SPLICE Institute 2026 Participant Concert 2 Program
Friday June 26, 2026 - still an auspicious day
7:30pm EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Livestream simulcast on SPLICE YouTube (unique link)
Jay Ng Man Lok 吳文洛 : Etude for Uncertain Times
Robin Meiksins, flute
Dominic Mrakovcich : A Series of Scenes
Zaira Castillo, piano
Ashtyn Wolph : Scratched
Robin Meiksins, flute
John C.L. Jansen : Trace
John C.L. Jansen, 3rd-Bridge Guitar
Victor Cabezas : Stardust
Robin Meiksins, flute
JJ Bushman : 100 Voices
Gabrielle Gagnon-Picard, piano
Notes
Jay Ng Man Lok 吳文洛 : Etude for Uncertain Times
This is an etude for a alto flutist, practice material on staying present, calm, grounded, and connected to oneself and their instrument, in uncertain times like these, with major global conflicts, world-wide human exploitation, environmental crises, human rights crises, and threats of cognitive offloading.
This piece acts as one vast breath, with the breath of the performer as the basic unit. The first half builds up tension with more "dissonances", sudden changes in texture, and rising pitch, mirroring the "breathe in". The latter half releases that tension with more "consonances", rounded and peaceful sounds, and gently falling pitch, mirroring the "breathe out". Throughout the piece, with the help of electronic effects of reverb and specific use of equalization, the sounds of breath grow into harmonies, highlighting the presence and humanness of the alto flutist, while the sounds of the alto flute catch and dance with the breath. Inhale to exhale, noise to tone, dissolution to return. Every element in this piece becomes one single pneumatic body, grounded in the here and now.
Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, ICE, Epstein, AI, and the events in my lovely home of Hong Kong. In times like these, art, rest, play, love, kindness, and community are the ways of radical resistance, but also just the essence of humanity itself. I wish for all of us to hold onto that humanity, and stay present, in uncertain times like these.
Dominic Mrakovcich : A Series of Scenes
A Series of Scenes takes inspiration from our analogue mechanical past: its tactility, its intimacy, and now our fragmented memory of it all.
Typewriter art begins as pointillism before overtyping unexpectedly spills away into abstract curls and discrete motions.
The interpersonal world of zine-making and its humble tools: glue, scissors, felt-tip markers; copy and paste, copy and paste, copy and paste...
Black-and-white city photography with rich contrasts, speckled artifacts, and grasping strands of light; adjacent to lo-fi ambient music with its cassette hiss, detuned synths, and the reedy breakup of driven transistors.
Human environments without people reveal the human condition. Dark and empty cities; rain thundering upon a car roof in an empty parking lot.
Ashtyn Wolph : Scratched
A sonic representation of a broken DVD, Scratched was inspired by my fascination and amusement with the way DVD's were advertised in commercials when they were first being sold.
John C.L. Jansen : Trace
Trace explores the third-bridge guitar as a resonant object whose sounds seem to split from their source. Small gestures leave behind traces that gather, transform, and begin to feel independent of the performer.
Victor Cabezas : Stardust
This piece is a sonic exploration of one of the fundamental elements of our universe.
JJ Bushman : 100 Voices
People pass by each other every day and many don't often have the time to meet one another. They don't realize how alike or similar they may be what thoughts they may share and who they are around. This piece serves as an attempt to connect people of different walks of life with each other through their own individual words. Over years of interviews I've collected I want to show how much noise a group of just 100 people can make and how alike and different we all are. This piece asks you to be vulnearable about what scares you, how you want to change, what you enjoy. Celebrate one another and the people around you.
This piece is also political in an aspect, as unfortunately empathy can be a political divider in the United States where I'm from. This is about standing together, protecting your neighbors and looking out for one another. The power of 100 people is no joke. It is about community, the people around you and being aware of your part in your community and how you affect the world. No one is an alien on stolen land.
