Vladimir Tarnopolski (1955) was born in Dniepropetrovsk, Ukraine. He studied composition at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Nikolai Sidelnikov and Edison Denisov and music theory with Yuri Kholopov. His composition for the Conservatory's final exam was his Concerto for Cello (1988); it was selected by G. Rozhdestvensky for a series of concert programs, titled as From the history of Soviet music.

Tarnopolski is a frequent guest in many Western contemporary music festivals, such as: The World Music Days of the ISCM, The Berliner Festwochen, The Munchener Biennale, Wien Modern, Holland Festival, Frankfurter Musikfest, Almeida Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Hommage aux Russes Paris, The Schleswig-Holstein Musikfest, Tage fur Neue Musik Zurich, Make Music Together (Boston U.S.A.), The San Diego Arts Festival, Aktive Musik Dortmund, Rencontres Musicales d'Evian, Warsaw Autumn and many others. Numerous famous Russian conductors, such as Gennady Rozhdestviensky, Mstislaw Rostropovich and Alexander Lazarev have conducted his works. His music has been performed by such ensembles as Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Ensemble Modern, Schönberg Ensemble, Ensemble Reshershe, Ensemble of Soloists of the Bolshoi Theatre. His stage works were premiered in Russia, Germany, France, Netherlands.

In Tarnopolski's compositions there is a fulminantly charged musical substance which fits into a concisely articulated, well-balanced construction. The composers' music combines in a paradoxical manner two aesthetical aspects. The first is a search for a new euphony, which is developed on the basis of a complexly constructed sound material, which abolishes the juxtaposition between consonance and dissonance, sound and noise, harmony and timbre, as well as electronic and acoustic instruments. The second is a refined post-modernist theatricality, filled with either a joyful irony or a surrealistic grotesquerie.Tarnopolski plays a significant role in the development of contemporary Russian musical life. He was one of the initiators of ACM, the Association of Contemporary Music in Moscow (1989), which represented a group of composers, who reacted against the official Soviet cultural philosophy (the so-called socialistic realism). In 1993 he had founded the Centre for Contemporary Music at the Moscow Conservatory as well as the Studio for New Music Ensemble, which had performed many works by the Russian Avant-garde composers. In 1994 Tarnopolski had also founded Moscow Forum, a new annual International Festival of Contemporary Music in Moscow, the main focus of which is the integration of contemporary Russian and East-European contemporary music with Western European contemporary music.Since 1992 Tarnopolski is the professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory. He holds numerous composition seminars in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland and other countries.

Tarnopolski's musical compositions had been awarded many prizes including the Dmitri Shostakovich Prize (Russia 1991) and the Paul Hindemith Prize (Plon 1991).
 
Cellist Craig Hultgren is an activist for new music, the newly creative arts,and the avant-garde.  Possessing a broad range of instrumental techniques from traditional to radical, he has commissioned over fifty new works for thecello.  Through his collaborations with living composers, he is changing the way people write for and listen to the instrument.  Besides playing written compositions, Hultgren also performs his own spontaneous, free-style improvisations.  He presents programs of new music throughout the country and abroad.  His performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio's
Performance Today, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and European radio.  The Birmingham News said of him, ÒHultgren...pushes the limits of his instrument brilliantly by using extended techniques in fascinating ways.Hultgren has solo CD recordings on Minnesota-based Innova Recordings and Contemplative Outreach Birmingham.  His third solo recording, The Electro-Acoustic Cello Book, featuring new music for cello and electronics was released on Living Artist Recordings.  In the last decade, the Alabama State Council on the Arts has awarded him two individual Artist Fellowships.  He is a member of Th‡myris, a contemporary chamber music ensemble in Atlanta, the Chagall Trio, a piano trio in Birmingham, and Luna Nova, the ensemble of the Associated Colleges of the South. 
As a traditionally trained artist, Hultgren possesses music degrees in performance from the University of Iowa where he was graduated with distinction and honors and from Indiana University, the world's largest school of music.  He plays in the Alabama Symphony and has served as principalcellist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Panam‡.  He teaches at Birmingham-Southern College, the University of Montevallo, the University ofAlabama at Birmingham and the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Hultgren also works in the behalf of arts as an organizer.  He foundedBirmingham Improv the annual festival of improvisatory arts.  Currently, Hultgren is Secretary of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, a composers organization.  On the national level, he is a consultant for Living Music, an international organization of composers, and also participates on the steering committee of the New Directions Cello Association.  Every two years, he produces the Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, a competition for living composers of solo cello works where he plays the same program of finalists in Birmingham, Atlanta and Tuscaloosa.  The audience votes to chose a winner in each venue.
 

