Fuse Ensemble unEarthed Season

Artist Collaborators - Spring 2026

Sarah Aha, visual artist

Award-winning conceptual fine art photographer Sarah Aha’s work transforms imagination and emotion into visual narratives. Her background in Theater Arts and over a decade studying diverse dance forms inform her love of movement and the human form in synchronicity with nature. This dynamic foundation allows her to capture a deep connection between human presence and the spirit of the natural world.

Often the subject of her own lens, Sarah creates self-portraits and conceptual images that externalize her inner landscapes. Using a camera (and sometimes a drone) as her guide, she collects original photographs through travels and collaborations, weaving these elements into meticulously crafted composite images. Each piece integrates evocative colors, textures, and personal symbolism, inviting viewers into a layered experience of the world as both familiar and dreamlike.

Sarah’s mission is to expand our sense of self to embrace all forms of life, bridging the gap between self-discovery and connection to the world. Through her art, she invites us to see exploration of the self as a pathway to belonging, where each discovery connects rather than isolates us.

Jenni Brandon, composer

Jenni Brandon is a renowned composer and conductor known for her collaborations with various musicians and artists, crafting music that is both beautiful and lyrical. Her compositions are characterized by memorable melodies that often draw inspiration from the stories of her collaborators, the natural world, and poetry.

Brandon’s prolific output includes music for soloists, chamber ensembles, concertos, operas, and orchestras, with a catalogue boasting over 100 works. Her compositions have been featured on more than two dozen albums across labels such as Delos, MSR Classics, Blue Griffin, New Focus Recordings, Summit Records, Albany, and Centaur. She has been honored with several prestigious awards including the Sorel Medallion, the American Prize, the Paderewski Cycle, the Women Composers Festival of Hartford International Composition Competition, and the Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition.

Matthew Burtner, composer www.matthewburtner.com is an Alaskan-born composer, sound artist and eco-acoustician whose work explores embodiment, ecology, polytemporality and noise. His music has been performed in concerts around the world and featured by organizations such as NASA, PBS NewsHour, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the BBC, the U.S. State Department under President Obama, and National Geographic. He has published three intermedia climate change works including the IDEA Award-winning telematic opera, Auksalaq.  In 2020 he received an Emmy Award for “Composing Music with Snow and Glaciers” a feature on his Glacier Music by Alaska Public Media. His music has also received international honors and awards from the Musica Nova (Czech Republic), Bourges (France), Gaudeamus (Netherlands), Darmstadt (Germany), and The Russolo (Italy) international music competitions. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award for The Ceiling Floats Away, a large-scale collaborative work with US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Rita Dove. Burtner holds the position of Eleanor Shea Professor of Music at the University of Virginia (www.virginia.edu) where he Co-Directs the Coastal Future Conservatory (http://www.coastalconservatory.org). He also is founder and director of the Alaska-based environmental music non-profit organization EcoSono (www.ecosono.org). His new album Icefield is out now on Ravello Records.

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Gina Biver, composer

Deemed a “musical force of nature” by Gramophone, composer Gina Biver is the founder/director of Fuse Ensemble. Much of her work involves acoustic instruments, electronics, intermedia, and the crossing of boundaries between art forms coalescing into a unified conceptual model. Her work is inspired by the written word and by visual art, both static and moving, as she collaborates with filmmakers, choreographers, poets, media artists, sculptors, and painters.

I Care If You Listen stated that “Biver creates a playground for internal exploration that is both fascinating and deeply effective.” Her work has been presented in the US, Europe, Australia, Canada and Mexico. A champion of new music, with her group Fuse Ensemble she has premiered and performed numerous works by living composers since 2008.

Brittany J. Green, composer

Brittany J. Green (she/her; b. 1991) is a North Carolina-based composer, performer, and educator. Described as “a creative force of attention-seizing versatility” (The Washington Post) and “cinematic in the best sense” (Chicago Classical Review), Brittany’s music works to facilitate collaborative, intimate musical spaces that ignite visceral responses. The intersections between sound, video, movement, and text serves as the focal point of these musical spaces, often questioning and redefining the relationships between these three elements.

Brittany’s music has been featured at concerts and festivals worldwide including Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, World Saxophone Congress, New York City Electronic Music Festival, the American Piano Awards, and performances at Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, the DiMenna Center, and Miller Theater. Her collaborators include Rebekah Heller,  Alarm Will Sound, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and JACK Quartet. Brittany has held residencies with the Louisville Orchestra, Copland House, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Brittany’s research explores the work of Julius Eastman through the lenses of queer engages methodologies from music theory, critical theory, and queer theory to analyze the work of Julius Eastman and situate his output in a lineage of Black experimentalism and as a site of radical imagination and resistance. Additional research interests include investigating sound as a site of strategic opacity in the Black Church and engaging  MaxMSP as a tool for developing creativity and design principles in K-12 Music Education. She has presented research at the North Carolina Music Educators Association Conference, Society of Composers Inc. National Conference, Darkwater Women in Music Festival, and East Carolina University’s Research and Creative Arts Week.

Brittany is a member of The Recording Academy, and Society of Composers, Inc., and holds awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Charles Ives Scholarship), ASCAP Foundation (Morton Gould Award), New Music USA (Creator Development Grant), and Alarm Will Sound (Matt Marks Impact Fund). Brittany holds degrees from UNC-Pembroke (BM Music Education), East Carolina University (MM Composition and Theory), and Duke University (AM Music Composition; Ph.D Music Composition). Brittany teaches composition and music theory at East Carolina University. In her free time she enjoys reading poetry, line dancing, video games, watching basketball, and spending time in front of the bonfire with family and friends.

Gabriella Smith, composer

Gabriella Smith‘s work invites listeners to find joy in climate action. Her music comes from a love of play, exploring new instrumental sounds, and creating musical arcs that transport audiences into sonic landscapes inspired by the natural world. An “outright sensation” (LA Times), her music "exudes inventiveness with a welcoming personality, rousing energy and torrents of joy” (NY Times).

Lost Coast, a concerto for cello and orchestra, written for her longtime collaborator Gabriel Cabezas, received its world premiere in May 2023 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. This work joins her organ concerto, Breathing Forests, written for James McVinnie also premiered by the LA Phil, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Other current projects include a large-scale work for Kronos Quartet, commissioned in celebration of their 50th anniversary season, and an album-length work for yMusic featuring underwater field recordings. In December 2023, her work Tumblebird Contrails was performed on the Nobel Prize Concert by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Her first full-length album, titled Lost Coast, was recorded with Gabriel Cabezas and producer Nadia Sirota at Greenhouse Studios in Iceland and named one of NPR Music’s “26 Favorite Albums Of 2021” and a “Classical Album to Hear Right Now” by The New York Times. Gabriel and Gabriella, as a cello-violin-voice-electronics duo, have performed together around the world, including in Reykjavík, New York City, and Paris.