Bios
JJ Bushman is an award winning composer, pianist, audio engineer, and educator based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who excels in writing in various different styles for various different ensembles. His music serves to share stories of people, things and places, drawattention to these and preserve them. His goal is to provoke the minds of his audience and inspire others towards thinking inwardly about the life they live, the life others live and the world they find themselves in. He hopes to get his audience to appreciate nature and the small things that may go unnoticed around them and pursue community in as many aspects as possible. As a composer he has attended the Brevard Music Institute for Composition, Du Vert A L’infini, Splice and won a position in the Flow Project. As a sound engineer, JJ has played a role in recording, soundtrack, editing and mixing several published multimedia works. As a musician JJ has worked with several Milwaukee based groups such as The Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, UW-Milwauke jazz ensembles, Brew City Big Band, and The Milwaukee Ballet as a pianist, bassist and composer.
Victor Cabezas is an American contemporary composer, hornist, pianist, and singer currently based in the UK. His music has been described as “incredibly inventive” with “vivid soundscapes”. His acoustic and electronic works have been selected for performance at Bowling Green State University, SPLICE Institute, and the International Horn Society Symposium. In addition to his compositional endeavors, he is an experienced performer and teacher. He has been on faculty at Northern Kentucky University as an adjunct professor teaching composition and aural skills as well as the Assistant Director of the Vocal Jazz Ensemble. He holds a B.M. in Music Composition from Northern Kentucky University and an M.M. in Music Composition from Bowling Green State University.
Zaira Castillo is a pianist whose work bridges contemporary performance, experimentation, and community engagement. Trained as a classical pianist, her practice has expanded to include electroacoustic music, improvisation, and interdisciplinary performance, often integrating electronics, lighting, gesture, and found objects to create immersive performance environments.
Based in Chicago, she maintains an active solo and collaborative practice rooted in close collaboration with living composers. She is the co-founder of Duo Riso with clarinetist Evan Kopca, through which she has premiered over twenty new works and led workshops on extended techniques and contemporary performance practices. Her work has been presented at festivals and venues including Codés d’accés, Electronic Music Midwest, Constellation’s Frequency Series, Experimental Sound Studio, Elastic Arts, and the 2025 Time:Spans Festival with Ensemble Dal Niente.
Across her projects, Castillo is interested in challenging conventional performance roles and exploring new relationships between sound, space, and audience. Through performance, collaboration, and community-based initiatives, she seeks to contribute to a musical ecosystem that values experimentation, inclusivity, and the continual reimagining of how music is made and experienced.
Gabrielle Gagnon-Picard is a dynamic pianist recognized for her artistic sensitivity and bold approach to interpreting the modern repertoire. A laureate of the prestigious Eckhardt-Gramatté National Competition (2022), she stands out for her inventive and inclusive programming, highlighting the richness and diversity of contemporary music. Her recent distinctions include First Prize in the Concerto category at the Richmond Music Festival (2024), the Monik Grenier Prize at the Prix d’Europe Competition for the best performance of a work by a Quebec composer (2024), and the Auguste Descarries Scholarship (2023). In 2025, she presented Touches Modernes, a solo recital of Canadian piano music touring 19 cities across Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick with Jeunesses Musicales Canada.
Originally from Lévis, Quebec, Gabrielle studied with Dr. Jacques Despres at the University of Alberta and later at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, where she completed a master’s degree and a professional diploma under the guidance of Louise Bessette. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Performance at the University of British Columbia with Dr. Corey Hamm, supported by the Roy Barnett Graduate Fellowship.
A pianist sought after for her artistic curiosity and her ability to take on challenges, Gabrielle regularly collaborates with emerging composers from Canada, the United States, and Ukraine. She has premiered and recorded more than twenty works, exploring innovative forms such as improvisation, real-time generated scores, artificial intelligence, electronic accompaniment, and extended techniques. She has notably participated in the Vivier InterUniversitaire (ViU) and MUSE projects, which support the creation and dissemination of new works.
John C. L. Jansen is a composer, performer, educator, and instrument builder whose work explores the harmonic series, just intonation, and the unexpected resonances that emerge through alternative tuning systems and reimagined instruments. Originally trained as a classical guitarist, he approaches sound as both material and inquiry, integrating composition, performance, and instrument design into a single creative practice.
His music has been heard across the United States in concerts, festivals, recordings, and occasional collaborations in film and theatre. He is based in Takoma Park, Maryland, where he runs JLJ Instruments, and is currently pursuing a DMA in composition at the Peabody Conservatory.