Esther Lamneck, clarinetist, winner of the prestigious Pro Musicis Award, has appeared as soloist with major orchestras, with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, and with renowned artists including Isaac Stern. She has performed throughout the United States and Europe in featured appearances at the world's leading music festivals in Spoleto and Siena, Paris, Salzburg, Mexico City, and Newport.  Ms. Lamneck is a well known chamber musician and has toured internationally with such groups as the Virtuosi Wind Quintet, the New American Trio, Saturn and the Contrasts Trio.

Ms. Lamneck maintains an active career as clarinet soloist and has given recent solo concerts in Boston's Jordan Hall, the Baird Auditorium at the Smithsonian, New York City's Gould Hall, the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Villa Medici in Rome, the Bing Theater in Los Angeles and the Opera Comique in Paris. Awarded the Naumburg Scholarship, Ms. Lamneck received her Doctorate, Masters and Bachelor of Music degrees from the Juilliard School of Music. She is currently director of Instrumental Studies in the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions in the School of Education at New York University. She is artistic director of the NYU New Music and Dance Ensemble, and also serves as director of NYU's Music and Dance Program in Pisa, Italy where the ensemble is in residence during the month of July.

A versatile performer and an advocate of contemporary music, Ms. Lamneck is dedicated to expanding the traditional boundaries of music to create new art forms based on elements of jazz, folk and contemporary music idioms. She is one of few performers who plays the Hungarian Tárogató, a single reed woodwind instrument with a hauntingly beautiful sound. New compositions written for the instrument explore all the facets of new music performance from improvisation, electronics and interactive computer programs to works, which suggest the influence of Slavic and Hungarian folk music.

Ms. Lamneck has appeared on major television programs both here and abroad. She has recorded for numerous radio programs such as the ORTF in Paris and RAI in Rome. She has recorded for companies including Musical Heritage, Capriccio Records, CDCM-Centaur/Computer Music, Music and Arts, CRI, Opus One, and Capstone.

 

Pianist Marian Lee made her concert debut performing with the Ann Arbor and Flint Symphony Orchestras in Michigan. Soon after, she entered the Juilliard School as a scholarship student receiving Bachelor and Master degrees in Piano Performance under the guidance of Gyorgy Sandor and Seymour Lipkin. In 1991, she was awarded the coveted Fulbright Grant to the former Soviet Union for Professional Studies at the Moscow Conservatory with Naum Shtarkman. and most recently, completed her doctoral degree at the Peabody Conservatory of the John Hopkins University with Boris Slutsky.

Dr. Lee has performed extensively in Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, South America, and Asia, as well as in major cities throughout the United States. In 1995, she made her New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall as winner of the Artists International Award and has appeared as soloist with the orchestras of the Moscow Sinfonietta, Pacific Ocean Orchestra, Azerbaijan State Philharmonic, Brjansk City Chamber Orchestra, the Reconsil Ensemble, and the Orquestra Filarmonica do Espirito Santo (Brazil). In liaison with the United States Information Agency (USIA), Dr. Lee has performed in Far East Russia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. As a music ambassador for American contemporary music, Dr. Lee performed at the Hermitage Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia and toured Poland under the auspices of the U.S. State Department.

Marian Lee is frequently invited to perform at international contemporary music festivals, most notably, Moscow Modern and Alternativa 2000 in Russia, and was guest lecturer/performer at the 2002 Icebreaker: Voices from New Russia festival in Seattle. In the New York area, she has also performed with the contemporary music ensembles of Continuum and Music Mobile. Dr. Lee just completed a tour with the Seattle Chamber Players in Estonia and the Moscow Autumn festival in Russia, and has been invited back to join them in the Icebreaker II: Baltic Voices festival in Seattle. Currently, Dr. Lee teaches piano at the Town School in New York City.