James Tenney is an American composer and music theorist. Assimilating the ideas of John Cage starting in the 1960s, he made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal music, and tuning systems including extended just intonation. He has written extensively about music, and as an educator, he has passed his knowledge and understanding of music to students at such institutions as the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Yale University, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, and York University in Toronto.

William Winant is a critically acclaimed percussionist whose unique style has led to collaborations with a range of musicians and artists who have composed music specifically for him. For ten years he was principal percussionist with the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra (Dennis Russell Davies, director), and timpanist with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra 1985-1988 (Nicholas McGegan, director). His recording of Lou Harrison’s “La Koro Sutro” (which he produced for New Albion Records) was the New York Times Critic’s Choice for best contemporary recording of 1988. In 1999 he produced a recording of music by 20th-century avant-garde composers with the influential rock band Sonic Youth; “Goodbye 20th-Century” (SYR4), was hailed by both The Los Angeles Times and New York’s Village Voice as one of the best compendiums of this type of music ever recorded.