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Circles and Lines is a new composers consortium dedicated to providing an eclectic and accessible sample of compositional styles in contemporary classical music. The group’s music draws from a wide range of influences including ambient/electronica, rock, tango, minimalism and traditional classical. Its members include Angelica Negron, Noam Faingold, Eric Lemmon, Dylan Glatthorn and Conrad Winslow. www.thecirclesandlines.com

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1981 and is currently based in New York. Interested in creating intricate yet simple narratives that evoke intangible moments in time, she writes music for accordions, toys and electronics as well as chamber ensembles and orchestras. Angélica received an early education in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico where she later studied composition under the guidance of composer Alfonso Fuentes. Her music has been performed by the NYU Percussion Ensemble, Astoria Symphony Orchestra, TRANSIT ensemble, NYU Symphony Orchestra and the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and she has written music for documentaries, films, theater and modern dance. She participated as a curatorial associate for MATA Interval Series for their 2008-09 season where she curated a concert at Issue Project Room (NYC) of music for toys and unconventional instruments.

She holds a master’s degree in music composition from New York University where she studied with Portuguese guitarist and composer Pedro da Silva and film composer Ira Newborn. She also holds a bachelor’s in audiovisual communications from the University of Puerto Rico, and has contributed as a writer to the International Alliance of Women in Music Journal and the British magazine The Wire. Angélica is currently pursuing a doctorate in music composition at The Graduate Center (CUNY), where she studies with Tania León.

Conrad Winslow holds an M.M. degree in film scoring from NYU, and an Honors A.B. degree in music from Rollins College. He is pursuing a Master's degree in composition from the Juilliard School, studying with Pulitzer and Academy Award-winning composer John Corigliano. Winner of the 2010 Juilliard Orchestra Competition, his music is characterized by “harmonic thorniness and rhythmic vitality,” according to the New York Times. He composed music for the film The Last Romantic (2006), an “IndieWIRE undiscovered gem” available on IFC on demand, and his instrumental music has been performed by ensembles such as the American Composers Orchestra and the NYU Symphony, The Guidonian Hand trombone quartet, and ai ensemble. He collaborated with Natalie Weiss of experimental art-pop project Unicornicopia and groundbreaking glitch-hop producer Machinedrum on the musical Camp Wanatachi, commissioned by the co-creator of the Blue Man Group.

Noam Faingold is an eclectic composer who combines pop, modernism and jazz with music from his South American and Middle Eastern heritage. Current projects include performances as composer/guitarist/singer/conductor with his rock orchestra the Noam Faingold Orchestra, and a collaboration with the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey and the Ok Mozart Festival. Noam is also the composer-in-residence for the Midtown School for the Performing Arts in Tulsa, OK, and composition coordinator at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Brunswick, ME. His studies include several summers at the Freie Universität Berlin, the NYU/ASCAP film-scoring workshop and at the Bowdoin Festival, and he holds an MA in composition from New York University and BM in composition from the University of Tulsa. In the fall he will begin his PhD in composition at Kings College in London as a Jack Kent Cooke scholar. Noam is also a conductor and multi-instrumentalist, recently performing as a double bassist with the One World Symphony, Bowdoin Festival Orchestra, the Manhattan Camerata and the Boston-based Juventas new music ensemble.

Dylan Glatthorn is an American composer and lyricist and a recent graduate of NYU Steinhardt’s music composition program where he studied under Steven Rosenhaus. Glatthorn wrote the music, lyrics, and co-wrote the book for his musical, Republic, which had a stage reading in April at the Acorn Theatre in Times Square. The show’s incredible cast included such Broadway regulars as Lauren Worsham (New York City Opera’s Candide), James Moye (Tale of Two Cities, Full Monty), and Tony Award winning actress Beth Leavel (The Drowsy Chaperone, Crazy for You).

Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, he has composed, orchestrated, and music directed for numerous productions at the Palladium Theatre and the Studio@620. His music has been performed by ensembles such as the Quintet of the Americas, the Lumina String Quartet, the PCCA Orchestra, and the PRISM Brass Quintet. Dylan is a founding member of Circles and Lines, a NYC composers collective which has received favorable reviews in the New York Times.

Most recently, he served as music director and arranger for the New York production of Canteen! at the Laurie Beechman Theatre. He is a recipient of the Alan Menken Award, Walker’s Rising Stars Scholarship, Al Downing Jazz Association Scholarship, and the Mensa Education and Research Foundation’s Grosswirth-Salny Scholarship. Dylan resides in New York City and is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.

Composer and Violist Eric Lemmon received his Bachelors in Music at New York University’s Music and Performing Arts Program and is currently pursuing his Masters in Viola Performance at the Mannes Conservatory. He is the founder and editor of the music criticism and review site OpenSourceMusic.org.

As a violist, Eric has performed throughout the New York City metropolitan area with groups such as new music ensemble The Manhattan Camerata, recording artist WAZ sounds, the troupe Project Opera, and for the non-profit Lower East Side Performing Arts. He is also a regular member of Brooklyn’s One World Symphony, where he has played as principal. Eric has also performed as principal violist for works such as Alan Menken’s King David, Bernstein’s Candide, Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, Dylan Glatthorn’s Republic and Robert Cuckson’s A Night of Pity.

