Conductors
Tengku Irfan
Malaysian-born Tengku Irfan has appeared around the world as a conductor, pianist, and composer. He made his Carnegie Hall debut conducting The Juilliard Orchestra in April 2024. He has appeared as guest conductor with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra on several occasions. As assistant and cover conductor, he has worked with orchestras such as New York Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of the United States, and The Juilliard Orchestra. He was a Conducting Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival in 2025.
In his earlier years as a pianist, he has performed with orchestras worldwide such as Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, among others. His compositions have been premiered by groups such as the New York Philharmonic, New York Virtuoso Singers, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and the MDR Sinfonieorchester. He also won three ASCAP Morton Gould Awards as a composer.
He earned his Masters of Music in Orchestral Conducting at The Juilliard School, where he studied with David Robertson. As part of the commencement, he was the inaugural recipient of the Robert Craft Igor Stravinsky Grant in Orchestral Conducting. Currently, he is the founder and music director of his own group in New York, Ensemble Fantasque, promoting music from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Daniel Black
Montreal-based conductor Daniel Black has earned a reputation as a versatile musician capable of delivering "vital and engaging" performances in a variety of genres and styles, from ballet to opera, standards of the classic orchestral repertoire to Pops, educational programming, and film concerts. He completed a highly-successful four-year tenure as Resident Conductor of the Florida Orchestra in 2022, where he conducted over 150 performances including the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts' new triple concerto "Contact" with the acclaimed trio Time for Three.
In 2025-26, Daniel returns to conduct the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Florida Orchestra, as well as debut concerts with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the Boise Philharmonic, and the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra, among others. He is also a candidate for music director of the Great Falls Symphony Orchestra in Montana.
Daniel's recent guest-conducting engagements have included the Nashville Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, the Detroit Opera, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tallahassee Symphony, the West Virginia Symphony, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Eugene Symphony Orchestra, the San Antonio Symphony, the Savannah Philharmonic, the Texarkana Symphony, and many others. Daniel previously served as Assistant and then Associate Conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony in Texas, conducting over 150 performances.
Also an accomplished composer and arranger, Daniel is the conductor and principal arranger for Dreams of Bollywood orchestral pops show. His orchestration of Dvorak’s Gypsy Songs, op. 55 is published by Bärenreiter Prague, and a recording of the same will be released on the Chandos label in 2026. He is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre- Quebec.
Daniel has thrice been awarded the Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award, and was a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, the Kurt Masur Conducting Workshop, and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. He has studied with Kurt Masur, Edo de Waart, Robert Spano, Hugh Wolff, Larry Rachleff, Marin Alsop, Victor Yampolsky, Leonid Korchmar, and Neil Varon. He has studied composition with Richard Danielpour, Ana Sokolovic and François-Hugues Leclair.
Andrew A. Hill
Andrew A. Hill is a freelance conductor and professional musician based in New York City. He holds a Masters of Music in Conducting from Colorado State University and a Bachelors of Music in Music Education/Trombone Performance from San José State University.
As a conductor, Andrew made his New York City debut with the New Conductors Orchestra leading the orchestra in David Diamond's Symphony No. 1 (1941) on February 11th and February 12th, 2023. This past May of 2025, he conducted & recorded with the FAMES Institute Orchestra in Skopje, North Macedonia collaborating with composers from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam recording new music for short animated films. In March of 2025, Andrew was selected as one of eight in an international pool of applicants to participate in And Other Duties' Rising Stars New York 2025. During this workshop, he worked with Marin Alsop, Karen Ní Bhroin and Timothy Redmond. Known as a dynamic leader, he is featured in the book Learn Lead Lift discussing his approach to leadership and sharing anecdotes from his experience as a music director. As a professional musician, he has performed at Carnegie Hall (NYC), Davies Symphony Hall (SF), Walt Disney Concert Hall (LA), Berliner Philharmonie (Berlin, Germany), Milan Conservatory (Milan, Italy), Teatro Nuovo Giovanni da Udine (Udine, Italy), The Royal Concertgebouw Hall (Amsterdam), Smetana Hall (Prague), Teatro El Círculo (Rosario, Argentina) and Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires, Argentina). Currently, he is an active freelance conductor and musician in New York City for various genres of music.
Composers
Tomos Owen Jones
Tomos Owen Jones is a Welsh tenor, composer and conductor, and a graduate of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where he studied both voice and composition. He is based in Wales and in London, as a Young Artist at the National Opera Studio.
