Born in a time where music presumably existed with or without him, Cullyn D. Murphy (b.1993) is a composer, "performer," and friend to many. New York Times describes him as "[redacted]" while the Chicago Tribune "wish[ed] not to comment." Murphy's interests outside of music include magnets, writing instructions for a variety of furniture pieces, and DANGER. Upcoming projects include starting the math-rock band "this is what big words are for", a clarinet solo for marimba, and an opera based on the alleged conspiracy in late February 1861 to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln known as "The Baltimore Plot" for an elementary school in Chicago.

Laura Schwartz enjoys destroying every object in her house in the pursuit of sounds. (^.~) Her recent causalities include: 3 baking pans, 3 graphing calculators, 2 electric fans, and a small baggie of pennies. She regularly performs on amplified electric fan (although not for the Meal 1 concert). :’( As a composer, the music she writes explores written notation as a facilitator of a performer’s own creativity and self-formation. She writes music to create an experience that playfully resonates with curiosity. <(=^x^=)> She attended the University of California, Davis (B.A. in Music 2013), Illinois State University (M.M. in Composition 2015), and the University of Pittsburgh (Ph.D. in Composition and Theory 2019). :D!

Mark Micchelli (b. 1991) is a pianist-composer equally active in the fields of jazz and new music. He is a member of the piano-electronics duo Teeth and Metals, which has performed a variety of fully-composed and freely improvised works throughout the United States and internationally. Mark’s compositions have been featured at ICMC, the Bowling Green New Music Festival, the Oh My Ears Festival, and New Music on the Point; he has also performed other people’s compositions at the SPLICE Institute and the Avaloch Farm Music Institute. Mark is also active in the field of music technology, working with violinist-composer Mari Kimura to develop a gestural controller called MUGIC; he has also held a faculty position as Research Associate for the Future Music Lab at the Atlantic Music Festival. Mark is currently pursuing his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, where he splits his time between the Jazz Studies and Composition/Theory departments. Previously, Mark received an MA in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology from the University of California, Irvine, and a BA from Columbia University, where he studied music and computer science.