Composer and pianist Sean Friar grew up in Los Angeles, where his first musical experiences were in rock and blues piano improvisation. His music keeps in touch with the energy and communicative directness of those musical roots, now along with an expansive and exploratory classical sensibility that is “refreshingly new and solidly mature… and doesn’t take on airs, but instead takes joy in the process of discovery [and] in the continual experience of suspense and surprisethat good classical music has always championed.” (Slate Magazine).

He regularly composes for ensembles within and outside traditional concert music. His output ranges from works for orchestra and chamber ensembles to a junk car percussion concerto, music for laptop orchestra, and microtonal piano duo. He has received commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic Scharoun Ensemble, American Composers Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Modern, Cabrillo Festival, New York Youth Symphony, Redlands Symphony, NOW Ensemble, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the Curtis Institute, and Present Music. His music has been featured at festivals around the world including Aspen, Bang on a Can, Bowdoin, Cabrillo, Carlsbad, Chamber Music Conference of the East, GAUDEAMUS, International Young Composers Meeting, NASA, Norfolk, Nuova Consonanza, SONIC, the Venice Biennale, and the World Saxophone Congress. Also active as a pianist, Friar frequently performs with saxophonist Jeff Siegfried and recently debuted a new duo for amplified bassoon and piano with effects pedals with world-renowned Estonian bassoonist Martin Kuuskmann.

A winner of the Rome Prize, Friar has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Copland House, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard, Chamber Music America, ASCAP, Composer’s Inc., New Music USA, and the US Army Band. His music can be found on labels including New Amsterdam Records, Innova Recordings, Vox Novus, and Crescent Phase Records. In late 2021, his album-length composition for NOW Ensemble, Before and After, was released on New Amsterdam Records to international critical acclaim, being called “the existential void I want to crawl into like a hot bath on a cold night” by VAN Magazine. In January 2024, he was featured as composer and pianist on saxophonist Jeff Siegfried’s debut album, Shades (Parma Recordings).

Friar is Chair of Composition at the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver. He also oversees summer composition programs at Sunset ChamberFest in Los Angeles, the Suncoast Composer Fellowship Program in Sarasota, and the Lamont Summer Academy in Denver. He previously taught composition at the University of Southern California and UCLA. He holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University and undergraduate degrees in Music and Psychology from UCLA. His principal teachers were Paul Chihara, Paul Lansky, Steven Mackey, and Dmitri Tymoczko.

Marc Migó was born in 1993 in Barcelona. His fascination with music and composition blossomed during his teens after his grandfather gifted him a complete Deutsche Grammophon Collection, with Mozart’s Requiem remaining a personal favorite. He studied piano privately with Liliana Sainz and music theory with Xavier Boliart, leading to his acceptance in the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya where he studied with Salvador Brotons.

In 2017, Marc was accepted into The Julliard School as a CV Starr Fellow to pursue his master’s in music. While at Julliard, he was awarded the 2018 Orchestral Composition Prize, and would win the prize again in 2021. Following his enrollment in Julliard’s inaugural Opera Lab program, Marc received a commission from UrbanArias in Washington DC to compose an original opera with librettist John de los Santos as part of the Decameron Opera Coalition. The resulting piece, The Roost, premiered later that year and was inducted into The Library of Congress’ Performing Arts COVID-19 Response Collection. After receiving his masters, Marc continued his compositional studies with John Corigliano in pursuit of his prospective doctorate to be awarded in 2024.

Marc’s other commissions include The Fox Sisters (libretto by Lila Palmer) for The Liceu, Concerto Grosso "The Seance" for Verità Baroque, L’Illa Deserta for the Foundation for Iberian Music at CUNY, Faust [working title] for Dutch National Opera, and his first symphony for Metamorphosen Berlin. In addition, he has received the Pablo Casals Award (2019), the George Enescu Prize (2020), Organ Taurida Competition’s First Prize (2021), the inaugural Dominic Argento Fellowship for Opera Composition (2021), and the Leo Kaplan Award (2023.) Marc’s music has premiered and been performed in prestigious venues around the world, including Bunka Kaikan (Tokyo), Alice Tully Hall and National Sawdust (New York City), Konzerthaus (Berlin), Palau de la Musica (Barcelona), L’institut de France (Paris), and Tchaikovsky Concert Hall (Moscow). Marc currently divides his time between Barcelona and New York City.

Nick Bentz (b. 1994 - Charleston, SC) is a composer, violinist, and multimedia artist whose work is drawn to remote fringes and recesses of experience. In his work he seeks to render intimately personal spaces imbued with an individual sense of storytelling and narrative. His art centers around the blurring, juxtaposition, and amalgamation of stylistic idioms into singular sonic statements.

Nick's music has been performed by leading artists including the Philadelphia Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, yMusic, Ensemble Dal Niente, Hub New Music, HOCKET, Sandbox Percussion, LIGAMENT Duo, Charleston Symphony, Suzhou Symphony Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, and New Opera West, and featured at Lincoln Center, Kimmel Center, Copland House's CULTIVATE, the Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, Chengdu Museum, Bowdoin Music Festival, FSU Festival of New Music, and Piccolo Spoleto Festival. Current projects include co-commissions from Ensemble Intercontemporain and Wigmore Hall, and a piece for percussionist David Moliner to be premiered at the Musikverein. His work has received top honors from the Tribeca New Music Festival, the American Prize, the iSING International Young Artists Festival, Boston New Music Initiative, Hartford Opera Theater, and American Composer’s Orchestra’s EarShot Readings. Nick has held residencies at Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Suncoast Composer Fellowship, and Atlantic Center for the Arts.

As a violinist, Nick has soloed with the Charleston Symphony, Thornton EDGE, and the Pacific Philharmonic. He has also performed with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. An avid interpreter of new music, Nick has commissioned and premiered a number of pieces ranging from chamber and solo pieces to concerti and multimedia works.

Nick is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University, pursuing a doctorate in Music and Multimedia Composition. He received a master’s degree in composition from the University of Southern California. Nick also earned a master's in violin from the Peabody Conservatory, receiving bachelor's degrees in violin and composition from Peabody under the tutelage of Herbert Greenberg and Kevin Puts. Nick's mentors include Anthony Cheung, Wang Lu, Eric Nathan, Nina Young, Donald Crockett, Ted Hearne, Andrew Norman, Felipe Lara, and Yiorgos Vassilandonakis; his violin teachers include Lina Bahn, Yuriy Bekker, Espen Lilleslåtten, and Diana Cohen.