multiple other locations throughout NYC and Canada.

Chang has a passion for music of all genres and is influenced by jazz, rock, pop, musical theatre and Chinese culture, among many other things. He believes in the transformative and unifying power in music; his multiple grant-winning initiative, East-West Collaboration, broke boundaries by producing works fusing together eastern traditional instruments and western instruments in a contemporary music setting. He worked with director of the IU Chinese Gateway Steven Yin, pipa virtuoso Wu Man, Zhejiang Conservatory’s director of international affairs Jimmy Wu, and faculty from Indiana University’s East Asian Languages and Cultures department and the Jacobs School of Music Office of Entrepreneurship and Career Development to commission four composers to write for mixed Chinese-Western instrumental quartets which were performed in May, 2024, with all the composers present in Hangzhou.

Chang holds dual degrees in Composition and Mathematics from Bard College and a Master’s Degree in Composition from The Juilliard School, where he was a Morse Teaching Fellow and was awarded the Joseph W. Polisi “Artist as Citizen” prize. Chang is currently a doctoral student and Associate Instructor of Composition at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music

Alexey Logunov is a composer and pianist with a primary focus on contemporary and experimental music. His music explores textural density, timbral complexity, and fusion of acoustic and electronic sound worlds. He is inspired by a broad range of styles, from the emotional depth of late romanticism to dynamic energy of progressive rock and heavy metal.

Alexey was born in Leningrad, Russia. He graduated in 2014 from Saint-Petersburg State Conservatory of Rimsky-Korsakov, where he studied composition with Vladimir Tsitovich and Gennady Banshchikov and was later assistant to Sergei Slonimsky. Logunov studied piano performance at Saint-Petersburg Conservatory, mentored by Ekaterina Murina from 2016 to 2018. In 2020, he earned a Master of Music degree in Composition from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he studied with P. Q. Phan, Eugene O’Brien, and Tansy Davies. Logunov is now a doctoral student and recipient of a fellowship from the Composition Department at the Jacobs School of Music.

Logunov’s compositions have been performed at numerous festivals in Russia and internationally, including Synesthesia Lab 2024, Bang on a Can LOUD Weekend, From Avantgarde to Present Days, Children’s Earth, Sound Ways, reMusik.org, Musica Futura (Minsk, Republic of Belarus), New music-new reality (Ekaterinburg), Composer 2.0 (Yaroslavl) and the Midwest Composers Symposium 2019 (Indiana University, USA), Performing Media Festival 2024 (South Bend, Indiana), SEAMUS@40 (Louisiana State University, USA).

Alexey Logunov is a laureate of the IV International competition of performing musicians and composers “Romanticism: sources and horizons” Franz Schubert’s in memoriam (2013, Moscow), VI and VII young composer’s competitions at the International festival “Three centuries of classical romance” (2016, 2018, Saint-Petersburg), II young composers competition “Siberia symphony” (2017, Krasnoyarsk), diplomant of XVI Open composers competition named after Andrey Petrov (2022, Saint-Petersburg). He is a winner of 2023 Georgina Joshi Composition Commission Award at Jacobs School of Music and a nominee for a 2024 American Academy of Arts and Letters music award.

Jamey Guzman (M.M. Composition and M.M. Music Scoring for Visual Media, in progress, Indiana University) is a composer and storyteller who tells necessary underrepresented stories with experimental and innovative techniques. Jamey has received major commissions from The Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana; Really Spicy Opera, Opera Arlington, Strange Trace Opera, ENAEnsemble, Paradox Opera, and SONIT.

Laura Pacheco Nieto is a Colombian composer and singer whose work blends Latin American traditions and ornithological inspiration. Winner of multiple composition prizes, her music has been performed by the Bogotá Philharmonic, the Colombian National Symphony, and the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. She is pursuing a master’s in composition at Indiana University, studying with David Dzubay and Aaron Travers.

Wesley Thompson is a composer, writer, and multi-instrumentalist from the coastal town of Fairhope, Alabama. Drawing from eclectic influences such as 20th century classical music, rock/heavy metal, jazz, and video game soundtracks, Thompson explores the blurring of boundaries between the categorical tools we call “genres.” A love of improvisation, born from his piano studies, is also integral to his compositional style.

As an educator, Thompson looks beyond the barriers between musical traditions in order to understand the connection between influence and the compositional process. To this end, he is especially interested in the various “progressive” and “crossover” musical movements that have arisen throughout music history, particularly within the rock and heavy metal traditions. Similarly, Thompson believes in the connection between narrative and musical form, often writing poetry to represent his pieces in written form or for use as lyrics.

Thompson’s music has been featured at events such as the Charlotte and Brevard Music Festivals, and he has worked with numerous new music artists such as the Beo String Quartet, Transient Canvas, Lindsay Garritson, and Aaron Petit. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music theory and composition from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and a master’s degree in composition from the Manhattan School of Music. He is currently a doctoral student and associate instructor of composition at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.

Jacob Wilkinson is an American composer who holds a master’s degree from the Peabody Institute, where he was awarded the P. Bruce Blair award in composition. Equally passionate about practical and theoretical approaches to music, he enjoys integrating a variety of styles and methods into his teaching. He is currently pursuing a double DM/PhD degree in composition and theory at Indiana University.