Laurel Jenkins

Laurel Jenkins is a dancer, choreographer, educator, and mother. Her choreography emerges from a desire to reimagine our collective human experience. Jenkins’ work has been presented by Lincoln Center, Disney Hall, REDCAT, Automata, the Getty Center, Show Box LA, Danspace, the Lied Center for Performing Arts, Berlin’s Performing Presence Festival, Tokyo’s Sezane Gallery, and Paris’ Cité Internationale des Arts. She choreographed Bernstein’s MASS with the LA Phil and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. In addition, she has choreographed for LA Contemporary Dance Company, The Wooden Floor, and many universities including UNL. Jenkins was a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 2007-2012, and has danced in works by Vicky Shick and Sara Rudner. Jenkins performed in the opera Oedipus Rex/Symphony of Psalms by Peter Sellars and solos by Merce Cunningham in the Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event. Jenkins is the recipient of a Vermont Arts Council Grant, an Asian Cultural Council Grant, a French Institute Fellowship, holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence, and an MFA from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. She is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Matthew Evan Taylor

Composer and improviser Dr. Matthew Evan Taylor (1980) has been hailed as a composer of “insistent and defiant…envelopingly hypnotic” music (Alan Young, Lucid Culture). Dr. Taylor’s work is sparked by his curiosity about the surrounding world and the inherent social bonds built through music. Whether he is addressing issues about the nature of time or the bounds of the human breath on musical performance, Dr. Taylor writes music that is engaging, surprising, and unmistakably human. His aesthetic is typified by vibrant instrumental colors, mercurial juxtapositions, and an affinity for groove.

Innovative projects such as Life Returns, Say Their Names, Postcards to the Met, and The Unheard Mixtapes were created as new templates for composition and performance in the wake of the pandemic. His ongoing series The Living Score aims to decolonize the compositional process by democratizing the most precious Western musical artifact – the musical score.

Dr. Taylor’s music is available through New Amsterdam Records. Dr. Taylor is based in Vermont, where he is Assistant Professor of Music at Middlebury College. He also serves as Artist-Teacher in Composition at The Longy School of Music of Bard College.