Michael Sean Harris
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For several years since 1991 Michael had been a member of The Little People and Teen Players Club and a founding member of Ashe Caribbean Performing Arts Ensemble (Both are performing arts ensembles in Jamaica).While a member of these groups, Michael performed an eclectic mix of musical and theatrical styles and toured the U.S., the Caribbean and the UK.Apart from the training in Acting, movement and choral singing which he received as a member of these groups Michael studied piano, voice and viola privately.In 1996 Michael was accepted on scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston. There, he studied voice and pursued a dual major in Music Synthesis and Contemporary Writing and Production and was the convocation speaker at his graduation in May 2000.Directly after, Michael was contracted as the lead male vocalist for ‘Holiday on Ice-In Concert’. The show opened in Paris August 2000 and toured Europe, for three years. While on tour he had the opportunity to perform with several popular European artistes including: Leo Sayer, Petra Berger, Cheb Mami and Patricia Kaas.
Michael has been teaching as well as writing and arranging. He has co-written songs for popular artists at home and has a song in heavy rotation on Caribbean Radio. He is now exploring the recording and production aspects of music as well as performing.
Through his creative partnership JOY MECHANICS, Michael and longtime friend and collaborator Michael Holgate have produced 2 albums and since August 2012 have stage an annual Wolrd-Alternative music and arts festival- ‘Gungo Walk’
He is the Assistant Director for the School of Music at the Edna Manley College, where he has also taught Pop/Jazz voice and Jazz harmony and has recently co-written a music technology course for their degree programme.
Michael has also become a primary consultant with Digicel Rising Stars, acting as performance coach for all the selected artistes. He also works closely with the creative team with song selection and overall creative choices.
Michael is currently pursuing a masters degree in Music Technology Innovation at Berklee College of Music’s Valencia campus.
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M.T Aditya Srinivasan
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M.T.Aditya Srinivasan is one of the young and up-coming tabla players from Chennai, India. He was initiated into Carnatic music and western piano at the tender age of 4. However, he found his calling in the Tabla, inspired by a performance of table maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain.He began his training in Tabla under Shri Rajesh Dhavle at the age of 7 and was the youngest to be awarded the CCRT government of India scholarship (while still 2 years below the age bar).
After this he underwent training under Shri Chandrajit under the Farukhabad gharana of tabla for a brief period. Since 2009 he has been under the tutelage of Pt.Yogesh Samsi (ace disciple of Ustad Allarakha khan) of the Punjab Gharana of tabla as well as Padma Bhushan Vidwan Dr. Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman in the South Indian percussion tradition, Srinivasan has been regularly performing and has accompanied leading artists such as Shri M.Balamuralikrishna, Shri Vinayak Torvi, Sriram Parasuram, Anooradha Sriram, Anupama Bhagwat, Ranjani and Gayatri, Sikkil Gurucharan, Anil Srinivasan, Priya Sisters, Srimati Manjusha Patil Kulkarni, Vedanth Bharadwaj and many others. He has also been involved in many fusion projects, one of which – Zinx was adjudged the winner in an all India band hunt organized by Oscar winner A.R.Rahman.
Srinivasan also takes an active interest in theater and has been part of more than 15 plays with the city’s leading theater groups including – The Madras Players, Evam, Masquerade, Landing Stage, etc. – as an actor, music composer, production and marketing manager and as live musical accompaniment. |
Ben Houge
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Ben Houge is an artist working at the nexus of music composition, video game development, sound installation, performance, and generative video.An eighteen-year veteran of the video game industry, his music and audio design have been heard by millions around the globe in titles including Tom Clancy’s EndWar, Half-Life: Opposing Force, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity, Leisure Suit Larry 7, and Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura.
While living in China from 2004 to 2010, Ben collaborated with leading figures in the Chinese new music scene, presenting his work at a range of venues including the Shanghai eArts Festival, the Today Art Museum, the True Color Museum, OV Gallery, the Mini Midi Festival, D-22, Yu Yin Tang, XP, and many more.
His work has recently been presented by Boston Cyberarts, Non-Event, and the San Diego Museum of
Ben Houge currently teaches in the Music |
Clara Barbera
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Born in Valencia, Spain Clara trained at Centro de Danza Mari Cruz Alcalá before continuing her studies at English National Ballet School. Upon her graduation, she joined English National Ballet in 1997 where she danced as a Soloist in all the main classical ballets as well as the more modern pieces of their repertoire. In 2004, Clara joined Rambert Dance Company where she worked with choreographers such as Rafael Bonachela, Itzik Gallili, Wayne McGregor, Siobhan Davies and Michael Clark and danced main roles in pieces such as Antony Tudor’s “Dark Elegies” and Karole Armitage’s ”Gran Partita”. In May 2009, Clara left Rambert to be able to participate in artistic projects both in Spain and the UK: some highlights include Kim Brandstrup and Tamara Rojo´s Laurence Olivier Award winning “Goldberg Variations” at the Royal Opera House’ Linbury Studio and “Insound” Festival with music director Josep Vicent.She started her career as a choreographer during her time at ENB and her choreographic repertoire includes a number of solos (Conversaciones, Eight Ball, Look No Further) and group pieces (Pulsacion N.5, Nueve, Cabua Le Le, Nithakam). As a guest teacher, she has worked with Manchester based Company Chameleon and Centro Coreográfico de Teatres de la Generalitat amongst others.
