Matthew Coley is an internationally acclaimed soloist and chamber musician and the founder and executive/co-artistic director of Heartland Marimba. Matthew travels regularly bringing the beauty of the marimba's singing wood and the diverse timbre of other percussion, hammered dulcimer/cimbalom, and glass instruments to many audiences. He has performed in over 40 US states, 10 countries, and as a soloist with organizations throughout the US and abroad. 

Matthew’s work with Heartland Marimba has brought the marimba art form in front of audiences in more than 50 cities with 250 concerts for audiences of all kinds, including thousands of children. Additionally, HM's continual work with virtual content during 2020-2021 has led them to release 19 different remotely recorded videos of chamber works. Matthew has several critically acclaimed albums, including Between the Lines (2015), Circularity (2010), Souvenirs (2012), Heartland Marimba Dances (2016), and Vision (2019). He has performed as a soloist at Percussive Arts Society International Conventions and in concert halls across the nation. Matthew won several prizes from national and international competitions and holds percussion performance degrees from Northwestern University (DM and MM) and the University of North Texas (BM). He is a signature artist with JG Percussion and Beetle Percussion. Visit www.hearMatthewColey.com and www.HeartlandMarimba.com to learn more about Matthew.

MATTHEW COLEY, percussion
featured artist

Venezuelan cellist Horacio Contreras has gained esteem through a relevant activity as a performer, pedagogue and researcher. He is a faculty member of Lawrence University and the Music Institute of Chicago. Horacio has collaborated for performances as a concert cellist, recitalist, and chamber musician with prestigious artists, festivals, concert series and institutions in the US, Latin America and Europe. He has been invited to teach master classes at schools of music including Michigan, Juilliard, Oberlin, Indiana University at Bloomington, and renown programs in Latin America. His students have won awards in national competitions in the US and Canada, have made solo recordings, have performed as soloists nationally and internationally, and have continued their studies in prestigious programs in the US and Europe. His former students have been appointed in positions in schools of music and orchestras in Europe and Latin America. He is the author of the cello adaptation of Ronald Vamos’ Exercises in Various Combinations of Double- Stops, published by Carl Fischer, as well as the co-author of the Sphinx Catalog of Latin-American Cello Works, an extensive online database with information about works for cello by Latin American composers produced in partnership with the Sphinx Organization and CelloBello.org. 

Horacio is a member of the Pierrot ensemble Four Corners Ensemble, and also a founding member of the Reverón Piano Trio, an all-Venezuelan ensemble devoted to the divulgation of Latin American repertoire for piano trio. He started his cello studies at El Sistema in Venezuela, and made further studies in France and Spain. He holds a Masters and a Doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan.

HORACIO CONTRERAS, cello
featured artist

Baldwin Giang (b. 1992) is a Chicago-based composer, pianist, multimedia artist, and educator whose music aims to empower communities of audiences and performers by creating concert experiences that are opportunities for collective wonder and judgment.  Described as "taut and cohesive...challenging and rewarding" (Cacophony), Baldwin's music has been performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Symphony Center in Chicago, and Chateau de Fontainebleau. He has received commissions from the National Sawdust Ensemble, New York Youth Symphony, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Playground Ensemble, Fondation Maurice Ravel, Robert Black Foundation, Music in Bloom, How It’s Musically Made, and Music from Copland House. Additionally, he is lucky to have collaborated with such celebrated performers as the Albany Symphony, International Contemporary Ensemble, Argento Ensemble, [Switch~ Ensemble], orkest de ereprijs, Ensemble MotoContrario, Arditti Quartet, Spektral Quartet, JACK Quartet, Curtis Symphony Orchestra, Yale Symphony Orchestra, University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Opera Theatre of Yale College, Indiana University’s New Music Ensemble, University of Michigan’s Contemporary Directions Ensemble, University of Iowa’s Center for New Music Ensemble, University of North Texas's Nova Ensemble, Rage Thormbones, So Much Hot Air, unassisted fold, AEPEX Contemporary Performance, and members of Ensemble Intercontemporain and Ensemble Dal Niente. 

BALDWIN GIANG, composer
featured guest

Clare Longendyke is an award-winning pianist whose dazzling musicianship and colorful interpretations delight audiences wherever she performs. Set apart by her inspiring touch and captivating way of sharing music, Longendyke is a sought-after soloist, performing over 50 concerts a year in North America and abroad. Recent orchestral partners include Boston’s Arlington Philharmonic Orchestra and the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra of Minnesota. Her appeal has earned her performances on the University of Chicago Presents concert series, the Fazioli Piano Series in Los Angeles, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ SoundBites Series, as well as on NPR’s Performance Today.

