Aiyun Huang
Aiyun Huang enjoys a musical life as soloist, chamber musician, researcher, teacher and producer. Globally recognized since winning the 2002 First Prize and Audience Prize of the Geneva International Music Competition. She is a champion of the existing repertoire and a prominent voice in the collaborative creation of new works. Huang has commissioned and premiered over two hundred works in her three decades as a soloist, chamber musician, and producer. The Globe and Mail critic Robert Everett-Green describes Huang’s playing as “engrossing to hear and to watch” and her choice of repertoire as capable of “renovating our habits of listening.”
Born in Taiwan, she currently holds the position of Professor of Music at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto where she heads the percussion area and directs the University of Toronto Percussion Ensemble. She is the director of the Technology and Performance Integration Research (TaPIR) Lab at the University of Toronto.
Aiyun was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2024.
Michael Jones
Michael Jones is a percussionist and conductor based in Southern California. He has been described by Fanfare Magazine as a “phenomenal player” whose “restraint… carries the music through with otherworldly sounds.” His work focuses on championing new pieces of the 21st century as well as works from the 20th century avant-garde. He is particularly interested in touch, resonance, and the enchanted currents of sounding objects. Composers he has worked closely with include David Macbride, Kevin Good, pluto pell, and Matt Sargent among others. He has performed at the LA Philharmonic’s Noon-to-Midnight Festival, The Ojai Music Festival, The Other Minds Festival, Monday Evening Concerts, The Dog Star Orchestra Festival, and the Hartford New Music Festival.
He’s completed residencies at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Alberta), The Nief Norf Summer Festival (Tennessee), and others. He’s appeared in the past as a member of the Hartford New Music Collective, the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra, the Other Minds Ensemble, the William Winant Percussion Group, Empyrean Ensemble, ECHOI Ensemble, and red fish blue fish. He regularly performs as member and co-founder of the flute/percussion duo Offscreen, with Alexander Ishov, and the piano/percussion project Duo Refracta, with Shaoai Ashley Zhang.
Michael's scholarship focuses on the intersections of 20th-century modernism, instrumental ontology, and continental philosophy. He has presented work at the Nief Norf Festival's Research Summit and the Transplanted Roots Percussion Research Symposium. He currently serves on the Percussive Arts Society's New Music/Research Committee. In 2024 he joined the executive committee of Transplanted Roots, and will help to produce its 2025 conference in Porto, Portugal.
Michael endorses Marimba One vibraphones and marimbas.
Rebecca Lloyd-Jones
Rebecca Lloyd-Jones is a Lecturer at Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, a Marimba One Education Artist, and the Artistic Director of Synergy Percussion. Praised as “captivating” (San Diego Union-Tribune), she has performed at major events such as the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, IMPULS (Graz), soundSCAPE (Italy) and held residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Canada. Rebecca has performed with the PARTCH ensemble, Red Fish Blue Fish and was an adjudicator for the IPEA International Percussion Competition in Hong Kong (2024).
With an extensive research portfolio, Rebecca has received funding from the American Australian Arts Fund, the Creative Arts Research Institute (CARI), and was awarded the 2025 Elizabeth Wood Musicology Research Fellowship from the University of Adelaide. She presented her research at the Transplanted Roots Percussion Research Symposium 2017-2019 and served as the artistic producer for the 2022 symposium in San Diego, USA. As a composer, Rebecca’s works are released on labels including Populist (Los Angeles), New Focus Recordings, and MADE NOW MUSIC, and her pedagogical compositions have been published in the AMEB percussion syllabus.
Rebecca graduated from the Victorian College of Arts with the Desma Woolcock award for academic excellence, received a Master of Music Research from the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, and holds a Doctorate from the University of California San Diego with Distinguished Professor Steven Schick.
Karen Yu
A sound artist and curator based in Hong Kong, Karen Yu’s interests revolve around improvisation with sound objects and bodily movement, and how artistic practices and personal contributions could weave people together in a space through collaborations. With a background in contemporary percussion performance, Yu is currently the Artistic Director of Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong, a Co-Founder of the chamber percussion group, The Up:Strike Project, and an Associate Musician of Hong Kong New Music Ensemble.
She was an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Seoul Dance Center, and commissioned recently by the Hong Kong Arts Centre & Castlefield Gallery, Axel Vervoordt Gallery Hong Kong, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, and Hong Kong West Kowloon Cultural District Freespace. Karen Yu obtained a Bachelor and a Master of Music from McGill University. She is an instrumental instructor at the University of Hong Kong and part-time lecturer at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts School of Theatre & Entertainment Arts.