John G. Bilotta was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, but has spent most his life in the San Francisco Bay Area where he studied composition with Frederick Saunders. His works have been performed by Rarescale, Earplay, Chamber Mix, Oakland Civic Orchestra, Washington Square Contemporary Music Society, Kiev Philharmonic, North/South Consonance, Boston Metro Opera, Talea Ensemble, Avenue Winds, San Francisco Cabaret Opera, Musica Nova, VocalWorks, Boston String Quartet, and the Blue Grass Opera. Quantum Mechanic won the 2007 Opera-in-a-Month Competition and has received nearly a dozen performances around the country since then. His newest opera Trifles, based on the 1916 play by Susan Glaspell, will receive its premiere in a San Francisco Cabaret Opera production in June, 2010. His works have been released on several labels including Capstone Records, New Music North, Beauport Classical Music, Navona Records, Vox Novus, and ERM Media. John is Director of the San Francisco Chamber Wind Festival, and co-directs with Brian Bice the Festival of Contemporary Music. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Society of Composers, Inc., and is editor of SCION, the organization's opportunities newsletter.

Composer and Singer, Michael began his composing career as a singer/songwriter in Las Vegas where he formed a band and toured the Las Vegas Area. He began his classical composition in 2010 setting Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven as a song cycle for baritone, and has since arranged the cycle for Oboe, Harp, Violin and Cello. He has set an extensive amount of Art Songs to texts including Pablo Neruda, Josef Von Eichendorff, Heinrich Heine, and more. Michael particularly enjoys settings his contemporaries such as Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and poetry from an eclectic array of friends and acquaintances. In the summer of 2013 Michael had an exposition of his compositions with a Compositional Recital which featured many fine singers. His work The Highwayman, text by Alfred Noyes, was recently prepared in a virtual recital to benefit the ALSHope Foundation. Michael studies composition privately with many established composers. As well as composing; he has taken on many roles on and off-stage in the Las Vegas, Chicago, San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. These roles include teaching, directing, producing, and, most often, singing.

The multi-instrumentalist Michael Cooke is a composer of jazz and classical music. This two-time Emmy, ASCAPLUS Award and Louis Armstrong Jazz Award winner plays a variety of instruments: you can hear him on soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones, flute, soprano and bass clarinets, bassoon and percussion. A cum laude graduate with a music degree from the University of North Texas, he had many different areas of study; jazz, ethnomusicology, music history, theory and of course composition. In 1991 Michael began his professional orchestral career performing in many north Texas area symphonies. Michael has played in Europe, Mexico, and all over the United States. Cimarron Music Press began published many of Michael's compositions in 1994. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, he has been exploring new paths in improvised and composed music, mixing a variety of styles and techniques that draw upon the creative energy of a multicultural experience, both in and out of America. In 1999, Michael started a jazz label called Black Hat Records (blackhatrecords.com) and is currently on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. The San Francisco Beacon describes Michael's music as "flowing out color and tone with a feeling I haven't heard in quite a while. Michael plays with such dimension and flavor that it sets (his) sound apart from the rest." Uncompromising, fiery, complex, passionate, and cathartic is how the All Music Guide labeled Michael's playing on Searching by Cooke Quartet, Statements by Michael Cooke and The Is by CKW Trio. His latest release, An Indefinite Suspension of The Possible, is an unusual mixture of woodwinds, trombone, cello, koto and percussion, creating a distinct synergy in improvised music that has previously been untapped.

Yifan Shao, is a Chinese composer, vocal artist, visual artist, writer, and curator whose work explores intimacy and spatial perception through phantasmatic gradations. He performs using over six octaves of vocal range, synthesizer-level timbral control, and up to five simultaneous pitches via multiphonic techniques. His work has been featured in over ten countries at venues such as Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Center for New Music, and Blank Wall Gallery; festivals including the Sofia Symphonic Summit, CEME, St. Petersburg International New Music Festival, Monteluce, Getxophoto, and Nordingrå Konstrunda; and media outlets like PhotoVogue, KPOO San Francisco, and San Francisco Classical Voice. Collaborators include the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, Festino Chamber Choir, Corale di Monteluce, Moscow Soloists Contemporary Ensemble, and artists such as Jacques Desjardins, Ania Karpowicz, and Alexandra Pink. In 2025, he serves as voice soloist with SFCCO and is co-founder of both Vocalverse and Kooperativet Vännerstaskolan. His scores are published by Universal Edition and J.W. Pepper. Yifan studies composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under Elinor Armer and attended Odin Teatret's Odin Home Festival (2024), studying with Eugenio Barba, Julia Varley, and Jan Ferslev.

Yifan Shao, is a Chinese composer, vocal artist, visual artist, writer, and curator whose work explores intimacy and spatial perception through phantasmatic gradations. He performs using over six octaves of vocal range, synthesizer-level timbral control, and up to five simultaneous pitches via multiphonic techniques. His work has been featured in over ten countries at venues such as Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Center for New Music, and Blank Wall Gallery; festivals including the Sofia Symphonic Summit, CEME, St. Petersburg International New Music Festival, Monteluce, Getxophoto, and Nordingrå Konstrunda; and media outlets like PhotoVogue, KPOO San Francisco, and San Francisco Classical Voice. Collaborators include the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, Festino Chamber Choir, Corale di Monteluce, Moscow Soloists Contemporary Ensemble, and artists such as Jacques Desjardins, Ania Karpowicz, and Alexandra Pink. In 2025, he serves as voice soloist with SFCCO and is co-founder of both Vocalverse and Kooperativet Vännerstaskolan. His scores are published by Universal Edition and J.W. Pepper. Yifan studies composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under Elinor Armer and attended Odin Teatret's Odin Home Festival (2024), studying with Eugenio Barba, Julia Varley, and Jan Ferslev.

