Staff
Mike McFerron
Founder & Festival co-Director
Mike McFerron is a professor of music and composer-in-residence at Lewis University in the Chicago area. He has been on the faculty of Hong Kong Baptist University, the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and the Kansas City Kansas Community College, and he has served as resident composer at the Chamber Music Conference of the East/Composers' Forum in Bennington, Vt. McFerron is founder and co-director of Electronic Music Midwest and serves on the board of the directors for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra and is a past Chair of the Executive Committee for the Society of Composers, Inc.
McFerron's music has received critical acclaim and recognition. His music has been performed by the Remarkable Theater Brigade (Carnegie Hall), the Louisville Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Matthew McCright (Carnegie Hall), and Cantus among many others. His music has been featured on numerous SCI National Conferences, SEAMUS National Conferences, the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), Brooklyn College Conservatory's Electroacoustic Music Festival, the MANTIS (UK) festival, ÉuCue "Plugged Festival" (Montreal), University of Richmond's 3rd Practice Festival, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Denison University TUTTI Festival, Ball State University New Music Festival, Florida State University New Music Festival, Spark Conference, Annual Florida International Electroacoustic Music Festival, Spring in Havanna, the MAVerick Festival, several SCI regional conferences, and concerts and radio broadcasts across the U.S. and throughout Europe. He has written music specifically for Cantus, SUNY-Oswego, GéNIA, Andrew Spencer, Julia Bentley, the Chamber Music Conference of the East/Composers' Forum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Lewis University, Sumner Academy of Arts and Science, and the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra.
McFerron's music can be heard on numerous commercial recordings as well as on his website at https://www.bigcomposer.com.
Ian Corbett
Technical Director & Festival co-Director
Ian Corbett is the Coordinator and Professor of Audio Engineering and Music Technology at Kansas City Kansas Community College. He also owns and operates "off-beat-open-hats LLC," providing live sound, audio production, recording, and consulting services to clients in the Kansas City area. He has mixed FOH, and occasionally monitors, for many headline artists at venues around the USA. Throughout his career he has balanced education with professional employment in a wide variety of audio industry fields, including theater sound, television and radio, location concert recording, live sound reinforcement, and forensic audio evidence recording. As the co-founder and technical director of Electronic Music Midwest he enjoys multichannel sound and presenting immersive concert experiences. An internationally recognized author and educator, the second edition of Ian's book, "Mic It! – Microphones, Microphone Techniques, and Their Impact on the Final Mix" was published by Routledge/Focal Press in 2021, and he has also written articles for Sound On Sound magazine. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition, and has been known to play saxophone in Kansas City's jazz clubs and restaurants.
A highly active Audio Engineering Society member, Ian recently served as the AES Vice President – Central USA & Canada. He has presented tutorials and workshops at local, regional, national, and international events throughout the USA, Central and South America, and Europe. He is a frequent judge of AES student recording competitions, and organizes and hosts the Student Mix Critique sessions at AES events worldwide. Ian travels internationally to give presentations and workshops at colleges, universities, and to student and professional groups, and also frequently serves as an external examiner, moderator and program evaluator in the USA and Europe. Since 2004 he has been a member of the Audio Engineering Society's Education Committee (as well as several other AES committees), and has also been a member of the Producers & Engineers Wing of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. For more information, please visit: www.offbeatopenhats.audio
Jason Bolte
Technical Director
Jason Bolte is a composer and educator. He currently resides in Bozeman, Montana with his wife Barbara, their two beautiful daughters Lila and Megan. Jason teaches music technology and composition at Montana State University where he directs the Montana State Transmedia and Electroacoustic Realization (MonSTER) Studios and coordinates the B.A. in Music Technology. He earned a B.M. with an emphasis in Music Engineering Technology and a M.M. in Music Composition from Ball State University. He holds a D.M.A. in Music Composition from the University of Missouri - Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance, where he was a Chancellor's Doctoral Research Fellow, a Dean's Doctoral Fellow, and an Ovation Scholar. Jason's music explores the North American Mountain West, modular synthesis and live performance, intersections of music, art, and science, and other areas he finds compelling. His music has been performed by the Ensemble Dal Neinte, A/Tonal Ensemble, Maverick Ensemble, Elektramusic, junctQín, NewKeys, Alcome, and the NYU New Music Ensemble, among others. Jason's music has received awards and recognition from XI° Destellos Competition, SEAMUS, junctQín, International Competition for Composers "Cittá di Udine," ISCM Miami Section/World New Music Days, Concurso Internacional de Miniaturas Electroacusticas, International Electroacoustic Music Contest – CEMVA, Electroacoustic Composition Competition Música Viva, Bourges International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art, ETH Zurich Digital Arts Week Soundscape Competition, Music Teachers National Association/Missouri Music Teachers Association, International Society of Bassists Composition Competition, and ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition. His music is available on New Focus, Beneficence, ABLAZE, Thrmnphon, ELECTRO<>ACÚSTICO, SEAMUS, Irritable Hedgehog, Vox Novus, SoundWalk, and Miso Records labels.
