Todd Harper, composer/performer
Todd Harper wears many hats: composer, pianist, orator, combo creator, and most recently, as a visual artist. He is now combining these elements into creating a new notational system which he calls “Visual/Intuitive scores”. These scores also function as art and are displayed in art shows. Currently, Todd has three main combos functioning now: his “Euglena groups” which can be called a “eco-chamber” collective; the free funk/jazz quintet Troux Bloux with Matty Harris, Ivan Cunningham (saxophones), Tarek Abdelqader (drums) and Erik Fratzke (bass); and The Eco Boyz, an avant-folk combo with painter/mandola player Joseph Maurer, and special guests. Todd has curated and co-curated many musical events, such as Keys Please (piano stories of three generations) with Carei Thomas and Paul Cantrell; the Art of Sweat Rhythm Festival at Patrick’s Cabaret; and Midwest tours of Musical Ecology with renowned NYC flautist Jun Miyake. As a composer, Todd has written for The Temporal Mechanics Percussion Union of Arkansas City Kansas; baritone Dr. Michael Jorgensen for the Nobel Conference concert at Gustavus Adolphus College; music for video installation by Andrea Thoma in Stuttgart, Germany, and many others. Since 2020, Todd has been studying watercolors, learning the basics, and incorporating them in his music. His work to date includes a solo show (Being Outside) at the Rum River Library in Anoka, a group show in the Summer ’22 Pop up Show at Landmark Center Gallery, group shows “All about Birds” and “Wild about Water” at Rum River Art Center, and a group show at Pablo Center in Eau Claire, WI. Todd has another solo show in September 2023 at Paradise Art Center in Faribault, MN. The key points of Todd’s artistic and musical experiences are collaboration, connection, and celebration of the natural/human world, in all its complexity. All of this with a dash of surprise and humor.
Nirmala Rajasekar, composer and veena
World-renowned musician and Kalaimamani Awardee Nirmala Rajasekar is a dynamic Carnatic veena player, vocalist, composer, and educator. She is celebrated around the globe for her exquisite tone, vibrant musicality, captivating stage presence, and sensitive artistry. A passionate educator, Nirmala is at the vanguard of artists working to make the world a more equitable place for all. 
Shruthi Rajasekar, composer
Named by The Guardian as a composer "who will enrich your life", Shruthi Rajasekar is an Indian-American musician exploring identity, community, and joy. A 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Shruthi draws from her unique dual background in the Carnatic (South Indian classical) and Western classical traditions to create intersectional music. She was awarded the Global Women in Music Award from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights & Donne in Musica Adkins Chiti Foundation. Shruthi has been an artist-in-residence at Tusen Takk Foundation, Britten Pears Arts, and the Anderson Center. As a soprano and Carnatic vocalist, Shruthi has performed and recorded in numerous traditional and experimental settings. She was a Marshall Scholar in the UK, where she pursued postgraduate studies in composition and ethnomusicology. A graduate of Princeton University, Shruthi lives in Minnesota and serves on the board of new music chamber ensemble Zeitgeist. 
According to the Los Angeles Times, composer and performer Eve Beglarian is a “humane, idealistic rebel and a musical sensualist.” A 2017 winner of the Alpert Award in the Arts for her “prolific, engaging and surprising body of work,” she has also been awarded the 2015 Robert Rauschenberg Prize from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts for her “innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation.”
Beglarian’s current projects include a collaboration with writer/performer Karen Kandel and writer/director Mallory Catlett about women in Vicksburg from the Civil War to the present, a piece for twenty-four double basses in a grove of trees, and a song cycle setting texts by and about mid-20th-century women for the Brooklyn Art Song Society. Since 2001, she has been creating A Book of Days, “a grand and gradually manifesting work in progress…an eclectic and wide-open series of enticements.” (Los Angeles Times) In 2009, “Ms. Beglarian kayaked and bicycled the length of the Mississippi River [and] has translated her findings into music of sophisticated rusticity. [Her] new Americana song cycle captures those swift currents as vividly as Mark Twain did. The works waft gracefully on her handsome folk croon and varied folk instrumentation as mysterious as their inspiration.” (New York Times) Performance projects include Brim, Songs from a Book of Days, The Story of B, Open Secrets, Hildegurls’ Ordo Virtutum, twisted tutu, and typOpera. Recordings of Eve’s music are available on ECM, Koch, New World, Canteloupe, Innova, Naxos, Kill Rock Stars, CDBaby, and Bandcamp. |
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