John McMurtery (founding member) is section flutist of the New York City Opera Orchestra, and substitutes regularly with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, and the OK Mozart Festival Orchestra. He has appeared as soloist with the New York Symphonic Ensemble, the Artemis Chamber Ensemble, the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, and the 2005 Lincoln Center Festival. As an advocate for contemporary music, McMurtery performs with the Memphis-based ensemble Luna Nova and the Society for Chromatic Art (New York). Adding to his discography, he recorded for the NAXOS label as principal flutist on the collaborative disc of world premieres by award-winning composer Sean Hickey. During the 2006-07 school year, McMurtery was appointed Visiting Professor of Flute at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and has also taught at Westminster Conservatory in Princeton, NJ. He currently serves on the board of directors of the New York Flute Club, co-chairing the annual Flute Fair. McMurtery graduated in 2005 from The Juilliard School with a Doctor of Music Arts degree, where he studied with Jeanne Baxtresser, Julius Baker, and Robert Langevin. Previous teachers include Bart Feller at Rutgers University (MM '99) and Dr. Hal Ott at Central Washington University (BM '97).

Adam Bowles (founding member) is becoming increasingly active on the contemporary art-music scene, performing frequently in the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, Artburst, and similar venues for new music. Dr. Bowles is a native of Los Angeles who holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He obtained his Bachelor of Music degree at the Eastman School of Music, and received his Master of Music at the New England Conservatory of Music. His main teachers have been Milton Stern, Barry Snyder, Jacob Maxin, and Eugene and Elizabeth Pridonoff. He has also received periodic coaching with Richard Goode, Malcolm Bilson, and Seymour Lipkin. He is now an instructor on the Birmingham-Southern College Conservatory faculty where he teaches the two highest levels of music theory in addition to maintaining a studio of private students. At the college level he teaches Accompanying and both years of Keyboard Harmony for music majors. During the year Bowles frequently collaborates in recital with both students and faculty at BSC.

For several decades, cellist Craig Hultgren (founding member) has been a fixture on the scenes for new music, the newly creative arts, and the avant-garde. In recent years, he has performed solo concerts and chamber music in Rome, Boston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Miami, Atlanta, Orlando, Denver, Memphis and San Antonio. A recipient of two Artist Fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, he was a member for many years of Thámyris, a contemporary chamber music ensemble in Atlanta. A cellist in the Alabama Symphony, he also plays in Luna Nova, a new music ensemble with a large repertoire of performances available as podcast downloads on iTunes. Hultgren is featured in three solo CD recordings including The Electro-Acoustic Cello Book on Living Artist Recordings. In 2004, the Birmingham Sidewalk Film Festival 48-Hour Scramble cited him for the best soundtrack creation for the film The Silent Treatment. For ten years, he produced the Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, an international competition that highlighted the best new compositions for the instrument. He teaches at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Alabama School of Fine Arts and Birmingham-Southern College where he directs the BSC New Music Ensemble. He is a founding member and former President of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance and is currently Chair of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Youth Orchestras of Birmingham. Hultgren is a CAMA artist (Collaborating Artists Manifesting Adventure) with the St. Louis New Music Circle and will be presenting programs there for three seasons.

Jennifer Rhodes serves as principal bassoonist of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. She holds Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School and a Bachelor of Music degree and Performer’s Certificate from Eastman School of Music. Her major teachers are Frank Morelli and John Hunt. Before moving to Memphis, Dr. Rhodes enjoyed a busy freelance career in New York City where she performed with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, New York City Ballet and Opera Orchestras, and the American Ballet Theater Orchestra. An active chamber musician, she has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the North Country Chamber Players. She recently recorded Jonathan Dawe’s woodwind quintet “Fractal Farm” on the Furious Artisans label and can also be heard playing principal bassoon on Itzhak Perlman’s 1998 EMI recording “Concertos From My Childhood,” accompanied by the Juilliard Orchestra.

Robert G. Patterson holds a doctorate in composition from the University of Pennsylvania. His mentors include George Crumb, John Baur, and Don Freund. His compositions have been performed from South Africa to Norway and Spain to Seattle. Among the awards he has received are the 2004 National Symphony Orchestra Residency Commission, 1999 University of Michigan Bands Commission and the 1994 International Composition Prize from the City of Tarragona in Spain. In addition to his musical activities, Patterson helps develop PC-based hotel software for Hilton Hotels, and his interest in computers has led him to become an expert in musical engraving using a computer. He has played the in the Memphis Symphony Orchestra since 1994. He has performed in new music festivals with Luna Nova since its beginning in 2002.

Since completing his composition studies at the University of Chicago in 2003, Mark Volker has developed a growing reputation as a versatile composer and guitarist. His music has been performed and recorded by many prominent performers including the Contemporary Chamber Players, eighth blackbird, the Pacifica String Quartet, Musica Moderna Poland, the Pinotage ensemble, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Gryphon Trio, the Kiev Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes, So Percussion, Luna Nova, the Orquesta de Baja California, the Society for New Music, and the Boston Brass. His music has also been and featured at many major music festivals and conferences. He has received awards from ASCAP, SCI, ERMmedia, and Meet the Composer. In addition, Mark has premiered over a dozen works for guitar. Later this summer, Centaur records will release Elemental Forces, a collection of Mark’s recent works inspired by natural phenomena. Having taught for several years at Colgate University, Mark recently joined the faculty of the Belmont University School of Music (Nashville, TN) as coordinator of composition activities.

Nobuko Igarashi, a native of Memphis, is the Bass Clarinetist with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. She received the BM and MM degrees in clarinet performance from Indiana University at Bloomington. Her principal teachers at IU were Eli Eban and James Campbell. Ms. Igarashi has also studied with Howard Klug, Alfred Prinz, Hakan Rosengren and Dennis Smylie. She first joined Luna Nova as guest clarinetist at the 2007 Belvedere Chamber Music Festival.