Dan Pack (Cello and Composer) is a composer and musician. As a teacher, composer, actor, technician and administrator, Dan has worked with audiences and students throughout northern Utah. His greatest love (besides his wife) is the cello. He loves the versatility of the cello and demonstrates some of that versatility with his loop station performances. Dan studied with Dr. Uzur at Weber State University, and has loved serving as the Executive Director for NEXT Ensemble.

Harnessing the chugging, energetic sounds of contemporary postmodernism as a starting point, Andres R. Luz develops his artistic idiom from the legacy of music history stretching back to medieval and Renaissance stylistic practices, up to those of the present-day. Andres Luz studied with Jeffrey Miller at California State University, East Bay (B.A. Music, magna cum laude, 2013) and taken private studies in electroacoustic music with Ian Dicke, as well as master classes with Hannah Lash, P.Q. Phan, Zae Munn, Paul Salerni, and Melinda Wagner. Andres Luz completed the Master of Music Composition at the University of Redlands in 2016, studying with Anthony Suter.

In 2022, Andres Luz completed the Doctorate in Musical Arts in Composition at the University of Georgia (UGA), Athens, studying with Peter Van Zandt Lane, Adrian Childs, and Emily Koh. Andres Luz also served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Theory and Electronic Music Composition at the University of Redlands and as the assistant of the Dancz Center of New Music at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at UGA. His music has been played internationally and notably by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Wind Symphony of the College-Conservatory at the University of Cincinnati. Among his electroacoustic pieces, Andres Luz’s 2017 fixed media work, Premonitions, Landscape at Twilight was selected to be featured on MUSLAB-Cero Records’ album, PLANETA COMPEJO, Volume 4, released in January 2024. Among the works for large ensemble, Dr. Luz’s dissertation composition, Bulosan: On American Democracy for Narrator, Wind Symphony, and Fixed Media (2021, rev. 2023), won the 2023 American Prize in Wind Ensemble Composition, and 2nd Prize in Social Justice- related content, College/University-Level Wind Ensemble Division. The work is included in ABLAZE Records’ Wind Orchestra Masters vol. 1 album which Fanfare Magazine’s Ken Meltzer described as “an eloquent and moving work, one I recommend heartily.” In another review by Colin Clarke, Bulosan is lauded as "expertly structured and emotionally powerful," while Natalie Szabo writes that the album documents a "masterful ensemble performance. Five stars." Andres Luz is a member of ASCAP, SEAMUS, Millennium Composers Initiative, and Society of Composers, Inc., and is published by Murphy Music Press and Post-Classical Music.

Composer/Performer Randall Smith lives in pursuit of a creative practice that challenges categories and defies assumptions and expectations about genre, style traditions, and the foundations of music itself. Viewing music as a uniting and edifying force, Smith's interests chiefly lie in unusual and unexpected collaborations with musicians and artists of various disciplines and media as well as community experiences that challenge traditional concert formats and participant roles.

Never one to shy away from the bizarre, Smith makes up one half of punk-classical duo Counterpoint Hangman, an ensemble that evades description at every turn, combining stylistically fluid spontaneity with edgy, experimental theatrics.

Hobbies and extra-musical pursuits include cooking, reading everything in sight, learning languages, and Chinese martial arts.

Kristin Jensen, Lyric Soprano, is thrilled to be making her Next Ensemble debut with Surveillance State this evening. Kristin recently read the part of Medusa in the 2nd act of Protectress in a reader's theater produced by Opera Contempo. She currently serves as the artist-in-residence at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City, where she has been the featured soloist/soprano in Requiem by Antonio Salieri, Requiem by John Rutter and Requiem by Gabriel Faure. Kristin has sung the roles of Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, First Lady and First Spirit in The Magic Flute, Adina in L'elisir d'amore, the Shepherd in Tosca, Bo Peep in Babes in Toyland, and Christine in a lesser-known version of Phantom of the Opera. Kristin has sung in the Utah Opera chorus and the Phoenix Opera chorus. She has given recitals across the US and Canada. Kristin once delighted audiences in Europe in a brief stint as a busker. Kristin holds a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from Florida State University and a Master in Music in Opera Performance from Arizona State University. She trained as a Meisner actor at the William Esper Studio in NYC. Kristin continues to hone her craft as a singer, and is a skilled and experienced voice teacher of over 23 years, life coach, sound healer, women's circle facilitator, mom, and gardener.

In early June 2013, security infrastructure analyst Edward Snowden leaked numerous classified documents detailing the comprehensive global surveillance programs and

tactics carried out by the National Security Agency (NSA) in the U.S. and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the U.K. This revelation prompted widespread and heated concern over U.S. and British governmental policies in the bulk collection of private communications and internet data of citizens and foreign nationals to counteract terrorist activities at home and abroad. Surveillance State for soprano, alto saxophone, fixed media & live electronics, op. 10, takes as its subject the impact of massive government surveillance on the condition of American Idealism, specifically in matters of the individual’s right to personal freedom and privacy, in the years following the events of 9/11.

This piece is only a small portion of a 2 hour lecture by former CIA operative, John Stockwell. In the full lecture he spends much of the time talking about our destabilization campaign in Nicaragua in the 80’s. The tactics and situation look eerily similar to those of Venezuela right now. I chose this speech because I grew up in an LDS home and am American exceptionalist home. It is hard to separate the two when so much American exceptionalism is baked into the LDS religion. I thought we were the “good guys”. Many of the world views I was taught to believe as a child have been shattered as an adult. The U.S. has gone to terrifying lengths to achieve and maintain hegemony. It is hard to hold people to account if we don’t know when we don’t know the crimes. Listening to this lecture as well as others by other CIA operatives has helped me grasp the way the U.S. interacts with the world. Especially those in the global south. Things have not changed a lot since the 80’s as far as our international policies. And for what? The sounds you hear are layers of electric cello with effects. John Stockwell speaks in such a matter of fact way, so I wanted to try and add some emotion with the music. I hope you enjoy “Land of the Greed, Home is the Depraved”.

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze–

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself–

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale

Refaat Alareer was murdered in an Israeli airstrike. In large part paid for by the U.S. I see the genocide in Gaza, and I weep for all that humanity is not. Free Palestine.