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Australian composer/pianist Paul Grabowsky has won two Helpmann Awards, several APRA and Bell (Jazz) Awards, and eight ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) awards. He was also awarded The Melbourne Prize for Music in 2007, The Australian National University H.C.Coombs Fellow in 2010 and was the Sydney Myer Performing Artist of the Year in 2000. In 2019 Paul was appointed Composer in Residence for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for which he composed 4 symphonic works.

Peggy Monastra is an arts manager and consultant with over 30 years’ experience in the field of contemporary music with a focus on promotion, management, and publishing. She is currently Vice President at legendary music publisher G. Schirmer, Inc./Wise Music Classical where she has worked for over 30 years and previously held positions as Artistic Director and Director of Promotion. She has been a trusted advisor as New Works Creative Consultant for Opera America, and with Opera Philadelphia, Cincinnati Opera, Bethany Arts Community and for select large-scale projects and independent composers. Earlier positions include that of Music Specialist at the Library of Congress Music Division, and as professor of music history and private piano instruction. With a background in piano performance, pedagogy, musicology and gamelan, her greatest interests have always been in contemporary music across the performing arts and in advocating for creative artists. She holds degrees from Loyola University College of Music and the Eastman School of Music; and lives in Ossining, NY with her husband Steven Osgood and two sons.

Toronto-based pianist Cheryl Duvall has established herself as one of Canada’s foremost contemporary music interpreters, immersing herself in a wide variety of compositional aesthetics and collaborative endeavours. In 2011, she co-founded the “adventurous and smartly programmed” (Musicworks Magazine) chamber group Thin Edge New Music Collective. Since their inception, they’ve commissioned over 70 works, mounted lavish multidisciplinary productions such as Balancing On The Edge, and collaborated with leading performers like Charlotte Mundy, Jason Sharp, Ensemble Paramirabo (with whom they recorded an album.) They’re also widely noted for their direct engagement with composers, among them Linda Catlin Smith, Elliott Sharp, Barbara Monk Feldman, and Sarah Hennies. Their tours and residencies across Europe, and in Japan and Argentina have positioned them as ambassadors for Canadian music abroad. Her lucid sense of contour, evocative sonic and emotional presence, and boundless versatility make her both a dynamic soloist and in-demand collaborator.  Duvall holds an Honours BMus and Diploma of Chamber Music from Wilfrid Laurier University, and a Master’s of Piano Performance and Pedagogy from University of Toronto.

Thomas Fichter is the Artistic Director of the TIME:SPANS festival, which is made possible by theEarle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust (EBMF, since 2006.) Fichter also holds thepositions of Director of EBMF and Director (“Intendant”) of the Ensemble Musikfabrik in CologneGermany.

Mr. Fichter initiated the TIME:SPANS festival in 2015. After two seasons as part of the Crested Butte Music Festival, TIME:SPANS was moved to New York City as an independent contemporary music festival, with most events taking place at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Manhattan.

In his role as Director of EBMF, Mr. Fichter established the basis for research of Earle Brown’s lifeand work by organizing an online searchable inventory of the Earle Brown archive in Rye, NewYork. Both the archive and the digital data base are now at the Paul Sacher Foundation at Basel,Switzerland. He is also responsible for a revised edition of the majority of Mr. Brown’scompositions, published by Edition Peters, making Brown’s oeuvre fully available in print for thefirst time since Brown’s death in 2002, and he oversaw the digitization and re-issue of thelegendary Contemporary Sound Series recordings (produced by Brown).

Before moving to the U.S. from Germany in 2004, Thomas Fichter was appointed ExecutiveDirector of the “Ensemble Musikfabrik” in Cologne, Germany from 2001 to 2004. Under hisdirection the group established a concert series of contemporary music at the West German Radiostation in Cologne in 2003, “musikFabrik at WDR.” The concept of the fully funded series includesthe commission of a new work for each evening. Thomas Fichter returned to Musikfabrik asDirector in 2017. The series has premiered more than 100 works.

From 1982 to 2001 Thomas Fichter was a member of the leadership team, an artistic planner, and abass player of the renowned Ensemble Modern, Frankfurt. He worked with leading composers andconductors such as John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Pierre Boulez, Earle Brown, Peter Eötvös,Heiner Goebbels, Hans-Werner Henze, Mauricio Kagel, György Kurtag, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono,Steve Reich, Wolfgang Rihm, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Hans Zender, and FrankZappa. During these years he performed at international venues and festivals, among them theDonaueschinger Musiktage, the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, the Berliner Festspiele, the VeniceBiennale, the Paris Autumn, the Salzburg Festival and the Edinburgh Festival, and also in Japan(Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall & Akiyoshidai International Art Village), Australia, the UnitedStates, and South America.