Taylor Ho Bynum is a composer, performer, interdisciplinary collaborator, producer, organizer, teacher and writer. His expressionistic playing on cornet and expansive vision as composer have garnered him critical attention on over 20 recordings as a bandleader and dozens more as a sideman, including The Ambiguity Manifesto, a top-10 choice in the 2019 NPR Jazz Critics' Poll. His varied endeavors include leading his own bands, his Acoustic Bicycle Tours (where he travels to concerts solely by bike across thousands of miles) and his stewardship of Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Foundation (which he served as executive director from 2010-2018, producing and performing on many major Braxton projects, including two operas and multiple festivals). Bynum has worked with other legendary figures such as Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor and maintains current collaborative projects with Tomas Fujiwara, Mary Halvorson, Kyoko Kitamura, Joe Morris and Tomeka Reid, among others. He is currently the director of the Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth College, where he also teaches music history, composition and improvisation, and his writing has been published in The New Yorker, Point of Departure and Sound American.

A native of Florence, Italy, Filippo Ciabatti is the Music Director of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, and the Interim Music Director of the Dartmouth's Choral Ensembles. He also contributed to creating Dartmouth's Opera Lab. In October 2018, its first production featured Grammy Award-winning baritone Daniel Belcher and soprano Amy Owens. In 2018–2019, he led the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra on an Italian tour in collaboration with the Orchestra Toscana dei Conservatori in prominent venues and festivals, including the Puccini Days in Lucca. Other highlights of the season included an all-Beethoven concert with Israeli pianist Sally Pinkas, and a collaboration with the NPR show From The Top, hosted by American pianist Jeremy Denk. In 2020, Mr. Ciabatti conducted the world premiere of a new secular oratorio composed by the renowned jazz composer Taylor Ho Bynum and has collaborated on a project with the Martha Graham Dance Company. As a pianist and vocal coach in Italy, Mr. Ciabatti worked for the Cherubini Conservatory, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Florence Opera Academy. He has played for masterclasses of Renée Fleming, Nathan Gunn, William Matteuzzi, Donald George and Isabel Leonard. Since 2016, he has been music director and vocal coach of "Scuola Italia per Giovani Cantanti Lirici" in Sant'Angelo in Vado (Italy), and since summer 2019 he has joined the faculty of the Opera Viva! program in Verona as music director and vocal coach. He also recently joined the faculty of Camerata de' Bardi, the Young Artists Program of Teatro Grattacielo in New York City. Mr. Ciabatti holds degrees in piano, choral conducting and orchestral conducting from Italy and the United States.