Robert Voisey
Organization Advancement Director
Robert Voisey is a creator, producer, and promoter of art music through concert performances and multimedia productions. Through his company Vox Novus, he has presented over 500 events in more than 40 countries; venues range from recital halls and concert stages to bars and nightclubs, from art galleries and modern museums to parks and public atriums, as well as radio, TV, store front windows and the facades of a five-story building. Most known for his 60 minute intermissionless performances with the 60x60 project he has also produced several dance and radio marathons 12 hours in length. His 60x60 Dance was described by the New York Times as "…quite mad. But it's this kind of madness that makes the cultural world go round…"
Voisey has founded and directed several performance project series in order to promote art music and empower its creators and producers: 60x60 and its many multimedia iterations has presented more than 2500 composers, 2000 choreographers and dancers, and over 100 videographers, filmmakers, poets, sculptors and artists; Composer's Voice has premiered thousands of contemporary works in New York City with more than 150 performances; Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame has featured more than 100 musicians and ensembles perform the works of more than a thousand composers; Circuit Bridges that presented electronic music with over 20 performances; XMV that presented the video/music works of 50 artists; and the American Composers Timeline created in 2000 which at the time was one of the first most comprehensive listings of American composers on the Internet.
Voisey's work has been performed in over 40 countries and 6 continents (he is still trying for Antarctica), scores of radio stations internationally, several public television stations, as well as in short films and off-off broadway. A few places he has been performed include: Carnegie Hall, Stratford Circus, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Bowery Poetry Club, the dance club "Lobby" in NYC, Sheldon theater, and the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center. His career of collaborating and partnering with musicians, dancers, poets, and artists of different disciplines has led to a varied body of functional work.
M. Anthony Reimer
Web Systems Director
M. Anthony "Tony" Reimer's award-winning compositions and sound designs have been heard in venues across the country and internationally for over 25 years. He has a bachelor's degree from Ball State University, a Master's in Computer Music and New Media from Northern Illinois University and is pursuing a doctorate in Music Com- position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His passion is design- ing sound effects and writing music for live theatre, film, video games and interactive experiences. In addition to an active freelance career in theatrical sound design, Tony has also served as a sound designer and composer on many video projects and as the audio director and composer for the Mutiny Games company. He has also designed and implemented multiple interactive installations and data sonification projects in the Champaign-Urbana, IL area. Currently, Tony teaches sound design in the UIUC De- partment of Theater. He is also a researcher at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where he works on projects that aid collaborative efforts among artists, in- cluding things like a framework for collaborative development of multi-user virtual worlds, audience interaction technology through the use of mobile devices, and support for telematic performances. A complete list of works and other materials can be found at: http://www.toneguy.net/about.html.
Kay He
Creative Director
Dr. Yuanyuan (Kay) He is a composer and video artist with roots in China. Her works often explore and intertwine various forms of media to create unique audiovisual experiences that engage the audience. Many of her works involve collaborations with choreographers, dancers, video artists, audio technicians, and stage lighting and design artists. As a multimedia composer, she is very active in the music community. Kay serves as the Creative Director for Electronic Music Midwest (EMM), which is an annual music festival dedicated to programming a wide variety of electroacoustic music and providing high-quality electronic media performances. She is also the founder and Director of the Turn Up Multimedia Festival, which works to promote Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Culture-Connecting, and Equality. She is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona, where she teaches composition, electro-acoustic music, and orchestration.
During her career, Kay has won many awards and been selected for many performances in the U.S. and abroad. Kay earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and her Master of Music degree at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from the University of Texas at Austin where she studied under Dr. Russell Pinkston and Dr. Yevgeniy Sharlat.