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The evocative and embracing resonance of the natural world is a pervasive theme in the music of Ann Callaway, whose works have been premiered by the Seattle (Concerto for Bass Clarinet) and St. Louis (Amethyst for soprano & orchestra) Symphony Orchestras, the New York New Music Ensemble, Collage New Music, and Earplay. She has been composer in residence for Bella Musica and was the inaugural composer for Voci’s New Works Project, which commissioned On Music and Nature: Three Hopkins Settings (2015). The Peninsula Women’s Chorus performed Silvery Blue (2003, on her own poem on a local butterfly). Her 2020 project was Clamavi de tribulatione mea, a setting for double chorus of Jonah’s hymn of deliverance from the whale’s belly. She often writes music for her husband, bass Richard Mix, most recently Char, settings of six poems of Kurahara Shinjirô. A Contributing Director of Sonic Harvest, Ann Callaway is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has held residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Leighton Artist Colony in Banff. Her music is published by Subito Music Corp.

Concertmaster of the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera and of West Edge Opera, Dan Flanagan is Instructor of Violin at UC, Berkeley. He created "The Bow and the Brush," which commissions new music inspired by paintings and sculptures. With over 30 chamber and solo works, the performances have taken place across the U.S., France, Italy, and England, including Carnegie Hall, University of California, Boston University, University of Rome, Stern Pissarro Gallery, and the American Library in Paris. Several of these works can be heard on his album The Bow and the Brush (MSR Classics). He has performed as concertmaster with the Oakland Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony, California Symphony, California Musical Theater, Festival Opera, Symphony San Jose, Modesto Symphony, and Opera Parallèle, and performs regularly with the S. F. Opera, Trio Solano, and Eco Ensemble. As a composer, he has been commissioned by International Arts Educators Forum, Cecilia Ensemble, Trio Solano, Farallon Quintet, Hunter’s Point Shipyard Artists, Shipyard Gallery, Gold Coast Chamber Players, the Swedenborgian Church of San Francisco, and many soloists. In addition to promoting living composers and artists of diverse backgrounds, Dan regularly features his art collection to host fundraisers for charities. Dan recently joined the Contributing Directors of Sonic Harvest.

Peter Josheff (composer and clarinetist) has been on the front lines of the northern California new music scene for more than 30 years. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is a co-founder of Earplay and of Sonic Harvest, a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Empyrean Ensemble (UC Davis), Eco Ensemble (UC Berkeley), and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. He performs frequently with Opera Parallèle
and West Edge Opera. Peter’s music has been performed by the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, the Farallon Quintet, Earplay, Sonic Harvest, the Laurel Ensemble, the Bernal Hill Players, Empyrean Ensemble, and many soloists. Recent works include: Same Old Sadness (2020) for solo violin; On the Way to the Day (2020) for solo cello; Dewy not, Dewy got (2020) for solo bassoon; Warped Oracle (2019) and Images from the Past (2018) for spoken voice and piano; and The Dream Mechanic (2016), for woman’s spoken voice, tenor, and chamber orchestra. An Instructor of Clarinet at U..C., Berkeley, he is also an amateur guitarist/singer/songwriter. Peter is a Contributing Director of Sonic Harvest.

Ursula Kwong-Brown is a composer, sound designer and arts technologist, originally from NYC but recently located to Los Angeles. Described as “atmospheric and accomplished” by The New York Times, her work has been performed in the United States, Europe, and Asia in diverse venues including Carnegie Hall, le Poisson Rouge, Miller Theatre, the Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Honors include ASCAP and NACUSA awards, a Berkeley Symphony Composer Fellowship and grants from Chamber Music America and the Sloan Foundation. Ursula received her B.A. in Music & Biology from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in Music Composition & New Media from the University of California. In 2024, she became co-Artistic Director of the Bay Area based new music ensemble Ninth Planet. Her scores are published by Ursa Minor Music

Pianist Jeffrey LaDeur is known as a compelling exponent of classic and new repertoire. He inherited a rich tradition of pianism and interpretation from Annie Sherter, student of Vlado Perlemuter and Alfred Cortot. In 2018 he made his solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall on the centennial of Claude Debussy’s death. He appears regularly with orchestra and maintains a repertoire of over forty piano concerti. Together with mezzo soprano Kindra Scharich he produced To My Distant Beloved, an album exploring the connections between Beethoven and Schumann through song cycles and solo piano works. He has collaborated with distinguished artists such as Robert Mann, Bonnie Hampton, Ian Swensen, Axel Strauss, Geoff Nuttall, and the Alexander String Quartet. He is the founder and artistic director of the San Francisco International Piano Festival and president of the American Liszt Society, SF Bay Area Chapter. An active educator, he coaches ensembles at Young Chamber Musicians in Burlingame, and travels to various universities to offers masterclasses. LaDeur holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and counts among his teachers Mark Edwards, Douglas Humpherys, Yoshikazu Nagai, and Robert McDonald.

Richard Mix, bass appears with over a dozen Bay Area opera companies singing a repertoire that embraces Wagner and Monteverdi as well as Scelsi and Stockhausen. A former cellist, he made his singing debut as Truelove in Berkeley Contemporary Opera's 1992 production of The Rake's Progress and went on to the Darmstädter Sommerferienkurse für neue Musik, where he was awarded a Patenring grant and re-invited in 1994 and 1996. He has since appeared as Bartók’s Kékszakállú, Lully’s Roland, Stockhausen’s Luzifer and in Vladimir in Butterfly Country, whose Nabokovian title role was written for him by his wife, Ann Callaway. West coast premieres range from Arthur in Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse to C.P.E. Bach’s Matthaeus-Passion. Recent projects include an unaccompanied recital juxtaposing newer works such as Julius Eastman's Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan of Arc with mediaeval song from the Roman de Fauvel, an evening of Stockhausen’s Tierkreis with pianist Patti Deuter, and recitals featuring Carter, Pousseur and Cage alongside Callaway’s Char: Six Poems by Shinjiro Kurahara.

