SPLICE Institute 2026 Participant Concert 3 Program
Saturday June 27, 2026
11:00am EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Livestream simulcast on SPLICE YouTube (unique link)
Jackson Roush : click.wave
Colton Townsend, percussion
Siyuan Kang : Furious
Linus Poon, clarinet
Caroline Flynn : Behind the Eyes
Caroline Flynn, voice
Negar Gharibi : Microscopic Death
Gideon Broshy, piano
Alireza Khodayari : Memory of a Fragmented Body
Linus Poon, clarinet
Noemy Esparza-Isaacson : Fractal Vox
Noemy Esparza-Isaacson, voice/flute/synth
Notes
Jackson Roush : click.wave
He finds himself lapsing, drifting. His second nature has begun to take on a life of its own. It was born a long time ago.
It came partially through labor, partially by chance. It came so incredibly naturally. It came almost as an artefact of living. Even at the beginning, he was drawn into it unknowingly. Now, it is only maturing.
Its home is far away. It couldn’t typically tolerate being seen. It would not bear the touch of the contaminating eye. It has always preferred the darkness of spaces in the far interior, spaces where it can hum quietly to sealed, silent, empty worlds.
But it now finds itself free, undelimited in fading light. It begins to trace its surroundings, outlining them with its poisonous fingers, leaving a shimmering, iridescent trail. Reaching out to touch, he finds himself drawn passively, almost naturally into its toxic, brutal rhythms. He lapses into automatism, and is drifting away. Insistent, casually violent, superficially mind-full, it subverts the body of its host, and his warm initial touch has perished. It has been with him for a long time. But nothing of that time remains.
A voice calls out, and struggles. It cannot press through the building sheets of noise. It cannot cut through the grind. Where it can be glimpsed, it hides, darkened. He can only ask whose voice it is.
Siyuan Kang : Furious
Is furious a strong outburst?
In this piece, an insurmountable barrier to understanding causes furiousness.
"I don't understand."
Caroline Flynn : Behind the Eyes
You've got something special,
Potential
Waiting for you like you're in a movie
It's spooky
Patterns forming, you're the one to notice
You're focused
Negar Gharibi : Microscopic Death
The piece is an exploration of developing a motion by creating a progression from micro-gestures constantly interrupted by both hands, and on a larger scale by the electronic playback. In other words, the motion is being created by the progression of constant attack and release, either in the playback interrupting the piano part or both hands' interruption and interplay. This can be imagined as if you are looking/imagining a death happening inside a body, using a microscope, focusing on how each cell is dying and how the death is passing from one cell to another, and then there is a collapse.
Alireza Khodayari : Memory of a Fragmented Body
Memory of a Fragmented Body is a piece composed by Alireza Khodayari for B-flat clarinet and live electronics, written for the SPLICE Institute 2026 at Western Michigan University. In this work, the composer explores and imagines the clarinet as a “fragmented body,” in which different sound materials, such as key clicks, air sounds, pure tones, and multiphonics, are treated as interconnected parts of a single sonic organism.
The piece reflects on the idea of memory and its relationship to a fragmented body. It has a sonic and formal approach in which memory travels from being very far away in the mind, with sounds that are sonically familiar, to very blurry states, gradually transitioning and transforming into sonic moments that are closer to memory (metaphorically), but still blurred. A multiphonic trill is clear in sound but hard to focus on as a single pitch, which makes it both clear and blurred, at once close as a memory and far and obscure, compared with rapid key clicks and the sound of a human inside the body of a clarinet, which have some similar sonic elements but exist in a different world.
The electronics are also part of this fragmented body, functioning as a form of real memory that travels through time. In combination with the acoustic sound of the clarinet, the electronics create a sense of sourcelessness of sound (indeterminate sound source), where it becomes unclear whether the origin is acoustic, electronic, or somewhere in between.
Noemy Esparza-Isaacson : Fractal Vox
Fractal Vox Cumbia is inspired by recursive mathematical algorithms observed in nature and strategies for creating abstract 2D and 3D animations. At the center of this work is the voice which unergoes several transformations through live electronics. Additionally, the work is inspired by my own body of work of "cumbia grupera". Cumbia is a genre of music based on traditional Latin American music and folk dance genres. Grupera, (also known as Onda Grupera) is a subgenre of regional-Mexican music that reached the height of its popularity in the late 90s but has had a recent resurgence. The blending of contemporary music with culturally expressive music composition approaches, roots the work in my own latin music background through a technological lens.
