Robert Alexander is a music maker living in Los Angeles. His mission is to create music that helps us feel through our thoughts. Sometimes he also makes very silly things. Follow him online at www.robertalexander.net.

Fred J. Allen taught over 40 years and included 24 years as Director of Bands at Stephen F Austin State University, 7 years at Abilene Christian University and in two public school districts. In 2024, he was named Texas Bandmaster of the Year.

Allen has conducted All-Region and All-State Bands throughout Texas and the United States. He often served as guest conductor for bands playing at the Midwest Clinic and the Texas Music Educators Association Convention, and has also conducted in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia.

His arrangements and compositions have been played at conventions such as the Midwest Clinic, Texas Music Educators Association and in other states as well. Several of his works on are recommended state music lists for bands and flute choir.

Lorrie Baum is a distinguished composer of band, orchestra, and chamber music. She earned her Bachelor of Music Education degree at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Ms. Baum later received a Master of Music degree in music theory and composition from the University of Northern Colorado.

A member of The National Association For Music Education, Colorado Music Educators Association, American String Teachers Association, and ASCAP, Ms. Baum has traveled extensively as a performer and spent 30 years teaching K-12 band, orchestra, and vocal music, primarily in the Denver public schools. Her music has been performed throughout North America, Europe, and by brass groups from Pershing’s Own Army Band.

Dr. BJ Brooks was born in Portales, New Mexico in 1975. He has composed hundreds of works for ensembles, solo performers and the electro-acoustic medium. His scores have been honored with numerous awards, included as educational material at several universities, included in the acclaimed book series Teaching Music Through Performance in Band, found on several repertoire lists including Texas’ PML, and have been featured at numerous conventions such as TMEA, TBA, CBDNA, The Midwest Clinic, and the International Society for Contemporary Music. Dr. Brooks is the Assistant Artistic Director of the Amarillo Youth Choirs and Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas.

Blake Dylan Buehler (b. 2000) is an internationally performed composer, educator, and artist-activist with a passion for innovative music and the betterment of society through music. He has collaborated with acclaimed groups including Transient Canvas, the Texas New Music Ensemble, the Furman Symphonic Band, and Unheard-of//Ensemble. His music has been featured at the Texas New Music Festival, New Music Gathering, and the Alba Music Festival. His work is showcased on the albums CCI//Sessions, Vol. 5 (2023) and Unmeasured Light (2024).

David Campo is a composer, conductor and educator with 30 years of experience teaching and composing for ensembles at the middle school, high school and university level. His compositions reflect his deep understanding of wind band at all levels and his works range in difficulty from easy to professional level. In addition to his compositional activities, he is in demand as a clinician and adjudicator.

Ben Davis holds a Bachelor of Music Education and a Master of Music Composition from Northern Arizona University. Mr. Davis has 39 years of teaching experience and 17 years as a head high school director. He retired in May of 2020 as Director of Bands at Lindale Junior High School in Lindale, Texas.  Mr. Davis’ bands are consistent UIL Sweepstakes winners and have been selected twelve times as a Texas Music Educators Association Region Honor Band, advanced to the T.M.E.A. State Honor Band Contest multiple times and finished as high as tenth place. His ensembles won first place honors in the ATSSB Outstanding Performance Series State Contest.  In 2019, Texas Bandmasters Association named Mr. Davis and the Lindale Junior Band as Texas’ Exemplary Middle School Band Program for that year.

Mr. Davis is a former state officer for the Arizona Band and Orchestra Directors Association, the International Association of Jazz Educators – Arizona Unit, and a TMEA Region Officer. His professional associations include Texas Music Educators Association, Texas Bandmasters Association, the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Texas Music Adjudicators Association, and Phi Beta Mu - International Bandmaster Fraternity.  

Dr. Trevor Frost is currently a visiting assistant professor of music and associate director of bands at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, Arkansas, where he conducts the symphonic band, concert band, and pep band and also teaches conducting, music history, and orchestration. Frost received his Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in wind band conducting with a related area in composition from the University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL). Frost remains active as a composer, with performances all over the US receiving commissions from the New Hampshire Youth Band, the University of New Hampshire Wind Symphony, Lebanon High School (NH), and Norris High School (NE).

Japanese-born composer Asuka Kakitani’s deep love for nature inspires her to transform her vision into musical stories. Her mostly-programmatic music results from the inspiration evoked by her surroundings interweaved with her perspectives and imagination. Kakitani’s projects span jazz big bands, orchestras, chamber ensembles, soloists, and collaborations with choreographers. Kakitani was described as “[a] musical impressionist and supreme colorist” (Hot House Magazine) and her music as “the overflowing world of inspirational melody” (DownBeat Magazine) and “absolutely superb” (All About Jazz). Kakitani’s 2013 debut record, Bloom, was acknowledged as one of the year’s best debut albums by DownBeat Magazine Critics’ Poll and NPR Music Jazz Critics’ Poll.

Founder of Alias Press, adventurer-composer Stephen Lias’s music (b. 1966) is regularly performed in concert and recital throughout the United States and abroad by soloists and ensembles including the Arianna Quartet, the Anchorage Symphony, the Oasis Quartet, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival Orchestra, the Ensamble de Trompetas Simón Bolívar, the Boulder Philharmonic, and the Russian String Orchestra. His pieces are regularly featured at major national and international conferences including the International Trumpet Guild, the North American Saxophone Alliance, the Midwest Clinic, and the ISCM World Music Days. He has an extensive collection of works inspired by National Parks.

Praised by The New York Times as a saxophonist who is “...making the connections among about 70 years’ worth of contemplative, articulate and light–toned players,” Alex LoRe stands out as one of the most dynamic alto saxophonists and composers on the vibrant New York music scene. His work reflects an expansive range of influences, from the contemporary classical repertoire through today’s most influential artists on the jazz and popular music scenes.