Award-winning tenor Chad Somers’ most recent appearances include Gaston in La Traviata (Livermore Valley Opera), Andres in Wozzeck (West Edge Opera), and Curley in Of Mice and Men (Livermore Valley Opera). He created the roles of Boy in Nat Stooky’s Bulrusher (West Edge Opera), Sherlock Holmes in Meier’s Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant (Opera Modesto), and Narrator in Deborah Kavasch's Annabel (Opera Modesto). Equally at home in the concert hall, last season included appearances as tenor soloist in Dvořak’s Stabat Mater (UC Berkeley Alumni Chorus), Britten’s Saint Nicolas (UC Berkeley Choirs), Haydn’s Creation (Marin Oratorio), Finzi’s Intimations of Immortality (Stockton Chorale and Orchestra), Britten’s Saint Nicolas (MBU, St. Louis), Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2, Lobgesang (Sacramento Chorale Society and Orchestra), Puccini’s Messa di Gloria (Symphony San Jose), and Laitman’s Becoming a Redwood (Sonoma County Philharmonic). He has collaborated with composers Jake Heggie, Lori Laitman and Helmut Lachenmann. He earned a DMA at the Eastman School of Music. @chadsingsthings

Composer Allen Shearer has been honored with the Rome Prize Fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship, the Aaron Copland Award, residencies at the MacDowell Colony, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. His opera The Dawn Makers, on a libretto by Claudia Stevens, premiered at Herbst Theatre and was selected as a finalist in the National Opera Association’s Dominick Argento Chamber Opera Competition 2015. His Three Lyrics, a work written at the Copland House, won the Sylvia Goldstein Award. The premiere production of his opera Middlemarch in Spring was named one of the Ten Best Operatic Events of 2015 by the San Francisco Examiner, and one of the year’s notable events in classical music worldwide by the Encyclopedia Brittanica. His opera Howards End, America premiered at ZSpace in San Francisco in 2019, and Prospero’s Island, on a libretto by Claudia Stevens after Shakespeare’s The Tempest, premiered in 2023 at Herbst Theatre, San Francisco. Allen Shearer is a Contributing Director of Sonic Harvest.

Kyle Ko is an active horn player in the Bay Area, performing with ensembles such as the Santa Rosa Symphony, Opera Parallèle, and the San Francisco Symphony. He received his bachelor’s degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Alicia Telford and Mark Almond. Committed to contemporary music, he has collaborated with artists including Meredith Monk and Roscoe Mitchell. In addition to his performance work, he serves on the coaching staff of the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra and maintains a private studio with students in San Francisco and the East Bay.

Since 2007 Claudia Stevens has contributed to Sonic Harvest programs as a writer, player and performer of original solo works. She had toured as a performance artist since 1987 at the national level, as well as in Canada, Europe and Asia, with residencies at theater venues in Baltimore, Budapest, Toronto, Omaha and Houston, among others; at many colleges and universities, and at artist colonies including the MacDowell and VCCA. Her earlier career as a pianist included sponsored solo recitals at Carnegie Recital Hall, Boston's Jordan Hall, the National Gallery (as mentioned in "What Aaron Copland Said"), the Library at Lincoln Center, Harvard and Cal Performances series, and Community Concerts. A noted new music player, she twice was awarded fellowships in piano at Tanglewood, where she performed under Michael Tilson Thomas, Bruno Maderna and Gunther Schuller. And, supported by grants from the Virginia Arts Commission, she toured for ten seasons performing recitals of contemporary piano music and her own interdisciplinary works. Claudia also was a soloist in Romantic concertos with various orchestras, including the UC Symphony (as competition winner) and the Richmond Symphony. Her teachers included Leon Fleisher at Music Academy of the West, Bernhard Abramowitsch in Berkeley, Arie Vardi at the Rubin Academy, and Leonard Shure at Boston University (DMA in piano). With publications on a wide range of topics, as well as her own plays, Claudia has taught at Williams College and the College of William and Mary, where she is a resident scholar. She is a Contributing Director of Sonic Harvest.

Pianist Jeffrey Sykes has performed throughout the Americas, Europe, and Japan. Together with violinist Axel Strauss and cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau, he is a founding member of the San Francisco Piano Trio, which is praised for its virtuosic playing ranging from the trios of Haydn and Beethoven to those of Leon Kirchner and Astor Piazzolla. Jeffrey’s recent activities include performances at the African American Art Song Alliance; a tour along the Seine and Danube rivers; performances at the Musée des Impressionismes in Giverny, France, home of Claude Monet; performances in the US Virgin Islands; performances with the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society; a Carnegie Hall recital under the auspices of the Pro Musicis Foundation; a live broadcast over WGBH, Boston Public Radio; and a tour of Chile sponsored by the US State Department. Founder and artistic director of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society of Wisconsin, he was recently appointed Artistic Director of the Cactus Pear Music Festival in San Antonio, TX, and plays frequently at Music in the Vineyards in Napa Valley. He has recorded for the Albany, CRI, Mandala, Centaur, and Cactus Pear record labels. For 18 years he served as music director of Opera for the Young, which has introduced more than 2 million children to opera. Active as a vocal coach, he teaches piano, chamber music, and vocal coaching at the UC Berkeley and formerly at CSUEB in Hayward. He holds degrees with highest honors from the UNC Chapel Hill and the Franz-Schubert-Institut in Baden-bei-Wien, Austria, and was a Fulbright scholar in Germany. He completed his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.