James W. Cook is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Alabama where he studied composition under Craig P. First. He recently received the First Runner-Up Award in the Nancy Bloomer Deussen Young and Emerging Composer Competition.

Yifan Shao, is a Chinese composer, vocal artist, visual artist, writer, and curator whose work explores intimacy and spatial perception through phantasmatic gradations. He performs using over six octaves of vocal range, synthesizer-level timbral control, and up to five simultaneous pitches via multiphonic techniques. His work has been featured in over ten countries at venues such as Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Center for New Music, and Blank Wall Gallery; festivals including the Sofia Symphonic Summit, CEME, St. Petersburg International New Music Festival, Monteluce, Getxophoto, and Nordingrå Konstrunda; and media outlets like PhotoVogue, KPOO San Francisco, and San Francisco Classical Voice. Collaborators include the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, Festino Chamber Choir, Corale di Monteluce, Moscow Soloists Contemporary Ensemble, and artists such as Jacques Desjardins, Ania Karpowicz, and Alexandra Pink. In 2025, he serves as voice soloist with SFCCO and is co-founder of both Vocalverse and Kooperativet Vännerstaskolan. His scores are published by Universal Edition and J.W. Pepper. Yifan studies composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under Elinor Armer and attended Odin Teatret's Odin Home Festival (2024), studying with Eugenio Barba, Julia Varley, and Jan Ferslev.

Composer and Singer, Michael began his composing career as a singer/songwriter in Las Vegas where he formed a band and toured the Las Vegas Area. He began his classical composition in 2010 setting Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven as a song cycle for baritone, and has since arranged the cycle for Oboe, Harp, Violin and Cello. He has set an extensive amount of Art Songs to texts including Pablo Neruda, Josef Von Eichendorff, Heinrich Heine, and more. Michael particularly enjoys settings his contemporaries such as Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and poetry from an eclectic array of friends and acquaintances. In the summer of 2013 Michael had an exposition of his compositions with a Compositional Recital which featured many fine singers. His work The Highwayman, text by Alfred Noyes, was recently prepared in a virtual recital to benefit the ALSHope Foundation. Michael studies composition privately with many established composers. As well as composing; he has taken on many roles on and off-stage in the Las Vegas, Chicago, San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. These roles include teaching, directing, producing, and, most often, singing.

Lisa Scola Prosek is a graduate of Princeton University in Music Composition. Her teachers include Edward Cone, Milton Babbitt, Lukas Foss, and Gaetano Giani Luporini. Scola Prosek is the recipient of numerous grants, commissions and awards, including The NY Center for Contemporary Opera "Atelier" Award for The Lariat. Scola Prosek has composed and produced eight operas with librettos in Italian and English. In 2012, Daughter of the Red Tzar, written for acclaimed tenor John Duykers, premiered in San Francisco to capacity audiences, and is currently on the outreach season with Long Beach Opera. Lisa serves as General Manager and Director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, since 2001. Other awards have been from Theatre Bay Area, the LEF Foundation, The Argosy Contemporary Music Fund, Meet the Composer, the Hewlett Foundation, the American Composers Forum, The San Francisco Arts Commission, The Center for Cultural Innovation, The California Arts Council, the NEA and the Zellerbach Foundation.

Yifan Shao, is a Chinese composer, vocal artist, visual artist, writer, and curator whose work explores intimacy and spatial perception through phantasmatic gradations. He performs using over six octaves of vocal range, synthesizer-level timbral control, and up to five simultaneous pitches via multiphonic techniques. His work has been featured in over ten countries at venues such as Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Center for New Music, and Blank Wall Gallery; festivals including the Sofia Symphonic Summit, CEME, St. Petersburg International New Music Festival, Monteluce, Getxophoto, and Nordingrå Konstrunda; and media outlets like PhotoVogue, KPOO San Francisco, and San Francisco Classical Voice. Collaborators include the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, Festino Chamber Choir, Corale di Monteluce, Moscow Soloists Contemporary Ensemble, and artists such as Jacques Desjardins, Ania Karpowicz, and Alexandra Pink. In 2025, he serves as voice soloist with SFCCO and is co-founder of both Vocalverse and Kooperativet Vännerstaskolan. His scores are published by Universal Edition and J.W. Pepper. Yifan studies composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under Elinor Armer and attended Odin Teatret's Odin Home Festival (2024), studying with Eugenio Barba, Julia Varley, and Jan Ferslev.

Composer and Singer, Michael began his composing career as a singer/songwriter in Las Vegas where he formed a band and toured the Las Vegas Area. He began his classical composition in 2010 setting Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven as a song cycle for baritone, and has since arranged the cycle for Oboe, Harp, Violin and Cello. He has set an extensive amount of Art Songs to texts including Pablo Neruda, Josef Von Eichendorff, Heinrich Heine, and more. Michael particularly enjoys settings his contemporaries such as Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and poetry from an eclectic array of friends and acquaintances. In the summer of 2013 Michael had an exposition of his compositions with a Compositional Recital which featured many fine singers. His work The Highwayman, text by Alfred Noyes, was recently prepared in a virtual recital to benefit the ALSHope Foundation. Michael studies composition privately with many established composers. As well as composing; he has taken on many roles on and off-stage in the Las Vegas, Chicago, San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. These roles include teaching, directing, producing, and, most often, singing.