composing earth
cohort V
(2025-2026)
Che Buford
Che Buford (he, they) is an NYC-based artist whose work explores creating new narratives within the world of music while engaging in themes of memory and place.
Che performs as a violinist in various musical settings such as traditional orchestras, chamber music, solo, improvisational performance, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Their own work explores the possibilities of timbre and acoustical phenomena and connects them to elements of place, memory, poetry, and the quotidian. Che has had the privilege of creating with artists such as Longleash, The Rhythm Method, New York Philharmonic, Castle of our Skins, mal sounds, Steph Davis, Adama Delphine Fawundu, and Deborah Jack. Their work has been presented and performed in spaces that include Roulette, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Joe’s Pub, Antenna Cloud Farm, The DiMenna Center, and David Geffen Hall.
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Monica Chew
Monica Chew (she/her) is an Oakland pianist and composer. In 2017 she released her first solo album, Tender and Strange, featuring works by Bartók, Janáček, Messiaen, Takemitsu, and Scriabin. A “gifted player with an affinity for deeply sensitive expression” (Whole Note, June/July/August 2018), her playing is “wonderfully delicate, like tissue” (International Pianist, July/August 2018). She started composing in 2017 and couldn’t be happier about it. Her work has been featured as part of the Gabriela Lena Frank’s Creative Academy for Music’s #GLFCAMGigThruCovid initiative, Hot Air Music Festival, and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble’s Intersection program. Prior to 2015, she neglected piano for nearly a decade to work as a principal software engineer on security and privacy at Mozilla and Google after receiving her Master of Music from SF Conservatory of Music and a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley.
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Kevin Day
Dr. Kevin Day (b. 1996) is an award-winning, multi-disciplinary composer, jazz pianist and conductor. Internationally acclaimed as one of the world’s leading musical voices, Dr. Day’s work is known as a vibrant exploration of diverse musical traditions from contemporary classical, jazz, R&B, Soul and more. A unique voice in the world of classical music, Dr. Day takes inspiration from a broad range of sources, including romanticism, late 20th century music, jazz fusion and gospel. Across all areas, his work explores the complex interplay of rhythm, texture and melody across genres.
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Danny Gouker
Danny is a trumpet player, composer, and psychotherapist based in New York City. He is an alumni of GLFCAM cycles 6 (Duo Cortona) and 8 (Mallets and Strings). He has released three albums of composed and improvised music, two for the jazz quartet Signal Problems, made up of long-time friends and collaborators. He has also contributed to the original projects of numerous musicians in the New York area over the last 10 years with an emphasis on generosity and friendship as tenets of his side man work.
In 2019, between his two GLFCAM cycles, Danny chose to further pursue his love of human interaction with a Master’s degree in Social Work. Since 2020, he has been working full time as an Licensed Master Social Worker in community mental health settings as well as private practice in NYC. He has developed special areas of focus working with creativity, spirituality, relational trauma, and the criminal justice system. Danny is looking forward to bringing the breadth of his experience to developing the Artistic Wellness program with GLFCAM.
Grey Grant
Grey Grant (she/they) is a composer, performer, and librettist, whose work frequently involves a transdisciplinary, collaborative effort between herself and other artists. Much of their current work revolves around identity, the environment, and place. Her music: “[Crafts] a work that is moving, evocative and, by the end, exhausting (in the best sense)” and writes “demanding music with precision and nuance.” (Michigan Daily).
Grey’s recent works include Decomposition/Little Histories/Renewal, a new song cycle commissioned for trans baritone, Elliot Franks, Light of the Moon, an electroacoustic work for bassist Charlie Ruth Welty, Glitter Orgy, an evening-length dance-theater work for chamber musicians and performers exploring trauma recovery and sexual liberation, and The Precipice, a chamber-rock opera co-composed with Karl Ronneburg, for Fifth Wall Performing Arts.
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Oswald Huỳnh
Oswald Huỳnh is a Vietnamese American composer whose music navigates aesthetics and tradition, language and translation, and the relationship between heritage and identity. Described as “planetary music” (The St. Louis American), “oftentimes escaping the standards of orchestration” (Luigi Nono International Composition Prize), and “a gifted writer for orchestra” (Chicago Tribune), his work is characterized by intricate contrasts of timbre and interweaving textures that are rooted in narrative, culture, and memory.
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Tanner Porter
Tanner Porter is a composer-performer and songwriter. In her “original art songs that are by turns seductive and confessional” (Steve Smith, The New Yorker), Tanner explores her passion for storytelling, often framing her work within the imagery of the California coast she grew up on. Tanner’s orchestral music, described as “drop-dead gorgeous” (Jim Munson, Broadway World), has been commissioned by the San Francisco Ballet, Louisville Orchestra, Albany Symphony Orchestra, Nu Deco Ensemble, and the New York Youth Symphony, among others.
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Juhi Bansal
“Radiant and transcendent”, the music of Juhi Bansal weaves together themes celebrating musical and cultural diversity, nature and the environment, and strong female role models. Her music draws upon elements as disparate as Hindustani music, the spectralists, progressive metal, musical theatre and choral traditions to create deeply expressive, evocative sound-worlds. As an Indian composer brought up in Hong Kong, her work draws subtly upon both those traditions, entwining them closely and intricately with the gestures of western classical music. Recent projects include Love, Loss and Exile, a song cycle on poetry by Afghan women commissioned by Songfest; Songs from the deep, a new orchestral work inspired by humpback whale songs commissioned by the Oregon Mozart Players; and Waves of Change, a digital operatic short on womanhood, identity and clash of cultures inspired by the story of the Bangladesh Girls Surf Club.
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Shuying Li
Praised as “a real talent” (The Seattle Times) with “vivid, dramatic” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “enjoyable” (Gramophone Magazine) scores, and “an incredible span of compositional tool box” (American Record Guide), Shuying Li is an award-winning composer who began her musical education in her native China. In her sophomore year at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, she won a scholarship to continue her undergraduate studies at The Hartt School in Connecticut. She holds doctoral and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan. A passionate educator, Shuying has taught and directed the Composition/Music Theory Program at Gonzaga University. She joined the faculty at California State University, Sacramento in Fall 2022.
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