Bios
Gideon Broshy is a composer, pianist, and producer from New York City. He builds clouds and swarms from sharp figures, using improvisation, synthesis, and MIDI. His debut album, Nest (New Amsterdam Records), has been recognized by NPR, Stereogum, and A Closer Listen and presented on BBC Radio 3, NTS Radio, and the Lot Radio. As a pianist, he’s performed on NPR and at Carnegie Hall. His interdisciplinary work includes projects for dance, theater, film, and installation, presented by the Joffrey Ballet; the Brick Theater; the Greenwich Village, Science New Wave, and East London LGBTQ+ Film Festivals; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Yale University Art Gallery, and MASS MoCA. His writing has been published by Which Sinfonia, the New Journal, and These Fifty States. He was an artist-in-residence at Millay Arts in 2025. He studied music and sociology at Yale, the London School of Economics, and Juilliard.
gideonbroshy.com
Noemy Esparza-Isaacson is a Latina tri-cultural research-based composer, digital media/XR technology artist, and electro-acoustic improvisation vocal artist whose composition practice is exploratory through a social justice lens. Noemy work reflects issues that relate to her homeland near the US/Mexico border, women’s rights, child advocacy, and abstract investigations of the social phenomenon that are expressed through mathematical matrices. Her artistic practice blends both digital media/XR technologies with musical expression to inform the creation of both sonic and visual immersive environments that become sites for reflection and discourse. Noemy’s composition practice encompasses both acoustic and electronic contemporary music works for solo instruments, and ensembles. Her works have been performed by the ACME Percussion Ensemble conducted by Simone Mancuso at Arizona State University, Fonema Consort and Low Frequency Trio ensemble. Noemy received her BBA undergraduate degree at New Mexico State University, Master of Education (Teaching and Teacher Education) from the University of Arizona, Master of Fine Arts (Digital Technology) from Arizona State University and is currently a dual PhD Candidate at the ASU School of Music Dance, and Theatre (Doctorate of Musical Arts, Interdisciplinary Digital Media) and the School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS) (PhD Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology). Noemy is also award-winning Latin Billboard vocalist in the regional Mexican genre and has performed her accordion driven songs in the US, Mexico, and Europe. Her composition practice encompasses varied genres, multi-dimensional and multi-cultural views of expression.
Caroline Flynn is a multifaceted artist based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She holds two bachelors degrees in Creative Technologies in Music and Psychology from Virginia Tech, and recently graduated with a Master of Music in Composition from Western Michigan University. Her work has been presented at numerous conferences and festivals, including EMM, ICMC, NYCEMF, MOXSonic, SCI Student National Conference, SPLICE Fest, and the Electroacoustic Barn Dance. Caroline’s favorite color is purple and her music is available on all streaming platforms.
Negar Gharibi is a composer whose work explores texture, color, and the emotional traces left behind by lived experience. She draws on the rhythmic and timbral nuances of Iranian musical practice and experiments with acoustic and electronic media. Her music has been performed globally by artists and ensembles, including the Penn State Percussion Ensemble, Ensemble Metis (Mario Caroli and Martyna Kosecka) at the Nice International Music Festival in France, and the Mivos Quartet at the MDW University in Vienna. She is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Music Composition and Theory at Penn State University with Baljinder Sekhon and Paul Coleman. Beginning fall 2026, she will be pursuing the DMA in Music Composition at Cornell University.
Siyuan Kang is a composer from China, whose work draws inspiration from folk songs, arts and philosophy. When she creating sounds, she always using her distinct approach. Kang received guidance from Prof. Jiyong Feng at the Xi'an Conservatory of Music in China. She continued her study at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she worked closely with Prof. Michael Fiday and Prof. Miguel Roig-Francoli during her master's studies. She is currently in her second year of the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) program, first year of master’s in music theory at CCM.
Alireza Khodayari is an Iranian composer and Tar performer. He began learning music through Iranian microtonal traditions on the Setar before focusing on the Tar and studied Iranian music and Tar performance for three years at Tehran University of Art. He later moved to the United States and is currently in his fourth year of undergraduate composition studies at Berklee College of Music on a full scholarship, where he studies with Professor Marti Epstein.
