This October, Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble presents their fifth annual New Music Festival, a celebration of composed sound works, with a special focus on those that push composition's boundaries. EDME's executive director, JP Lempke, describes New Music as "a catch-all term for sounds that are composer-driven, encompassing experimental, improvised, electronic, chamber, and symphonic musics. It is contemporary classical, but without the inherent contradiction embedded in that phrase.”

On the 2nd, the opening concert will feature guest artists from around the world. On the 3rd & 4th, EDME & IMPULSE Ensemble will perform newly composed scores, chosen from over 300 international submissions.

Concert 1, Guest Artists is a celebration of new music performers from around the world. Performers will share their personal explorations of the intersections between technology, improvisation, and composition. Concert 1 features:

Lauren Sarah Hayes is a Scottish improviser, sound artist, and scholar who is recognised for her embodied approach to computer music. Her music is a mix of experimental pop/live electronics/techno/noise/free improvisation and has been described as "voracious" and "exhilarating". Her performances stretch, transform, and sculpt sound by manipulating, remixing, and bending voice, drum machines, analogue synths and self-built software live and physically. Her shows are highly gestural, exploring the ephemeral and fragile relationships between sounds, spaces, and audiences. Over nearly two decades, she has developed and honed her live electronics improvisation system, an instrument that allows her to playfully navigate between the realms of responsiveness and unpredictability in both her solo performances and numerous collaborations.

Jessie Lausé is a sound artist, educator, and administrator from central Kentucky. Their work often utilizes experimental electronic and acoustic sound practices, found sounds and physical materials, and alternative notations to encourage diversified sensory engagement. As a teacher of multimedia arts, they are very passionate about creating inclusive and collaborative learning environments and accessible creative spaces.​ Most recently, Jessie has collaborated with the Boulder Public Library, performers at the Yarn/Wire Institute, ~Nois Quartet, and mark-maker Steph Parnes. Jessie is also a member of the Plein Air Sound Collective, an ecosystem of composers, performers, producers, and physical spaces. Plein Air's debut album, Weathering Steel, was recorded at the Tank Center for Sonic Arts in Rangely, Colorado.

Tender Cruncher is the avant-garde electronic experimentalist Penelope Lindsay. Ithaca.com (her old home town before relocating to Oregon) described the project thusly: "strange, but vivaciously real. Minimalism meets Dada in some nexus of weirdo electro acid pop: the results are often lifting and always unique. Lindsay manages to blend high art and punk mentality into a boiling abstraction. There’s an honesty to Tender Cruncher that shines through in the poetry, the oddness, and the nakedness of the compositions. The music attracts through intensity." EDME played with her in Corvallis earlier this year and can attest to the above!

Azalea Twining is a composer and vocalist from NYC and Harrisonburg, VA. Her most recent works include *Enough Rope*, a song cycle set to poetry by Dorothy Parker premiered at MATA (Music at the Anthology) last Spring; *Appalachian Postludes* for String Quartet; and *Sun Through my Window,* for voice, piano, and Appalachian harp, premiered by her band, Allmost Honorable Ladies. She has received commissions from the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artists Program, Cincinnati May Festival, ChamberQUEER, Composers Now Second Stage Initiative, Intersection Ensemble, and Luna Composition Lab–where she studied with Ellen Reid and won the 2021 G. Schirmer for Luna Lab Prize for her piano trio, Under Her Voices.

Neda Nadim is a composer, sound artist, and educator from Tehran, Iran. Her music draws inspiration from Persian poetry and a wide range of human experiences and emotions. Characterized by dense and complex textures, her work is influenced by the microtonal structures and timbral scope of Iranian traditional music. Neda's current interests include electronic music and sound installations. Her compositions have been recognized and performed internationally by ensembles and performers, including Unheard-of//Ensemble, as part of the Klingler ElectroAcoustic Residency; the New Music Festival at Bowling Green State University; Splice Ensemble; ~Nois Saxophone Quartet; Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble; and Fifteen Minutes of Fame (Lisa Cella). Additionally, flutist Claudia Aizaga has performed Neda’s pieces internationally in Quito.