Alfred Ladzekpo is Co-Director of the African Music and Dance Program at California Institute of the Arts. A native of Ghana, Ladzekpo is a specialist in the sogo drum. He has founded several programs and ensembles dedicated to preserving and advancing the musical heritage of Ghana, and lectures widely on the subject in the United States.
David Johnson is an instructor and coordinator in the percussion program at the California Institute of the Arts. A specialist in mallet percussion he has played with artists like Yusef Lateef, Dave Brubeck, Mel Torme, Maureen McGovern and Green Day.
David Roitstein is chair of the Jazz Studies program and teaches jazz piano, theory, ear training, and arranging at the California Institute of the Arts.
Ed Carroll is Instructor in trumpet and Coordinator of Brass Studies at the California Institute of the Arts. He also serves on the faculty of Dartmouth College.
Susan Allen is Associate Dean and Instructor in harp at the California Institute of the Arts. Throughout her thirty-year career she has built a reputation as a virtuoso harpist, and has appeared with many of the world’s foremost musicians in a number of fields, from fellow classical musicians to jazz musicians like Dave Brubeck and world-renowned performers like violinist L. Shankar.
James Tenney was a pianist, composer and teacher and a student of some of the Twentieth century’s greatest composers, among them Edgard Varèse, John Cage and Harry Partch. He was an early pioneer of computer-generated music, and of the application of information theory to the art of composition. For the last six years of his life, he taught composition at the California School for the Arts. James Tenney died on August 24, 2006.
Michael Pisaro is Co-Chair of the Composition and Experimental Sound Practices department at the California School for the Arts, where he teaches music composition and theory. He is also a working composer whose work is regularly performed by new music ensembles and programs worldwide.
Vicki Ray is a Professor of piano and Coordinator of Keyboard Studies at the California Institute of the Arts. She is also an accomplished concert pianist who has performed works written for her by composers such as John Adams, Paul Dresher, Arthur Jarvinen and Donald Crockett.
Vinny Golia is a Woodwinds and Composition Instructor at the California Institute of the Arts. He is also a composer, and founder of Nine Winds Records, a label which releases New Age and contemporary classical music by West Coast artists.
