Singer-songwriter Willy Mason, who lives in Martha’s Vineyard, MA, has toured with Death Cab for Cutie, Ben Kweller, and Radiohead, and he opened for Norah Jones at the 2010 Montreux Jazz Festival. Mason’s albums include Where the Humans Eat (2003) and If the Ocean Gets Rough (2007).

Hailed by The Village Voice as “the king of sampling,” Carl Stone is a pioneer of live computer music and electro-acoustic composition. Stone, who divides his time between San Francisco and Japan, where he teaches at Chukyo University’s School of Cognitive Sciences, has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Classically trained violinist and string arranger Nina Violet hails from Martha’s Vineyard, MA, and has toured across the U.S. and Great Britain with musicians such as Elvis Perkins, Willy Mason, and Radiohead. Her album We’ll Be Alright was released in the fall of 2011.

Portland, OR–based singer-songwriter Justin Ringle formed Horse Feathers with multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick in 2004, and the two have been joined since by a rotating group of musicians, including Heather Broderick, Nathan Crockett, and Jebadiah Bernards. Among the band’s releases are House with No Home (2008) and Thistled Spring (2010).

Cat Martino has toured across the U.S. and around the world with acts such as Rufus Wainwright, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Sharon Van Etten, and her frequent collaborator Sufjan Stevens. Originally from Long Island, Martino is currently based in Brooklyn. Her solo albums include Here Now (2004), The Sea Closet (2009), and Yr Not Alone (2011).

New York–based composer Richard Einhorn's work includes Red Angels, commissioned by the New York City Ballet, and Voices of Light, written to accompany Carl Theodor Dreyer’s classic silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc. Einhorn’s first opera, The Origin, which is based on the work of Charles Darwin, premiered in 2009 and was staged in Bremen, Germany, in 2011.

Elliott Sharp has been a key figure in New York City’s avant-garde music scene for over 30 years. He has released more than 85 recordings ranging from orchestral music to No Wave rock and has collaborated with musicians such as Debbie Harry and the Kronos String Quartet. The subject of Bert Shapiro’s 2008 film Doing the Don’t, Sharp was a 2010 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in music.

Born and raised in Chicago, Andrew Bird is a classically trained violinist and former swing jazz musician. His first band, Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire, released three critically acclaimed albums between 1997 and 2001; Bird’s subsequent solo releases include Armchair Apocrypha (2007), Useless Creatures (2010), and 2012’s Break It Yourself.

Mary Lorson was the lead singer of the group Madder Rose until it disbanded in 1999, when she formed Saint Low. Based in Ithaca, New York, Lorson is currently frontwoman for Mary Lorson and the Soubrettes, whose releases include BurnBabyBurn (2011).

Lee Ranaldo is a singer, guitarist, writer, producer, and artist who is best-known as a cofounder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Ranaldo’s solo albums include From Here to Infinity (1987) and this year’s Between the Times and Tides, and his artwork has been shown in galleries and museums in Paris, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Vienna, and Sydney.