Notes on Contributing Authors:

Dr. Franklin COX received B.M. degrees in cello and composition from Indiana University, as well as composition degrees from Columbia University (M.A.), and the University of California, San Diego (Ph.D.), where he also served as adjunct faculty member from 1993 to 1995. He studied cello with Gary Hoffman, Janos Starker, and Peter Wiley, and composition with Steven Suber, Fred Lerdahl, Brian Ferneyhough, and Harvey Sollberger. Dr. Cox has received numerous fellowships, prizes, and commissions from leading institutions and festivals of new music, including fellowships from the Schloss Solitude and the Sacher Stiftung, the Kranichsteiner Prize for both composition and cello performance from the Darmstadt Festival (also serving on the Komponistforum in 1994), and commissions from the 1998 Berliner Biennale and 2001 Hannover Biennale. He has performed with many leading new music groups, including the Group for Contemporary Music, Exposé, Surplus, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, and Ensemble Köln. Since 1993, he has presented a solo recital entitled "The New Cello," focused on original new works for the cello, more than 80 times throughout Europe and North America. In 2002, he joined the faculty of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County as Assistant Professor of Music. He is co-editor of the international book series, New Music and Aesthetics in the 21st Century. His works are published by Rugginenti Editions and Sylvia Smith Publications.

Wieland HOBAN, born in 1978 in London. Studies in music and German in Bristol, then from 1998-2003 in composition at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt with Isabel Mundry, Hans Zender and Gerhard Müller-Hornbach. Various German composition prizes. Freelance translator, primarily in the fields of music and philosophy, as well as author of musical analyses. Since 2000 also translator for the Darmstadt Summer Course. Contact: wielhoban@aol.com

Martin IDDON was born in Manchester (UK) in 1975. He studied composition and musicology at the Universities of Durham and Cambridge. In 2002 he was awarded the Jahresstipendium of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst to carry out research into the Darmstadt International Ferienkurse for New Music at the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, as a part of his doctoral research focusing on the decline of the post-war avant-garde. He has since co-edited a volume focusing on the Darmstadt New Music Courses with Paul Attinello and Christopher Fox, and his articles have appeared in Musical Quarterly, Twentieth-century Music and Contemporary Music Review. From 2005-06 he was Lecturer in Music at University College Cork, Ireland, and since 2006 has been Lecturer in Music at Lancaster University, UK.

Larson POWELL. Assistant Professor of German at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Professor Powell specializes in 20th century literature and film (especially DEFA and film music). His first book on modern German poetry (The Technological Unconscious) will be published by Camden House in 2008; a second book on post-1945 media art (electronic music, radio plays, film soundtracks) is in preparation. He has published and lectured in German, French and English, on German film and literature as well as on musicology, psychoanalysis, systems theory and philosophical aesthetics. Among his recent publications are “Allegories of Management. Norbert Schulze’s Soundtrack for Das Mädchen Rosemarie,” in Framing the Fifties: Cinema in a Divided Germany. ed. Sabine Hake and John Davidson (Berghahn 2007), 180-193, and “The War with Other Media: Ingeborg Bachmann’s Der gute Gott von Manhattan.”

Alexander SIGMAN (1980) is currently in the dissertation phase of the doctoral program in Music Composition at Stanford University, having studied primarily with Brian Ferneyhough. He has pursued further post-graduate study with Chaya Czernowin at the University for Music and Performing Arts, Vienna (2007), and is attending the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague during 2007-2008. Prior to Stanford, Sigman obtained a BM in Music Composition and a BA in Cognitive Sciences from Rice University. He has received performances at several music programs and festivals, such as Centre Acanthes (2002, 2003),June in Buffalo (2005,) the Darmstädter-Ferienkurse (2006), the Abbaye de Royaumont (2006), and the Wellesley Composers Conference (2007). His music has been performed in France, Germany, Austria, and the US by such ensembles as the Arditti Quartet, les Percussions de Strasbourg, Mark Menzies/Ensemble Inauthentica, and Ensemble SurPlus, as well as soloists such as Magnus Andersson and Françoise Rivalland. Since his undergraduate studies, Sigman has received several commissions, awards and grants, including the American Composers’ Forum Encore grant (2005-2006), Columbia University’s Bearns Prize (2006), a Fulbright scholarship to the Netherlands (2007-2008), and a fellowship for a residency at the Akademie Schloss Solitude (to commence October 2008). In June 2007, he was composer-in-residence at the Musiques Démesurées festival in Clermont-Ferrand, France.

Ming TSAO (1966) holds graduate degrees in music composition (Ph.D.), ethnomusicology (M.A.), and mathematics (M.A.). He has received a number of commissions from new music ensembles, such as ensemble recherché, Arditti String Quartet and ELISION ensemble, as well as upcoming performances in new music festivals such as Wien Modern and Donaueschingen. He studied composition with Chaya Czernowin, Brian Ferneyhough and Philippe Manoury. A CD of his compositions will soon be released with Ensemble SurPlus.