Joshua Nathan Rubin served as the Program Director and then Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble from 2011-2018, where he oversaw the creative direction of hundreds of concerts in the United States and abroad. As a clarinetist, the New York Times has praised him as, “incapable of playing an inexpressive note.” His interest in electronic music has led him to work to make technologies easier to use for both composers and performers, and to build platforms for the collective management of ensembles. He has collaborated with the foremost composers and performers of our time, and this season is featured in performances on modern and on historical clarinets in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Houston, Geneva, Bergen, and Berlin, at Carnegie Hall, and at the Ojai Music Festival. Rubin serves on the faculty of the College of Performing Arts at The New School, Ensemble Evolution, and soundSCAPE Festival in Switzerland, teaching clarinet and electronic music. Joshua holds degrees in Biology and Clarinet from Oberlin College and Conservatory, and a Master’s degree from the Mannes School of Music. He maintains an artistic presence in New York and Los Angeles.

As a solo artist, Heller is known for creating immersive environments — using custom lights, commissioned clothing, and playing from memory — to facilitate electric connections with her audiences. A curious and unceasing advocate for the bassoon as a solo instrument, Heller has worked side-by-side with composers — Steve Reich, Ash Fure, Felipe Lara, George Lewis (and hundreds of others!) over the last decade to forge an exciting new repertoire of works for solo bassoon, bassoon with electronics, and chamber music featuring the bassoon. Many of these compositions can be found on her solo albums: 100 names, which was called “pensive and potent” by The New York Times, and METAFAGOTE, which ArtMusicLounge insists is “here to explode…any preconceived notions you may have had about bassoon music.” As bassoonist (since 2008) and former Co-Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Heller has been a passionate advocate for a more diverse and exciting musical landscape, spearheading landmark ICE commissioning programs and Co-Directing Ensemble Evolution at The New School.

Nicole Sütterlin is an associate professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She earned her PhD from the University of Basel, where she taught before joining Harvard in 2014. Her research and teaching span German, European, and American literature and culture from the 18th century to the present, with particular emphasis on environmental humanities, history of science, and transnational memory and trauma studies. She is the author of Poetik der Wunde: Zur Entdeckung des Traumas in der Literatur der Romantik (“Poetics of the Wound: The Discovery of Trauma in Romantic Literature,” Wallstein 2019). In her current book project, Monstrous Microbes? Multispecies Bodies in the Posthuman Novel, she examines how contemporary fiction mobilizes the microbiome as a critical lens through which to address environmental crises.