Hana Ajiashvili is a Georgian-Israeli composer whose works are performed internationally by leading ensembles including the Meitar Ensemble, Musica Nova, Ensemble XXI Century, Continuum, and the Studio for New Music in Moscow. She has received numerous awards, including the Israel Contemporary Players’ Young Israeli Composers Prize (2004), the Prime Minister’s Award for Composers (2008, 2021), the Acum Award (2017), and first prizes in international competitions such as Contempus – University of Macedonia (2022) and the Luxembourg International Composition Competition “Artistes in Herbe” (2025). 

Ajiashvili earned her master’s diploma in piano and composition from the Vano Sarajishvili Tbilisi State Conservatoire in 1995 and continued her studies with Vladimir Tarnopolsky at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where she collaborated with the Studio for New Music and the Young Composers’ Committee of the Moscow Composers’ Union. In 2007, she completed her doctorate at Bar-Ilan University under the supervision of Gideon Lewensohn and Betty Olivero. She currently serves as director of the Or Yehuda Conservatory. 

Hana has received commissions from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, including Zoominout (2011) for the Israel Contemporary Players and Impossible Sketches (2023) for the Meitar Ensemble. Her opera Cut Glass (2020), with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, was widely performed, and she again collaborated with Vavrek in 2023 on the oratorio Philosophies. 

Her music for the film Miracle earned international recognition, winning awards in Poland, Belgium, and China in 2007. Her works are performed worldwide by ensembles such as the Israel Contemporary Players, The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Momenta Quartet (NYC), Mivos Quartet (NYC), Reconsil (Vienna), defunensemble (Finland), Riot Ensemble (London) and Trio Catch (Hamburg). Her music has appeared at festivals including Heroines of Sound (Berlin), CEME (Tel Aviv), Arco (Universität Mozarteum, Salzburg), ISCM World New Music Days, the Asian Composers League Festival, Sound Roads (St. Petersburg), Dresden Nights, Ha-Teiva Marathon, Tzlil Meudcan Festival (Tel Aviv), SaxOpen (Strasbourg), Moscow Autumn and Alternativa (Moscow). 

An American composer, pianist and thereminist of international acclaim, Dalit Hadass Warshaw’s works have been performed by numerous orchestral ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Albany Symphony Orchestra and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. Described by Gramophone magazine as “abound[ing] in narrative suspense and elation, with orchestral writing that embraces everything from the subtle and glistening to a voluptuousness that likely would tickle Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel ,” Warshaw’s music has been praised for its lyricism, distinctive harmonic vocabulary, emotional intensity and vivid sense of character.  

Notable orchestral premieres within the past decade include Conjuring Tristan, a “narrative concerto” for piano and orchestra based on Thomas Mann’s Tristan, and Sirens: A Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra, performed by both the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Albany Symphony. Sirens was described by The Boston Globe as a “sublimely expressive concerto” and listed among “Boston’s Best Classical Music Concerts in 2019.”  

Recent accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016), the Copland House Residency Award (2023), three MacDowell Fellowships (1998, 2019, 2024), a New York State Council on the Arts commission (2022) and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2017), awarded to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts. Earlier in her career, Warshaw received five ASCAP Foundation Grants to Young Composers, a Fulbright Scholarship to Israel, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two BMI Student Composer Awards and multiple residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo, among other honours.  

As a piano soloist, Warshaw premiered her own piano concerto with the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2015 and has appeared with the Rockland Symphony, the Cheyenne Symphony and the Misgav Chamber Players under the direction of Lukas Foss. She has been featured widely as both soloist and chamber musician in venues such as Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall and Bargemusic, where she debuted her seven-movement piano work Different Loves: A Cycle of Classical Portraits in 2021.  

Having studied theremin with the renowned Clara Rockmore from an early age, Warshaw has appeared as theremin soloist with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the New York Festival of Song and the San Francisco Symphony. She has also performed with ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the American Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra.  

Warshaw holds master’s and doctoral degrees in composition from The Juilliard School and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University. A full-time member of the composition faculty at the Boston Conservatory from 2004 to 2014 and former faculty at Juilliard Extension and Pre-College, she currently teaches at the Mannes School of Music and at Brooklyn College (CUNY).  