As a dance producer and curator, she created the “WORK” series, a platform aiming to show short works of UK-based choreographers and which to this day has seen two editions (Valencia, 2009 and Santander, 2010). She’s also a founding member of New Movement Collective, a United Kingdom-based collective of new generation choreographers, with whom she has co-choreographed and danced in London, Lisbon, Cologne, Madrid and most recently in Valencia. (NMC was nominated to a UK’s National Dance Awards as Best Independent Company of 2013.)
In 2011, she became Associate Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer for Ballet Clásico de Valencia and joined Berklee College of Music’s Valencia Campus where she currently serves as Student Affairs Manager and teaches “Movement for Musicians” to students both at the graduate and undergraduate level. Since joining Berklee’s Valencia Team she has participated in a number of collaborations, highlights including EmTech España 2013 and Nithakam (musical video and choreography).
Other information: She was nominated to a UK’s National Dance Award in 2007, holds a BA in Business Studies and is currently finishing her MA in Arts Management by the Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales. |
Ganavya Doraiswamy
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Ganavya was born in New York, but taken to South India to grow up. There, she learnt how to play the veena, harmonium, sing Carnatic music and abhangs, and became a classically trained Bharathanatyam dancer in the Kalakshetra style. Her name in Tamil comes from the phrase “gānam vyāpithal,” or “spreading music.” However, the true focus of her time in India was to learn an ancient instrument called the jalatharangam that her grandmother (and hardly anyone else) played.
Ganavya came back to the United States and obtained a Bachelor’s in Psychology, where she briefly worked at the Everglades Correctional Institution as a student counselor for the Corrections Transitions Program in Miami, Florida. Although her initial objective as per the program was to help inmates with coping with life outside of prison if they were released, one particular exercise that asked them to write poetry became the focus of her work there: it eventually led to the publication of a work titled “Entrapped Words” that includes illustrations and poetry by the men she worked with.
Having worked for non-profit organizations such as No More Tears (founded by former Bollywood actress Somy Ali) and Vittal Academy, Ganavya raised money through performances and brought medical teams and supplies to her ancestral village in India under the banner of “Project Nemili,” an endeavor for which she won the Silver Knight Award presented by The Miami Herald.
After having worked various jobs (including being a Managing Director of a literary magazine and an Executive Recruiter in the IT industry), Ganavya became part of Berklee College of Music’s first graduate class in ’12 when she got accepted to the Contemporary Studio Performance program, where she sampled her grandmother’s instrument as a means to make it more accessible. That year, she also worked on translated jazz standards to Tamil and re-contextualizing traditional Indian songs. On behalf of Berklee, she had the honor of being produced by and performing with award-winning musicians in prestigious venues. She has written an suite in experimental music that corresponds with the stages of sleep that also uses the South Indian mode of Neelambari that is believed to induce drowsiness.
As a Post-Graduate Fellow, Ganavya published a text titled “Fundamentals of Indian Music” through Berklee College of Music and is currently teaching a certification course titled the same. You can reach her at www.ganavya.com.
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João Bruno Soeiro
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Born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1983, and raised in that same city, he started to study music at the age of 19, at the Academia de Amadores de Música (AAM), in the piano class of Professor Teresa Menéres. The following year, he entered the Musicology degree at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, having dropped out of it 3 years later, to dedicate himself exclusively to the piano. In 2006, he started studying with Professor Vela Belozorovich, with whom he finished the secondary course of piano (8th degree) at the AAM in 2009. During these years there, he also learned Chamber Music with Professor Fernando Flores and Analysis and Composition Techniques with Professor Eurico Carrapatoso.
From 2005 on he started attending diverse masterclasses with some of the most renowned pianists and piano teachers in the world, such as Elisso Virsaladze, Vitaly Margulis, Paul Badura-Skoda, Boris Berman, Eldar Nebolsin and Sequeira Costa.From September 2008, he started working with Professors Maria Gambarian and Nana Nemsitzveridze in Moscow, Russia, and in 2009 he was accepted at the prestigious Gnessin Academy of Music, in that same city, in the studio of Professor Gambarian (with Professor Nemsitzveridze as an assistant). He concluded his Bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance there in 2013. During those years, he played several solo recitals both in Portugal and Russia and also had his first experiences writing music for cinema and visual media, which led him to realize how much he loved and wanted to work in that professional field.
In the fall of 2013 he enrolled in the Master’s degree in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at the world-famous Berklee College of Music, Valencia Campus, where he is currently studying.
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