As a composer, Eric recently premiered his performance art piece The Cure at Troy based on Seamus Heaney’s work of the same title at the new music venue Le Poisson Rouge. The concert received a favorable review in The New York Times from Alan Kozinn. Eric was awarded NYU’s Creative Collaboration Grant in relation to the performance of The Cure at Troy and was recently awarded Mannes’ Peter M. Gross Grant, which is dedicated to helping students at the conservatory achieve professional goals. Eric’s past and present viola teachers are Stephanie Baer, Pamela McConnell, Laura Shuster and Ira Weller. In composition, past and current teachers include Jerica Oblak and Rudolf Palmer.

Lucía Caruso

Composer and pianist Lucía Caruso was born in Mendoza, Argentina in 1980, where she started her piano studies with Gustavo Gatica. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music in classical piano, she has received important awards in several international piano competitions, such as the Claudio Arrau International Piano Competition in Chile, the Giomar Novaes International Piano Competition in São Paulo, Brazil, and First Prize at the National University of Cuyo Symphony Orchestra Competition, Argentina. She performed as a soloist with that orchestra in 1999 and 2006 and with the National Youth Symphony Orchestra at the National Theatre of San José in Costa Rica. In two consecutive years, in 2002 and 2003, she was one of only four pianists from Europe and the United States that were selected to participate with a scholarship at the International Musiké Academy Festival in Durham, England, with Jean-Bernard Pommier.

Ms. Caruso has an international concert career as a pianist, composer and with her original “Duo Caruso-da Silva” formed with her husband Pedro Henriques da Silva. The performances of her works have taken place in several cities of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica, England, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, at the Audiorio Silvestre Revueltas in Mexico, at the Marble Hall of the Hungarian Radio in Budapest where she performed together with her husband at the opening ceremony of the Portuguese presidency of the European Union, and in the United States, most notably three appearances at the Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall, two at Steinway Hall (NYC) and a performance of her “Orchestral Study” by the Manhattan School of Music Composers Orchestra in 2004. They also created the new group HANGAR 45, where they focus on electronic tango and more...

She also studied piano with Miyoko Nayaka Lotto; and composition and orchestration with Pedro Henriques da Silva in New York City. She is currently completing a Masters Degree in Composition at the New York University with Dr. Dinu Ghezzo, where she is also studying film scoring with renowned film composer Ira Newborn (“Naked Gun,” “Ace Ventura,” “Ferris Bueller's Day Off”). She co-composed with her husband for Richard Témtchine’s new film “How to Seduce Difficult Women” (featuring Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Paul Lazar); for the documentary “Il ritorno di Inge” and she is constantly collaborating with the New York University film students.

Pedro da Silva

An eclectic and versatile Portuguese composer and guitarist, Dr. Pedro da Silva composes in just about every style and plays 18 different instruments. Recently, he has recorded for Oscar-winner Michel Gondry's films "Be Kind Rewind" (ft. Jack Black, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, Sigourney Weaver and Mos Def) and “Interior Design”; composed for Richard Témtchine's (“Dummy” 2002, ft. Adrien Brody, Milla Jovovich) new film "How to Seduce Difficult Women" (ft. Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Rachel Roberts, Paul Lazar); and composed for the prize-winning documentary “Tijuana nada más...” by Yolanda Pividal and Carmen Vidal, a winner of a student Oscar. Pedro has recorded as well with acclaimed film composer Jean-Michel Bernard ("The Science of Sleep", "Human Nature").

Pedro's compositions and performances have taken him to over a dozen countries in four continents: throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Denmark, Finland, and India. He has performed some of the most important concert halls in the world: Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Joe's Pub in New York; Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, Portugal; Auditorio Silvestre Revueltas in Mexico City; Bartók Radio in Budapest, Hungary; among many others. At Carnegie Hall Pedro has had three performances to date in both the Isaac Stern Auditorium and Weill Hall: as a soloist, as part of an ensemble, and as a composer. He has written more than ten orchestral works for the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, and has performed with them and other orchestras such as the Pittsburgh Symphony.

In October 2008, he founded the Manhattan Camerata with his wife, Argentine pianist and composer Lucía Caruso. The Manhattan Camerata is an original and innovative chamber orchestra whose repertoire is mainly focused on early music (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque), contemporary, and World music.

Pedro holds a masters and a doctorate in composition from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour, and has been an adjunct assistant professor of composition at New York University, Steinhardt School, since September 2006. He wrote his doctoral thesis – "Modal Relations and Classification" –on modes and scales from all over the World, classifying, researching and analyzing over 2000 scales from four different standpoints: acoustics, ethnomusicology, music history and set-theory. Some of the modal systems he investigated are: Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Thai, Indonesian, Persian, Turkish, Ancient Greek, Ecclesiastical, as well as African and South American music.

He grew up in several countries – the US, France, Portugal, Canada, Spain and Belgium – and speaks six languages. As a result of this upbringing and of his lifelong exploration of World music and ethnomusicology, he has collected and performs 18 instruments, including: sitar; bouzouki; cuatro; oud; lute; balalaika; mandolin; mandola; bass; ukulele; cavaquinho; viola braguesa; classical, electric and Portuguese guitars. He studied sitar in India in 2001 and 2002 with Neeraj Prem, who is a disciple of Ustad Vilayat Khan's gharana – the most respected musician in India when he was alive.

Pedro has given masterclasses and lectures in the fields in which he specializes: composition, ethnomusicology, tuning, Wagner, Messiaen, film scoring, John Williams' leitmotif system, and guitar, in the US, Argentina and Mexico. Also, he has recently joined the faculty of the online music community Musiccomm along with some of the most renowned musicians of today, mostly including musicians of the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera.