Kat Walsh is a bassoonist, violist, violinist, and composer based in Mountain View, CA. She has performed with groups including the Pan American Symphony Orchestra, Orlando Opera, Central Florida Lyric Opera, and Southern Winds, and currently plays with a variety of casual ensembles around the Bay Area. Walsh has a BA in music from Stetson University in DeLand, Florida and a JD from George Mason University in Arlington, VA, and when not behind a music stand is instead practicing law, in technology, IP, and internet policy.

William Severson (b. 1941), at age eight, negotiated piano lessons before informing his parents in a small mountain town in California, but waited until he was 27 to begin vocal lessons in Hawaii when singing with the Honolulu Chorale. This latter instruction was somewhat successful as he sang 1976-7 season with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, which is a volunteer professional chorus associated with the Boston Symphony in Massachussetts. His parents insisted that he have a livelihood so he has a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and worked in the computer field for 40 years. He has not mixed computers with music except to be one of the partners of Micro Pro Musica Press. It uses computers to engrave music including his own compositions and arrangements and offer them over the internet. Severson performs around the greater Bay Area with the Golden Age Ensemble. He has had permanent singing positions in churches for 20 years. Severson begain composing in 1979 and was a founding member of the Society of Gay and Lesbian Composers, which performed several of his works. He is a member of the Irregular Resolutions, based in San Francisco. Severson studiedwith Rebeca Mauleon-Santana at CCSF, and Janis Mercer at CMC.

Harry Bernstein has been involved in San Francisco Bay Area music for many years as a composer, performer and teacher. He began his musical training on the trumpet, later learning the recorder as well as the Baroque the modern flutes. More recently, his life has been altered by the invasion of a viola. This occurred a few years after Bernstein began his association with City College. Why take up a stringed instrument in one's fifties? In his case, he took on the challenge of learning the viola in order to explore both orchestral and chamber music, and to learn how to write more effectively for strings. Not long after earning a D.M.A. in early music performance from Stanford University, he moved 30 miles north to San Francisco where he has lived ever since. He has studied composition with Jerry Mueller and has written vocal and instrumental music. Bernstein is co-founder of the Golden Age Ensemble, a duo presenting varied programs of instrumental and vocal music around the Bay Area and is a partner in Micro Pro Musica Press, SF, which offers music engraving, arranging and transcription services. He is currently active with the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra (flute), the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (viola), and that unpredictable composers' circle known as Irregular Resolutions. Bernstein is an instructor in both the Music and Older Adults Departments at City College of San Francisco, and also teaches privately.

Nancie Kester teaches piano and music composition in her private studio. She recently retired from her long-standing faculty position at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, CA. In addition to her teaching, Kester is an award-winning composer and arranger, having won prizes in the 2012, 2013 and 2015 MTAC Composer's Today competitions for her choral triptych, California Collage, and for various piano works. She received a BA in Piano and Music Composition from California State University, East Bay, and an MM in Kodaly Music Education from Holy Names College with piano as her instrumental focus. Kester has continued her piano and composition studies with Julian White, Jason Levis, and other master teachers. She has composed and arranged numerous works for chorus, piano, and instrumental ensembles. She is an author and partner in Calicanto Associates -- publisher of books, CDs, choral arrangements, and musical plays featuring songs with historical relevance. Kester resides in Berkeley, CA.

Stardust is an anarchist, animist, queer/genderqueer, radical faerie composer living in the somewhat embattled and mythical sanctuary of San Francisco. Since 2014, Stardust's SFCCO offerings have included A la recherche des danses perdues, Home, Railway Sonata, Wiggle, and a theatre triptych of True of Voice Overture, True of Voice Entr'acte, and True of Voice Finale. Stardust also playwrights, most recently creating Lucia, a play about a lesbian anarchist revolutionary organizer of a group called "Mujeres Libres" ("Free Women") during the Spanish Civil War and Social Revolution. Other works include chamber music and symphonic music prepared for encouraging musician friends at events such as the Humboldt and Calcap Chamber Music Workshops and welcoming ensembles such as the Opus Project Orchestra, the Golden Gate Symphony, the San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Freedom Band, and of course the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. Stardust plays the oboe and the English horn.

Dr. Mark Alburger (1957-2023, Upper Darby, PA) was an award-winning, eclectic ASCAP composer with postminimal, postpopular, and postcomedic sensibilities. He was the Music Director of SF Composers Chamber Orchestra, SF Cabaret Opera / Goat Hall Productions, and The Opus Project; Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music and New Music; Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Music Theory and Literature at Diablo Valley College; and a Musicologist for Grove Online and Grove Dictionary of American Music. His principal teachers were Gerald Levinson and Joan Panetti (Swarthmore College, B.A.); Jules Langert (Dominican University, M.A.); Christopher Yavelow (Claremont University, Ph.D.); and Terry Riley. Dr. Alburger had composed 399 major works, including chamber music, concertos, oratorios, operas, song cycles, and symphonies. His complete catalogue was available from New Music. (markalburgerworks.blogspot.com)

John Beeman studied with Peter Fricker and William Bergsma at the University of Washington where he received his Master's degree. His first opera, The Great American Dinner Table was produced on National Public Radio. Orchestral works have been performed by the Fremont-Newark Philharmonic, Santa Rosa Symphony, and the Peninsula Symphony. The composer's second opera, Law Offices, premiered in San Francisco in 1996 and was performed again in 1998 on the steps of the San Mateo County Courthouse. Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra was premiered in January 2001 by Paul Dresher, electric guitar. Mr. Beeman has attended the Ernest Bloch Composers' Symposium, the Bard Composer-Conductor program, the Oxford Summer Institutes, and the Oregon Bach Festival and has received awards through Meet the Composer, the American Music Center and ASCAP. Compositions have been performed by Ensemble Sorelle, the Mission Chamber Orchestra, the Ives Quartet, Fireworks Ensemble, the Oregon Repertory Singers and Schola Cantorum of San Francisco.

Dr. Erling Wold is a composer and man-about-town. He recently premiered two large works, his Missa Beati Notkeri Balbuli Sancti Galli Monachi in St Gallen, Switzerland, and his solo opera Mordake for tenor John Duykers as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival. He is currently working on a personal autobiographical theater piece detailing his corruption and death with the help of James Bisso, which may never be finished, and just finished a more tractable violin sonata for the Denisova-Kornienko duo in Vienna. He is best known for his operas, including Sub Pontio Pilato, an historical fantasy on the death and remembrance of Pontius Pilate, a chamber opera based on William Burroughs' early autobiographical novel Queer, and his critically acclaimed work A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil, based on the Max Ernst collage novel.