Warshaw’s debut orchestral album, Dalit Hadass Warshaw: Sirens, was released in April 2025 on BMOP/sound, featuring the Boston Modern Orchestra Project conducted by Gil Rose with guest soloist Carolina Eyck. The recording has received notable acclaim from Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, Sequenza21 and The Ultimate Classical Music Guide by Dave Hurwitz.  

Other recordings include Invocations, a portrait album of solo and chamber works featuring Warshaw’s performances on both piano and theremin, available on Albany Records. 

Nicholas Denton Protsack is a New Zealand–based Canadian composer and cellist who seeks to create new connections between music and the natural world. Described by the Canadian Music Centre as a “composer to keep a close eye on,” his ecologically inspired works often blend notated and recorded media with experimental improvisation. His music has been performed internationally in a range of concert settings, including frequent performances across North America, Europe and New Zealand.  

In 2025, Denton Protsack was named the SOCAN Emerging Composer-in-Residence with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. He has also been a recipient of a BMI Foundation Student Composer Award and multiple SOCAN Young Composer Awards. Recent commissions include works for Stroma (New Zealand), the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the Toronto Summer Music Festival and Ensemble for These Times (E4TT), winners of The American Prize.  

As a cellist, Denton Protsack focuses on contemporary and experimental music, often engaging in collaborative projects that bridge classical and avant-garde traditions. He is a founding member of Moth Quartet (New Zealand) as well as the Canadian-based groups Branchroot Ensemble and Sounds Like Things. While primarily a chamber musician, he has also appeared as a soloist with orchestras including the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra.  

Denton Protsack is the founder and artistic director of Whatnot Records, a genre-defying independent label dedicated to producing, promoting and distributing experimental music in all its forms. Since early 2023, the label has released a variety of collaborative and solo projects by Denton Protsack and by other artists worldwide. His goal for Whatnot Records is to showcase a broad spectrum of experimental work, featuring both emerging and established voices from around the world.  

He recently completed his PhD in music composition at Victoria University of Wellington, where he studied with composers Michael Norris and Dugal McKinnon. His earlier mentors include composer David Garner, and his principal cello teachers include Jean-Michel Fonteneau, Jennifer Culp, Judith Fraser and Morna Howie.  

Adrian Mocanu is a Romanian-Ukrainian composer born in 1989 in Kyiv. He has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and residencies, including the Gaude Polonia scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland (2019), a Postcolonial Recherche residency with Ensemble Recherche (2021–22), an artistic residency at Casa de Velázquez – Académie de France à Madrid (2022), a residency at The Green Room for Performing Artists in Cologne (2023), Malévoz Quartier Culturel in Switzerland (2025), and the Odyssée program from the Association des Centres Culturels de Rencontre (ACCR) and the French Ministry of Culture (2024). He studied composition at the National Music Academy of Ukraine and completed his postgraduate studies at the Centro Superior de Enseñanza Musical Katarina Gurska in Madrid, Spain. 

Mocanu served as composer-in-residence for the Juventudes Musicales de España (Musical Youths of Spain) during the 2023–24 season and, in 2024, was awarded the Weltoffenes Berlin Fellowship of the Senate of Berlin as composer-in-residence with the vocal ensemble Maulwerker. In 2025, he was granted a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome. 

Among his awards are the Frederic Mompou International Award (Barcelona, 2017), second prize at the 4th International Composition Competition GMCL/Jorge Peixinho (Lisbon, 2019), first prize at the Borys Lyatoshynsky Composition Competition (Kharkiv, 2021) and second prize at the 5th Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition (Vienna, 2022). That same year he also received second prize in the 33rd Young Composers Prize organized by the SGAE Foundation (Madrid). In 2024, he became laureate of the George Stephănescu International Composition Competition and received a commission from the DEBUT Classical Singing Competition to compose the mandatory vocal work for that year’s contest. In 2025, he was the winner of the first edition of the St. Francis of Assisi International Composition Competition. 

Mocanu has collaborated with and written works for ensembles including Ensemble Musikfabrik, Maulwerker, Ensemble Recherche, IEMA Ensemble, Ensemble Mosaik, Barcelona Modern Ensemble, PinkNoise Ensemble, Bilbao Sinfonietta, Continuum XXI and Anima Vox Duo. His music has been premiered in Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Serbia, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil and the United States.