Kivie Cahn-Lipman
holds degrees from Oberlin and Juilliard and is a DMA candidate at CCM. He is the founding cellist of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) with which he performs regularly to international critical acclaim, as well as gambist, lironist, and director of ACRONYM, a new period-instrument ensemble. An avid performer of contemporary music, Kivie has played more than 500 solo and small ensemble world premieres. He has recorded for the Naxos, New Focus, Bridge, New Amsterdam, Tzadik, ECM, Kairos, Mode, Tundra, Starkland, Olde Focus, and Nonesuch labels. As a chamber musician, Kivie has performed frequently in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and other major venues on three continents, as well as live on WNYC 93.9 in New York and WFMT 98.7 in Chicago. His 2014 recording of the complete Cello Suites of J.S. Bach was praised for its "eloquent performances," "fresh thinking," and "energy and zeal" (The Strad). Kivie taught cello in a full-time position shared between Smith College and Mount Holyoke College from 2005-2012 and has been a faculty member at the Cortona Sessions for New Music since 2012.

Farhad Forrest Pierce
composer and watcher of the night sky, lives in Lawrence, Kansas. Blessed with an unusual capacity for enthusiasm, and an unnatural delight in delight, he has written 200 or so compositions, which include vocal, chamber, and choral music in equal measure. Winner of the Barlow Prize, the Ortus and Avalon international competitions, as well the international choral competitions of the Boston Chamber Singers and Boston Choral Ensemble, Pierce is nevertheless flatlandishly obscure. Educated at Indiana University, the University of Minnesota, and University of Puget Sound, he was raised in the dry Columbia Plateau region of eastern Washington State, the grandson of Dust Bowl immigrants. At one time or another a student of Tango, piano, North Indian classical singing, cello, poetry, and Chishti Sufism, he teaches and drinks espresso at the University of Kansas, and serves on the vividly convivial faculty of the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Cortona, Tuscany.

His works have been commissioned and performed in sacred and concert settings around the world, on noteworthy concert series and by diverse ensembles such as the BBC Singers, Brave New Works, the Chamber Players of the Society of New Music/ISCM, the BMOP chamber series, DuoSolo, the Chamber Orchestras of Portland and Kansas City, the Indianapolis and Walla Walla Symphonies, the Concord Ensemble, Khorikos, The Latvian Radio Choir, Octarium, the Seattle New Music Ensemble, the Oregon and Northwest Repertory Singers, the Boston Choral Ensemble, Volti, the Dublin and Canadian International Organ Competitions, Songfest, and by numerous distinguished soloists in North America and abroad. His forthcoming CD Bison Circles (Meyer Media, summer 2014) with DuoSolo, encapsulates his large catalog of works for flute and piano. Pierce is the past resident composer of the Seattle New Music Ensemble and the founding artistic director of Portland’s Friends of Rain Contemporary Ensemble. Upcoming projects include the concert-length theatre work French Mary’s Song About the Werewolf for soprano Laura Bohn and ICE cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman; The Kansas Rapture, for the H2 saxophone quartet; and Pierce’s third opera, Zen Master Raven, a chain of 78 miniature scenes for ten singers and four percussionists.