Robin Meiksins is a freelance contemporary flutist focused on collaboration with living composers. While Chicago-based, she uses the Internet and online media to support and create collaboration, as well as more traditional means of performance.
In 2017, Robin completed her first year-long collaborative project, 365 Days of Flute. In this project she performed 138 works by living composers, as well as works from the established flute repertoire. Each day featured a different work or movement and each video was recorded and posted to YouTube the same day. In 2018, Robin launched the 52 Weeks of Flute Project. This project builds on the ideas of internet performance and collaboration from the 365 project. Each week, Robin works with a different living composer to workshop a submitted work, culminating in a performance on YouTube.
Robin has premiered over 100 works by living composers and has performed at SPLICE Institute, the SEAMUS national conference, Oh My Ears New Music Festival, and Frequency Festival. In 2018, she was a guest artist at University of Illinois for their first annual ’24-Hour Compose-a-thon.’ Robin was awarded the Mrs. Hong Pham Memorial Recognition Award for New Music Performance at Indiana University in 2016.
In 2013, Robin was the Ontario woodwind representative at the Federation of Canadian Music Festival’s National Competition, where she placed second overall. She has performed in master classes with Michael Hasel, Conor Nelsen, Jeanne Baxtresser, and Jeffery Khaner. In 2014, she was a recipient of the Kingsway Humber Foundation Scholarship. Robin was also a two-time recipient of the Musical Arts Society of Cleveland’s scholarship. Robin holds a masters degree from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music where she studied with Kate Lukas and Thomas Robertello. Robin received a Bachelors of Music with Distinction from University of Toronto, having studied with Leslie Newman. Other notable teachers include Marisela Sager, Linda Miller and Joseph Juhos.
Dominic Mrakovcich is a composer whose work bridges classical tradition and modern ambient sound. His recent projects include the original score for Miguel Ramirez's independent film No Care in the World and the Alice in Wonderland ballet for Northern Michigan University's Department of Theatre & Dance.
He earned a Master of Music in Composition from East Carolina University, where he studied with Ed Jacobs, and a bachelor's degree from University of Massachusetts Amherst, studying composition with Salvatore Macchia and percussion with Ayano Kataoka and Thom Hannum.
Active in New London's experimental music community, he has performed solo and with Hearing Dogs and Pink Sap, and produced the 2023 Experimental Exposé featuring punk and avant-garde artists. Inspired at an early age by Howard Shore's score for The Lord of the Rings, Mrakovcich has pursued a creative practice that moves freely between concert music, film scoring, ambient sound, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
He currently serves as Sound & Media Supervisor and Engineer at Northern Michigan University while continuing to compose new works for the stage and concert hall.
Ashtyn Wolph is a Connecticut-based composer, saxophonist, and educator pursuing graduate studies in composition and saxophone performance at the Hartt School of Music. She has studied saxophone under Joshua Heaney, Garrett Evans, and Carrie Koffman and composition under Matthew Kennedy, Doug McConnell, and Gilda Lyons. Ashtyn is a current Hartt Composition Fellow and performs as a member of the nationally recognized Hierax Saxophone Quartet. They have recently premiered works as part of the Heidelberg University New Music Festival, Navy Band Saxophone Symposium, North American Saxophone Alliance Conference, and the 2025 SPLICE Institute Fellowship. Ashtyn aims to use her music to explore the experiences of women in music and advocate for the programming of underrepresented composers.
Jay Ng Man Lok 吳文洛
Hong Kong composer, sound artist, social artist, anti-disciplinary artist, film scorer, guitarist, performance artist. Currently studying music composition and electronic music in the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA). Jay welcomes all composition styles, with interest in a wide variety of forms including performance art, conceptual art, participatory art, sound art.
Jay was a composer participant in Darmstadt Summer Course 2025, where he composed “I Am” for “Untitled Presentation”, originated from the Enby Manifesto workshop led by Luxa M. Scuettler, and where he had lessons with Sarah Nemtsov and Simon Steen Andersen. He was part of a multimedia project in a collaboration between HKAPA and a Hong Kong government art space Oi! Space. He has also composed “Elements in Harmony” as a collaboration with the Hong Kong Palace Museum. A film’s theme song “Flower as Stone” he created was nominated for Cannes World Film Festival Best Original Song 2022.