TAK Ensemble Executive Director Laura Cocks is a New York based flautist and composer. Playing a custom-made open G# Almeida with a Boston cut Powell headjoint, Laura performs regularly with ensembles including Talea Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Wet Ink Ensemble. They recently released an album with Carrier Records, and can be heard on many other labels. Laura has been in residence at institutions including Harvard University, Stanford University, and The Delian Academy for New Music, and currently teaches privately at The New School.

Artist Website

Based in New York City, soprano Sharon Harms has premiered the music of many leading contemporary composers, and has appeared as a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and as a guest artist of the American Academy in Rome, MATA, Princeton Festival, Resonant Bodies Festival, and more. She is a member of the Argento Ensemble, and has performed with other groups including Ensemble Mise-en, Limón Dance Company, and MET Opera Chamber Orchestra. Recent projects include a 2013 Latin Grammy nomination for Gabriela Ortiz' Aroma Foliado with Southwest Chamber Ensemble.

Artist Website

Born in Bucharest, Filipino-American Levy Marcel Ingles Lorenzo, Jr. works at the intersection of music, art, and technology. On an international scale, his body of work spans electronics design, sound engineering, instrument building, installation art, improvisation, and percussion performance. With a primary focus on inventing new instruments, he prototypes, composes, and performs new electronic music.

Artist Website

Toronto-born, Brooklyn based vocalist Charlotte Mundy is a member of TAK Ensemble, who have performed at Lincoln Center and the Library of Congress, and Ekmeles vocal ensemble, who were awarded the 2022 Ernst von Siemens award for performance of contemporary music. Passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration, she has acted, danced and marched through venues including the Metropolitan Museum, the BAM Next Wave Festival, The Park Avenue Armory, St. Ann’s Warehouse and Abrons Arts Center as well as forests, haunted houses and hair salons.

Artist Website

Based in New York City, percussionist Joshua Perry is a passionate advocate for contemporary music and interdisciplinary performance. He frequently collaborates with living composers and has premiered well over 100 works for percussion and mixed ensemble. Perry is a member of Iktus Percussion, ensemble mise-en, Hotel Elefant. He has been a featured soloist in performances around the globe, and has appeared in festivals including the Donaueschingen Music Festival, MATA Festival, and New Voices-New Music at Carnegie Hall.

Artist Website

Kurt plays viola, teaches and composes, and lives in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Ohlone land with spouse Tim and dog Hendrix. Kurt is fascinated with finding ways to incorporate notions of failure and catastrophe as part of the pursuit of making something beautiful. Kurt is Artistic Advisor with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Artistic Director of the Composers Conference, and teaches Music Composition at UC Davis.

Artist Website

Based in New York City, Kyra Sims is a collaborative musician, writer, and actress. She has worked as a backing musician with notable artists such as Lizzo, Frank Ocean, Carole King and Jon Batiste. She debuted in 2015 as a member of The New York Neo-Futurists in NYCs longest-running Off-Off Broadway show as a writer, director, and performer, and last year became Co-Artistic Director of the company.

Artist Website

Based in Ridgewood, Queens, Stephen Cooper is a composer and audio engineer. A long-time engineer at Roulette Intermedium, he has worked at various other multidisciplinary spaces in NYC such as the Kitchen, Pioneer Works, Abrons Art Center, and Miller Theater. Stephen is currently studying media scoring at Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema in Brooklyn.

Based in New York City, Nicholas Houfek is a lighting designer specializing in live performance. Recent and frequent collaborators include: Claire Chase, Marcos Balter, New York Philharmonic, The Kitchen, Levy Lorenzo, Doug Fitch, Silkroad Ensemble, Mario Diaz de Leon, Ojai Music Festival, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. He is a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble and a graduate of Boston University.

Artist Website

Heather C. Freedman is a visual artist and theater designer who works in film, theatre, and opera. Recent work includes: Gianni Schicchi & Buoso’s Ghost, directed by Anna Rebek for Montclair State University; Play House by Alexa Derman presented by Brown University; and award-winning short film Post-Term, written and directed by Saleem Gondal. Broadway credits include Assistant Costume Design for Funny Girl (costumes designed by Susan Hilferty) and Caroline, or Change (costumes designed by Fly Davis). From 2015-2017, Heather was the Resident Fellow of Rhode Island School of Design’s (RISD) European Honors Program in Rome. In 2016, she collaborated on costumes for William Kentridge and Kristin Jones’s Triumphs and Laments, an opera performed on the banks of the Tiber River. She is a graduate of RISD and NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She lives in New York City.

Visual Direction

Marie Lorenz is a Brooklyn-based artist who has been exploring and documenting urban waterways for many years. Her notable project, Tide and Current Taxi, is a relational performance art piece that uses the tide to navigate New York City. Recent solo exhibitions of her work include the Albright Knox Museum (Buffalo), Everson Museum (Syracuse), and Jack Hanley Gallery (New York).

Artist Website

Music

Kurt plays viola, teaches and composes, and lives in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Ohlone land with spouse Tim and dog Hendrix. Kurt is fascinated with finding ways to incorporate notions of failure and catastrophe as part of the pursuit of making something beautiful. Kurt is Artistic Advisor with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Artistic Director of the Composers Conference, and teaches Music Composition at UC Davis.

Artist Website

Libretto

Dana Spiotta is an award-winning novelist whose books include Innocents and Others (2016), Stone Arabia (2011), Eat the Document (2006), and Lightning Field (2002), all published by Scribner. She has received prestigious awards such as a Guggenheim Fellowship and the John Updike Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. She teaches at Syracuse University.

Artist Website