Since moving to the United States, he has continued to perform actively as both a composer and Tar performer, and his collaborative experiences often inspire new compositional directions. His works have been performed internationally in the United States and Europe by distinguished ensembles and performers. His music has been performed and read by ensembles including the JACK Quartet, Hypercube, Mivos Quartet, Sound Icon, and the Rhythm Method String Quartet. Among his recent achievements, he was selected as a JACK Studio Reading artist in 2024, and his composition was performed and recorded by the JACK Quartet. In 2026, one of his compositions was performed as part of the International Viola Congress concerts in Paris. Alireza was also the recipient of the Amy Beach Award (2025) and the Earle Brown Award (2026) from Berklee's Composition Department.
Alireza's work focuses on timbre, texture, and the creation of distinctive sonic worlds through close collaboration with performers. He is particularly interested in combining the colors of different instruments to create hybrid sonorities that can function as newly imagined instruments. Alongside acoustic work, he composes for small ensembles and solo instruments with electronics, exploring interactions between acoustic and electronic sound. He uses perception and cognition as compositional tools to interpret and translate ideas, words, and images into his musical language, shaping pieces that balance conceptual depth and sonic exploration. His music is shaped by collaboration, experimentation, and the synthesis of instrumental colors, reflecting his Iranian microtonal background while exploring new sonic possibilities.
Linus Poon is a U.S-based Hong Kong clarinetist committed to contemporary and cross-cultural collaboration through instrumental performance. He holds a Bachelor of Music and Master’s of Music from the Hartt School where he studied under Ayako Oshima, serving as an active member of the Hartt Wind Ensemble, Symphony Band, Orchestra, and the Foot in the Door ensemble. Through Hartt, he also participated in the first ever SPLICE Fellowship program in 2026, performing Deformities by Justin Villaflores. Linus has pursued several solo projects, most notably two collaborations with composer Rj Dion: Nautical Adventure for clarinet and ensemble, and Coney Tales for clarinet and piano. As of August 2026, he will be pursuing a Professional Studies Diploma at Mannes School of Music under Charles Neidich.
Jackson Roush is a WNY-based composer whose music is concerned with language, with symbolic structure, with mundana and minutiae, and with the borders of representation. Growing out of free improvisation and a belief in untutored sound, Jackson’s music finds strange interferences and subconsciously formulated points of contact, and has been read and performed by ensembles and performers such the Arditti Quartet, Talea Ensemble, Kyle Hutchins, Meridian Arts Ensemble, and the Atlantic Brass Quintet. Holding an MM from Ball State University, Jackson is currently pursuing a PhD at SUNY Buffalo.
Colton Townsend is a composer, performer, and educator based in Austin, Texas. Colton’s compositions and arrangements have been premiered by the UW-Milwaukee Wind Ensemble, UW-Milwaukee Percussion Ensemble, UW-Milwaukee New Music Ensemble, University of Arkansas Percussion Ensemble, Bentonville High School Jazz Ensemble, Fayetteville High School Percussion Ensemble, and members of the University of Arkansas Wind Ensemble, Slee Sinfonietta, MDI Ensemble, Formalist Quartet, and JACK Quartet.
As a performer, Colton has multiple years of Winter Guard International and Drum Corps International experience at both the Open and World Class levels and has premiered dozens of new compositions for percussion. He has also performed with numerous professional ensembles such as Present Music, the Wisconsin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Master Singers of Milwaukee, Jubilate Chorale, and the Milwaukee Choristers. His teaching experience includes Teaching Assistantships at both UW-Milwaukee and the University of Texas at Austin, where he is currently studying. His teaching experience also includes Westlake High School, Bentonville High School, Fayetteville High School, and Cooper Elementary School. His festival and conference activity includes New Music on the Point, Vu Symposium, SPLICE Summer Institute, June in Buffalo, Du Vert À l'Infini PluComp, highSCORE, and Nief-Norf summer festivals.
Colton is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Master’s of Music with a dual concentration in Composition and Theory and Percussion Performance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he received the Distinguished Graduate Student Fellowship Award for the final year of his degree. He earned his Bachelor’s of Music in Music Education from the University of Arkansas, where he also earned numerous awards and graduated as a Fulbright College Highest Distinction Scholar.