JOHNNA WU, the co-founder of PinkNoise, is an active performer and improviser in North America, Europe, and Asia. In 2015, she was the only artist awarded the Fulbright scholarship to pursue research in Germany, and was sponsored by the State Department of the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany. She graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts with double degrees in Biology and Musicology and obtained a Masters of Music degree in violin performance at The Juilliard School. Her most recent appearances include performances at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre, Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, Paris Philharmonie, Guangzhou Opera House, and the Banff Centre in Canada. She serves on the faculty and is a co-curator for the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland.
SIMON KANZLER, the co-founder of PinkNoise, is a composer, laptop improviser and vibraphonist based in New York and currently lives in Paris as a participant of the Cursus program at IRCAM. He has a diverse musical background both as an improviser—originally on the vibraphone and in recent years primarily on his self-made modular software instrument—and as a composer, working with a broad range of musicians including new music ensembles, jazz bands, improvisers, heavy metal and rock musicians. His chamber works have been performed by new music groups such as the ensemble mosaik and the modern art ensemble. He has studied composition with Mauro Lanza at the UdK Berlin from 2015 to 2017 and jazz vibraphone with David Friedman at the Jazz-Institute Berlin from 2009 to 2013. Computer music has become his primary research focus since 2018 and is now an essential ingredient in all of his work, for which he creates his own software. Kanzler is the founder of the KIM collective Berlin that organizes a yearly festival for experimental music, the KIM Fest in Berlin. The collective has recently cooperated with the Jazzfest Berlin, for which Kanzler created a multichannel sound-installation in 2018 and participated in the creation of “Mass of Hyphae” a fungus opera, that was performed at the Jazzfest Berlin 2019. He has released four albums of his band projects Talking Hands, Double Identity and Nodía Es on the labels Unit records and WhyPlayJazz.
Brooklyn-based flutist ROBERTA MICHEL is dedicated to the music of our time. Praising her “extreme adventurousness,” New York Concert Review said she “riveted with her performance, inspiring one to want a repeated hearing.” Michel is the Co-artistic Director of Wavefield. A founding member of Duo RoMi and Cadillac Moon Ensemble, Michel has also performed with: Ecce Ensemble, Portland String Quartet, Newspeak, SEM Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, Argento, Iktus, Wordless Music Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ensemble LPR, and Cygnus Ensemble among others. Recent venues include: Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Alice Tulley Hall, Merkin Hall, The Kennedy Center, Roulette, Issue Project Room, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She can be heard on New Dynamic, Innova, Tzadik, and Meta Records. Michel has commissioned and premiered hundreds of new works and has worked with many notable composers of our day.Michel holds degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder, SUNY-Purchase College, and the City University of New York Graduate Center. She is a winner of the NFA Graduate Research Competition for her dissertation on the flute music of Salvatore Sciarrino, resulting in a presentation at the 2013 National Flute Association Convention in New Orleans. Her teachers include Robert Dick, Tara O’Connor, and Alexa Still. She currently teaches at St. Francis College, Sarah Lawrence College, and at her private studio in Brooklyn.
Clarinetist KAI HIRAYAMA is a performer, improviser, and recording musician devoted to the music of now. An avid champion of new music and a strong believer in its necessity for a culturally relevant musical future, he has worked with many composers including Igor Santos, Conrad Tao, Amy Beth Kirsten, Alan Hankers, David Sanford, and more to create and perform new works of clarinet solo and chamber music. An active member of the NYC/NY freelance musician community, Kai is a frequent substitute with many local orchestras, including the Albany Symphony, so&so NYC, and the US Broadway premiere of “Gwangju - the Musical”. A passionate educator as well as performer, he maintains a large private studio of clarinet and saxophone students, has served as substitute clarinet faculty for the Juilliard School Pre-college Division, and is on the faculty of the Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival in Leavenworth, WA. Kai has performed internationally, with concerts around Europe, Australia, and North America. He completed his doctoral studies at Stony Brook University under the guidance of Alan Kay.
NYC-based cellist, singer, and improviser IVA CASIAN-LAKOS is a first-generation American of Mexican-Croatian descent. She has toured across the North America and Europe with interdisciplinary, genre-bending ensembles such as Bang on a Can All-Stars, Synesthetic Project, Ensemble Illyrica, eco|tonal, PinkNoise Ensemble, and Unheard-of//Ensemble. Iva’s versatile repertoire ranges from classical cello to boundary-stretching new works involving choreography, singing, acting, improvisation, and more.
Iva collaborated with legendary vocalist and composer Joan La Barbara on a new work for singing-cellist commissioned by Bang on a Can and performed at their virtual marathon, Long Play Festival, and Noguchi Museum series. She has also worked with composers Christopher Stark, David Crowell, Ana Lopez (nnux), Wang Lu, and Erika Dohi. Iva also enjoys collaborations with visual artists, videographers, and dancers in interdisciplinary projects, often via the Vienna-based collective Synesthetic Project.
In 2017, she co-founded Zagreb-based Ensemble Illyrica, a chamber ensemble which performs classical repertoire alongside folk-based music and newly commissioned works. Hailed for their “creative ecstasy, freshness, tonal harmony and rhythmic clarity,” (Novi List) Illyrica has performed in major venues and festivals across Ireland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia, such as Lednice-Valtice Music Festival, Wiener Musikverein, Zagreb Biennale, Scena Amadeo, Kultursommer Wien, Festival Arsana, and Hvar Summer Festival. Illyrica released their debut classical album on Hitchtone Music in 2022.
Pianist HAN CHEN, a native of Taichung, Taiwan, studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky at The Juilliard School, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, in part on a Van Cliburn Alumni Scholarship. He continues his studies at the New England Conservatory with Wha Kyung Byun. As first-prize winner of the Sixth China International Piano Competition, Mr. Chen released his debut CD, of Liszt opera transcriptions, on Naxos Records. He has performed with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (under Vladimir Ashkenazy), Aspen Music Festival Brass Ensemble, China Symphony Orchestra, Macao Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra, Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, and National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, and given recitals in New York, Taiwan, and China. A modern-music enthusiast, Mr. Chen collaborated closely with Juilliard’s new-music ensemble, AXIOM (as in John Cage’s Concerto for Prepared Piano), and is on the roster of the New York-based Ensemble Échappé. His program of all New York-based composers at the new-music venue Spectrum was a Time Out New York critic’s pick. Mr. Chen also is an avid composer whose works have been performed in Taiwan, New York, Aspen, and beyond.