LoRe has released five albums as a leader and has contributed his talents as a side musician on over two dozen albums. He is on teaching staff at the New School College of Performing Arts and is a Boston Sax Shop and Conn Selmer endorsed artist.

Ryan McQuay Meredith is a composer, trombonist, environmentalist, and advocate for the music of others. He writes about his experiences outdoors in the American Northeast, in U.S. National Parks, and abroad in Europe and the United Kingdom. His compositional style is diverse and exploratory, often inspired by visual arts, technology, and sonic experience. Ryan works in a variety of mediums, from concert to computers to canvas. Other mediums of art serve critical roles in Ryan’s compositional process. He frequently explores painting, photography, sculpture, even macramé, to find musically meaningful connections between art and lived experience.

Dr. Ben Morris is a composer and jazz pianist whose eclectic projects include multimedia works, operas, chamber and orchestral music, big band pieces, and film scores. His music, which often tells stories about our relationship with the natural world and crosses genre boundaries, has garnered awards, grants, and commissions from ASCAP, Downbeat, Fulbright, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Washington National Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, and the American-Scandinavian Foundation. His music has recently been described as "witty" (Wall Street Journal), “heart-touching” (OperaGene), "fresh" (All About Jazz), and "wonderfully inventive" (Tom Cipullo). Ben studied music composition at Rice University, University of Miami, and the University of Colorado Boulder, and he is currently assistant professor of music composition at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Preston Parker (b. 1989) is a composer, conductor, and music educator from Jacksonville, Texas. He currently serves as Assistant Band Director for his former high school in Jacksonville ISD, where he specializes in teaching low brass. Parker attended Tyler Junior College and The University of Texas at Tyler, with an emphasis in Music Composition and Music Education, and later received his Master’s degree at Stephen F. Austin State University in Music Composition where he studied under Dr. David Campo and Dr. Stephen Lias.

The compositions of Joseph C Phillips Jr are not limited or defined by any one genre but rather are an amalgamation, transmuted into a singular and individual style. Phillips calls his style, mixed music; the term is inspired by mixed race people who have traits and characteristics that come from each individual parent, from the melding of the two, and their own uniqueness. Mixed music is an organic fusing of various elements from many different influences, forming compositions that are personal, different, and new.

Chris Prather (b. 1995) was drawn to music at an early age. Music’s healing power offered a place of belonging through his, at times, turbulent adolescence. The obsessive, inseparable nature of his relationship with music has led to a variety of successes as a composer. One of these being the 2022 Opera on Tap-OKC premiere of his opera No Justice, No Peace (2022). Critics have described this work as “complex, swirling, at times nearly inscrutable, but peppering moments of familiarity and cultural reference points throughout.” Recently, Prather’s piece Hope on the Horizon (2024) was given its world premiere by the University of Central Oklahoma Wind Symphony under the baton of Dr. Brian Lamb. Prather also serves as a voting member of the Recording Academy (GRAMMYs).

Dr. Paul Rudy (DMA) has been called “The High Priest of Sound” and “Sage.” In addition to composing instrumental and electronic art, he practices sacred sound, sound immersion, sound healing, and leads meditations. His music and sonic art balance conservatory training with shamanic practices, subtle energies, and technology, each of which guide his intuitive performances and compositions, bridging science and spirituality. He is a Rome Prize (2010), Guggenheim (2008), Fulbright (1997) and Wurlitzer Foundation (2007 and 2009) Fellow, and his music has won two Global Music Awards (2012, for Innovation in Sound and Mixing/Editing), the Sounds Electric ’07 (Dublin), EMS Prize (Sweden), and Citta di Udine (Prize ex aequo, Italy) competitions, to name a few. He is a Curators’ Distinguished Professor and Coordinator of Composition at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, Conservatory, where he received the Kauffman Award for Artistry (2008) and Service (2018). Six CD’s in his series “2012 Stories” are available for streaming and purchase online.

Christopher Alan Schmitz composes solo, chamber, and ensemble music that is “sublimely gorgeous” (Fanfare) and “pensive…hard-driving…and whimsical” (American Record Guide). His compositions have been performed and recorded internationally by the London Symphony Orchestra, the USAF Airmen of Note, and many others, in venues ranging from New York City (Carnegie Hall) to Alaska (Denali National Park) to London (St. Luke’s Church). Christopher’s educational music has appeared in concert programs at all levels of development and his recent solo and chamber works have been performed by the Cortona Trio, Svyati Duo, Terell Stafford, Amy Schwartz Moretti, and Denson Paul Pollard, among others.

Theodore Vidal (b. 2001) was born in Bulgaria and adopted into the United States at age two. Vidal is a passionate composer and professional musician whose global journey is shaped by a lifelong love of exploration and creativity. Dedicated to sharing life’s richness and inspired by worldly cultures, Vidal made his compositional debut at the age of fifteen and is now known for crafting music that tells stories, evokes emotions, and inspires. His musical works have been performed by global ensembles and orchestral groups.

Jack Wilds is a composer and educator whose works have brought him into collaboration with musicians aged 5-95. Ranging from children's choirs to collegiate wind ensembles and professional chamber groups, Jack's music draws on visual art, philosophical and religious texts, poetry, and absolute musical influences to create vibrant works that meet performers where they are while inspiring authentic, artistic music making.

His chamber music has been performed by the Attacca Quartet, the University of Texas New Music Ensemble, the Austin Saxophone Ensemble, and members of the New York Philharmonic and the Atlanta Symphony. His works have also been featured at international festivals and composition workshops including the International Trombone Festival, the Slider Asia Clinic in Hong Kong, the American Trombone Workshop, the International Horn Symposium, New Music on the Bayou and The Wyoming Festival.