Tomos is a composer of choral, orchestral and operatic works, and his music is often inspired by literature, artwork and the music and world around him, particularly the people, places and traditions of Wales. His compositions have been premiered by ensembles including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Cardiff Polyphonic choir, and at Leeds Lieder Festival and the National Eisteddfod. He was an ORA Singers Graduate Composer for 2024, and competition successes have included the WNO-RWCMD Composition Competition in 2021, and Welsh Guards March Competition in 2024. Tomos is a founder and Musical Director of May Street Opera, and alongside director Harvey Evans he created and conducted the premiere of his first chamber opera “The Egg” at Atmospheres Festival 2023.
Recent operatic roles have included Don Ottavio Don Giovanni, Lysander A Midsummer Night’s Dream, L’Aumonier Dialogues des Carmélites, cover Eisenstein Die Fledermaus and cover Rinuccio Gianni Schicchi (all RWCMD), The Spirit Dido and Aeneas (Longborough Festival Opera / Barokksolistene), and most recently performed scenes from Cosi Fan Tutte, Fidelio and La Clemenza Di Titio at NOS in collaboration with Opera North. Passionate about performing new music, he has premiered roles including Y in Plaut’s The Y Knot (RWCMD), Gwydion the Magician in Stephen McNeff’s 2117/Hedd Wyn (WNO Young Company), and the Data Collector in Richard Barnard’s Nonsensus (Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival).
David Vess
David Vess (b. 1991) is an emerging American composer of orchestral, band and choir music who is fascinated with subjects that question the boundary between what we know is real and what is imagined. His work often uses music as a vehicle for exploring themes such as endless liminal spaces, the bizarre and ever-shifting world of dreams, and even extraterrestrial encounters. His “glowing vocal textures” have lead to performances and commissions from ensembles such as the GRAMMY nominated choir Seraphic Fire, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the New Conductor's Orchestra, the Holyoke Civic Symphony Orchestra, the Brockton Symphony Orchestra, the Slee Sinfonietta, the Unheard-of-Ensemble, Shiki Duo, Boston Musica Viva, and a new upcoming work for the South Bend Chamber Singers.
Vess recently graduated with a DMA in Composition from the University of Miami, studying with Shawn Crouch and Lansing McLoskey. He holds a Master's in composition from the Boston Conservatory and Bachelor's from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in tuba performance. Vess was recently appointed the Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Outside of writing music, he runs the growing YouTube Channel: Music with Dave, where he helps composers achieve their goals in music with videos on composition and score study. For more information, please visit: davidvessmusic.com.
Benedikt Brydern
Benedikt Brydern received formal training in violin and piano at the Richard-Strauss Academy of Music in Munich, Germany. He pursued private compositional instruction under the guidance of Romanian composer Stefan Zorzor. He was selected from a pool of 1000 applicants to perform with the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Bernstein in 1988. He returned to the festival in 1990 to participate in the television series "Orchestra!" featuring Sir Georg Solti and Dudley Moore.
Following his graduation in 1992, he was awarded a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship, enabling him to further his studies in the United States. He completed the Advanced Studies Program "Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television" at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, where he studied with David Raksin, Elmer Bernstein, and Bruce Broughton.
He is the recipient of two Marmor Composition Awards, sponsored by the Stanford University Music Department, the 2002 William Lincer Foundation Chamber Music Competition, and in 2004, the Composer's Symposium at the Bach Festival in Eugene, Ore., commissioned him to compose a string trio in honor of George Crumb’s 75th birthday. The Oakland East Bay Symphony, in collaboration with the James Irvine Foundation, commissioned a new work for their 2010/11 season. He was a National Finalist in the Rapido Composition Competition in Atlanta (Atlanta Chamber Players) in 2024 and 2020.
His compositions have been performed and premiered by esteemed ensembles including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Sacramento Philharmonic, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Master Chorale and numerous chamber ensembles. His music is published by Universal Edition, Ries & Erler, Mel Bay, Edition Kossack, and Peer Music International.
Robin Haigh
Robin Haigh writes music that blends pop, classical, and experimental ideologies and sounds. His pieces have been performed and commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, City of London Sinfonia, National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, London Sinfonietta, Orchester im Treppenhaus, Lowell Chamber Orchestra, and Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra.
Honours include a 2017 British Composer Award for recorder quintet In Feyre Foreste, a 2020 Ivor Novello Award for the chamber orchestra piece Grin, and a further five Ivor Novello nominations for No One (harp), SLEEPTALKER (orchestra), LUCK (trumpet concerto), FILTH (amplified ensemble) and AESOP 2 (recorder soloist and ensemble), which was also nominated for the 2025 Gaudeamus Award.
He studied at Goldsmiths College and the Royal Academy of Music with Dmitri Smirnov, Edmund Finnis, and David Sawer, and worked as an assistant to Sir Harrison Birtwistle. In 2021 he completed his AHRC funded PhD, “Composing Millennial Nostalgia”, that was undertaken at the University of York and supervised by Martin Suckling.