WHO WE ARE

Ed Sarath is Professor of music in the Department in Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance and also director of the U-M Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies. He divides his time between teaching, scholarship, performing, composing, recording, speaking, and spearheading leadership initiatives. In addition to founding and serving as President of ISIM, he has recently launched the Alliance for the Transformation of Musical Academe (ATMA). His most recent book is Black Music Matters: Jazz and the Transformation of Music Studies (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) which along, with prior book Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness: Jazz as Integral Template for Music, Education, and Society (SUNY/Albany, 2013), are the first to apply principles of an emergent, consciousness-based worldview called Integral Theory to music. He designed the BFA in Jazz and Contemplative Studies, the first degree program at a mainstream academic institution to include a significant meditation and consciousness studies component. He is active globally as guest speaker as well as performer and composer, having collaborated with leading artists across wide-ranging genres. His recording New Beginnings features the London Jazz Orchestra performing his large ensemble compositions and his solo flugelhorn work.

Jin Hi Kim is highly acclaimed as both an innovative komungo (Korean fourth century fretted board zither) virtuoso and for her cross-cultural compositions. Kim has introduced the Korean indigenous komungo for the first time into Western contemporary music scene through her wide array of compositions for chamber ensemble, orchestra, avant-garde, cross-cultural ensemble, multi-media, and avant-garde jazz improvisations. Kim is a recipient of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship for Music Composition and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University.

Kim has performed her own works at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art, Asia Society, Royal Festival Hall (London), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Expo Zaragoza (Spain), and many significant new music festivals around the world. Kim’s komungo solo works represent an evolution of the instrument into the twenty-first century. Her new komungo compositions are imbued with meditative and vivid energy that makes it mesmerizing. Kim has co-designed the world's only electric komungo and created live interactive pieces with a MIDI computer system. Using MAX/MSP, the komungo sound is processed through a personal computer program in live that is triggered by MIDI foot pedal. Staying true to the nature of the instrument, her solo interweaves from old timeless mind to space-age blips.

Dr. Anthony Branker is an adjunct professor in jazz studies at Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts where his teaching responsibilities include graduate seminars in Jazz Historiography, graduate seminars Jazz Composition & Arranging, an undergraduate course in Jazz Theory, and directing the Avant Garde Ensemble. Previously, he was a member of the faculty at Princeton University for 27 years, where he held an endowed chair in jazz studies, was founding director of the program in jazz studies, and associate director of the program in musical performance. He also served as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at the Estonian Academy of Music & Theatre and was a member of the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, Hunter College-CUNY, and Ursinus College. Dr. Branker’s work as a composer, educator, scholar, conductor, and performer has been featured on the international stage in Brazil, Switzerland, Poland, Finland, Italy, Estonia, Denmark, Greece, China, Australia, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Russia, Lithuania and Japan as well as throughout the United States. As an educator and researcher, Dr. Branker has pursued pedagogical directions inspired by the field of aesthetic education and has designed spaces of learning where students can work in self-directed, democratic, and collaborative ways while contributing to their own learning and music-making. In so doing, students have participated in a variety of undertakings that have utilized collaborative-based improvisational activities that make use of freer approaches to music-making as a strategy to stimulate group interaction and improvisation. As a composer, he has recorded for Origin Records and Sons of Sound Records and has eight albums as a leader. His most recent CD release, Beauty Within (Origin), features saxophonist Ralph Bowen, pianist Fabian Almazan, bassist Linda May Han Oh, drummer Rudy Royston, and guitarist Pete McCann.

Kate is an Associate Professor Emerita and Research Professor at Tufts University in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development with affiliations with the Department of Music,  the Department of Drama and Dance,  and the Tisch College of Civic Studies.  Her research and program evaluation work are focused on the impact of arts participation on children and youth from underserved communities.  Dr. Camara received her M.A. at Northwestern University, and her Ph.D. at Stanford University.  As Director of the YouthBEAT Research and Evaluation Project, she is interested in promising practices used in guiding children and youth toward positive development, achievement and empowerment.  Dr. Camara has conducted research throughout the U.S., Ireland, and England on music and children’s development, and has directed or co-directed several national evaluation studies related to adaptive functioning of children, families, and communities in her work with the American Institutes of Research in Palo Alto, CA.  In November, 2019,  she will participate in a N.A.M.E. research visit to educational and community centers in Cuba to learn more about the educational, community, and musical programs for adults and youth.  She has  served as an evaluation consultant for Westat Corporation, Child Trends, and Abt Associates and has presented her research at national and international conferences including ISME,  ISIM,  ISAME,   NAfME, The College Music Society, the Jean Piaget Society, the Society for Research in Child Development, and the National Association for Multicultural Education.   

 Prior to obtaining her doctorate, she taught students in pre-Kindergarten, elementary,  secondary, and college settings and developed and directed a six-year national pilot project in northern Minnesota  for the preparation of  Head Start teachers.  In addition, Dr. Camara worked professionally as a musician, actress, and director of children’s theater in Minnesota and in Illinois.  She currently serves as a development and evaluation consultant to music and arts-integrated schools and programs throughout the U.S. and she continues to teach private voice and piano lessons and drama coaching to children and youth in her private studio in Acton, MA.

​Maja Radovanlija was born in Belgrade, Serbia, where she later completed her Bachelor degree at the University of Belgrade. While studying there, she won 1st prize at the International Competition in Kjustendil, Bulgaria and has since performed frequently as solo and chamber musician, touring Serbia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Macedonia, Greece, Tunisia, Switzerland and other European countries. Her interest in contemporary, experimental and improvisational music grew at the same time as her interest in different approaches within the classical guitar repertoire. As a graduate student (M.M and D.M) at Indiana University, she studied guitar with Ernesto Bitetti and early music with lutenist Nigel North, and broaden her repertoire in this direction, as well. She has been collaborating with numerous performers and artists as a member of Minneapolis Guitar Quartet, Szilard Mezei strings flute trio, ImprovIsAndDo project, Studio6 new music ensemble, the Improvised Ecosystems interdisciplinary project, and OneVoice mixed chorus. In solo recitals, Maja often performs her own pieces inspired by Balkan music, as well as improvised pieces. Beginning in the fall of 2011, she has served as guitar faculty at the University of Minnesota School of Music in Minneapolis, MN.