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Longendyke blends a passion for music’s classical tradition with an equal affection for what she calls “the music of our time.” In less than a decade, she has premiered over 100 new compositions and performed the music of today’s most exciting living composers—works by Joan Tower, Frederic Rzewski, Gabriela Lena Frank, Amy Williams, and others.

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Hailed as “a sparkling pianist" by the Hyde Park Herald, Longendyke is on track for a transcendent musical career. Her efforts to bring innovative musical experiences to public places and historic sites earned her a nomination for the Indianapolis Business Journal’s Women of Influence award in 2019. She currently serves as Artist-in-Residence and Director of Chamber Music at the University of Chicago.
 

CLARE LONGENDYKE, piano
featured artist

Soprano Amy Petrongelli revels in performing music of all different periods and styles. Lauded in the New York Times for her “admirable fluidity,” her diverse performance career encompasses music from Haydn’s Creation in Carnegie Hall to Berio’s Sequenza III at the Radio Nacional Córdoba in Argentina. In 2020, Amy was honored with an Emerging Artist Award from the University of Michigan for her significant contributions to the field of music performance.

Particularly at home in contemporary repertoire, Amy has premiered new works for organizations such as the Houston Grand Opera, New American Voices, and AEPEX Contemporary Performance and collaborated with members of Eighth Blackbird, Bent Frequency, Alarm Will Sound, Latitude 49, and the Metropolis Ensemble. Amy has also been a featured performer for organizations such as Five Boroughs Music Festival, the Casement Fund Recital Series, the Contemporary Undercurrent of Song Project, and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival. Alongside her work as a soloist, Amy is the vocalist and co-artistic director of the Khemia Ensemble, a contemporary classical chamber music ensemble.

A passionate educator, Amy is currently an Assistant Professor of Voice at Baylor University in Waco, TX and serves as the director of the Collaborative Piano Institute Vocal Academy summer program at Louisiana State University.

AMY PETRONGELLI, voice
featured artist

Joshua Thompson is a pianist, social musicologist, teaching artist and producer. He is increasingly recognized on a national scale for his expertise on classical composers of African descent and the inherent cultural connectivity in the broader aesthetic of Black Arts movements. As the 2020 Beckman Emerging Artist Fellow of the Arts Council of Indianapolis, he successfully completed his residence at the Africana Studies Center for Music and Society at the Berklee School of Music in Boston and currently serves as the first Musicologist in Residence for Classical Music Indy.

Joshua is a classically trained and accomplished keyboard artist with a personal mission to exclusively program and perform classical masterworks by composers of African descent. In 2019 Joshua was named Performer in Residence for Eskenazi Health’s Marianne Tobias Music Program and in 2020 was named a Robert D. Beckmann Jr Emerging Artist Fellow made possible by the Arts Council of Indianapolis. Joshua has worked with legendary bassist John Clayton, Smithsonian Research Fellow Dr. William C. Banfield, touring pianist Ric’key Pageot, Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Davis, renowned clarinetist Anthony McGill, and international operatic soprano Angela Brown. 
 

In January 2018, Thompson debuted his first artistic production, “Village Voices: Notes from the Griot”—an original production that highlights the unsung and underperformed masterworks from artists of African descent and continues to be performed on local stages and in classrooms throughout the Indianapolis metro area. In October 2019, he was a featured presenter for the popular TED Talk series. His award-winning podcast series “Melanated Moments in Classical Music” with co-host Angela Brown, won 2020 Best Music Podcast from the Black Podcasting Awards and was recently featured in the Miami Times.

JOSHUA THOMPSON,
musicologist / pianist
featured guest

"…Zoulek's performance, on saxophones in every range, is stunningly virtuosic, whatever the genre." (The Wall Street Journal). A modern saxophonist of “pure mindfulness and talent” (PopMatters), Nick Zoulek's artistry as a performer, collaborator, composer, and media artist has led to a diverse portfolio of distinctive artistic ventures. A soloist, Nick’s craft has been lauded as “wickedly contagious” (The Huffington Post) with the capacity to “[take] you to other worlds” (Milwaukee Magazine). Currently, Nick is working on his second album project, Enter Branch, collaborating with musicians including Sean Carey (S. Carey, Bon Iver), Nathalie Joachim, Nick Photinos, and Chris Porterfield (Field Report). Nick is a member of Duo d’Entre-Deux and the Coalescent Quartet, adding to a roster of collaborations with Eighth Blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, ~Nois, Juxtatonal, and many more. A composer, Nick often works with dance, film, animation, and video games, with a portfolio including compositions for the Madison Ballet, the hit video game Red Dead Redemption 2, and Legs of Steel ski films. He holds a DMA in Contemporary Music from Bowling Green State University, with further degrees from the CRR de Boulogne-Billancourt and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. For more information please visit www.nickzoulek.com

NICK ZOULEK, saxophone
featured artist