Outside the Box

MARCH 24 – APRIL 4 | 2026

Now in its nineteenth year, Outside The Box builds on its legacy as an exceptional annual new music festival and concert series. Composers and performers of international acclaim join forces with members of the SIU School of Music performance faculty to create an atmosphere of exciting, engaging, contemporary concert music. All events are free and open to the public. Please join us!

Schedule of Events»

Featured Artists

ERIC MOE

Eric Moe, composer of what the NY Times has called “music of winning exuberance,” and recently described by his physician as a “pleasant male in no acute distress”, has enjoyed extensive support for his work from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, the Barlow Endowment, Meet-the-Composer USA, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, MacDowell, Yaddo, Bellagio, the Camargo Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Montalvo Arts Center, UCross, the Aaron Copland House, Ragdale, Hambidge, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, Avaloch Farms, and the American Dance Festival, among others.

Tri-Stan, his one-woman opera on a text by David Foster Wallace, was hailed by the New York Times as “a tour de force” that “subversively inscribes classical music into pop culture.” One review of his Uncanny Affable Machines (New Focus Recordings), finishes up with “Killer stuff that feels like thinking man’s music”. Strange Exclaiming Music (Naxos) was described in Fanfare as “wonderfully inventive, often joyful, occasionally melancholy, highly rhythmic, frequently irreverent, absolutely eclectic, and always high-octane music.” Kick & Ride (bmop/sound) was a WQXR album of the week: “…it’s completely easy to succumb to the beats and rhythms that come out of Moe’s fantastical imaginarium, a headspace that ties together the free-flowing atonality of Alban Berg with the guttural rumblings of Samuel Barber’s Medea, adding in a healthy dose of superhuman strength.” Other portrait CDs include Where Do You See Yourself In 5 Years, Strenuous Pleasures (New Focus), Meanwhile Back At The Ranch (New World Records), Of Color Braided All Desire, Kicking and Screaming, Up & At ‘Em, Siren Songs (Albany Records), and On the Tip of My Tongue (Centaur).

As a pianist, Moe has premiered and performed works by a wide variety of composers. His playing can be heard on the Albany, Koch, CRI, Mode, New World, and Innova labels in the music of David Del Tredici, John Cage, Roger Zahab, Marc-Antonio Consoli, Mathew Rosenblum, Jay Reise, Ezra Sims, David Keberle, Felix Draeseke, and many others, in addition to his own. His solo recordin,g The Waltz Project Revisited - New Waltzes for Piano, a CD of waltzes for piano by two generations of American composers, was released in 2004 on Albany. Gramophone magazine said of the CD, “Moe’s command of the varied styles is nothing short of remarkable.” He founded and co-directs Pittsburgh’s Music on the Edge new music concert series. Moe holds degrees from Princeton University and U.C. Berkeley; he is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh.

website: https://ericmoe.net

ANDY HUDSON

Performances by Andy Hudson have been hailed as “a treat for the listener” (IAWM Journal) and have been praised for “an uncommon singularity of purpose, technical virtuosity, youthful vigor and a mature sensitivity” (The Clarinet). An “inspiring” (MMR) and “fearless” (Cacophony) performer, he has performed widely across North America, Europe, and Africa in solo, chamber, and orchestral settings in some of the world’s great venues. Praised for his "measured sophistication and expansive phrasing" (Voix des Artes), Andy has been a top prizewinner at the MTNA National Woodwind Competition and has received other prizes in numerous competitions. He has recently performed with the Atlanta, Charlotte, Sarasota, and North Carolina symphonies, and was appointed Bass/3rd Clarinetist of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in 2020; other festival appearances include the Lucerne, Bang on a Can, Hot Air, Sound Atlas, and Great Lakes Chamber Music festivals.

“Truly a performer for the moment" (CVNC) with an "irrepressible musicality" (The Clarinet), Andy is a noted interpreter of contemporary music and has premiered 200+ works to date. He has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on their MusicNOW series and is a clarinetist/bass clarinetist with Miami’s Nu Deco Ensemble and the Raleigh-based ensemble earspace. He is Artistic Director and clarinetist with the international sextet Latitude 49, with whom he can be heard on the albums The Bagatelles Project, Wax and Wire (called “a must-have album for any lover of contemporary music” by The College Music Symposium), Don't Say A Word, and Obsolete Music. His debut solo album halfway home released in 2022 on Potenza Music (called “exceptional” by The Clarinet) and his two books on contemporary pedagogy, Elements of Contemporary Clarinet Technique and SPACE BASS: Advanced Explorations for Bass Clarinet, are co-authored with Roger Zare for Conway Publications.

Andy joined the faculty of the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music as Associate Professor of Clarinet in the Fall of 2023, and has given guest masterclasses at many of the world's great centers for musical study, including conservatories and universities in Romania, South Korea, Egypt, Canada, and across the United States. Previously, he taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was a nominee for the James Y. Joyner Award for Teaching Excellence and the NC State Chair for the International Clarinet Association. Andy is an Artist-Clinician for Buffet Crampon, a Vandoren Performing Artist, and an Ambassador for Rovner Products; he holds degrees from Northwestern University (DMA, MMus) and the Schwob School of Music (BMus). When he’s not practicing, you are likely to find him cycling, trail running, reading, or listening to baseball on the radio.

website: https://www.theandyhudson.com/

JI HYE JUNG

Praised as “spectacular” by the Los Angeles Times and “extraordinary” by the Ventura County Star, the Times describes percussionist Ji Hye Jung as “a centered player who can give the impression of being very still yet at all places at once.” Ms. Jung began concertizing in her native South Korea at the age of nine, where she performed more than 100 concerts, including solo appearances with every major orchestra in Korea. Soon after coming to the United States in 2004, Ms. Jung garnered consecutive first prizes at the 2006 Linz International Marimba Competition and the 2007 Yale Gordon Concerto Competition.

With percussion repertoire still in its formative stages, Ms. Jung feels strongly about collaborating with composers to further the creation of a new voice for the art form. She has commissioned and premiered works by several important composers including, Kevin Puts, Alejandro Viñao, Paul Lansky, John Serry, Lukas Ligeti, and Jason Treuting. In 2013, she made the premier recording of Michael Torke’s marimba concerto Mojav,e and in 2014 recorded Phillip Glass’ Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra for the Naxos label.

Ms. Jung frequently performs with many of today’s most important conductors and instrumentalists. For six years, she has served as principal percussionist with the west coast-based chamber music ensemble Camerata Pacifica, with whom she has premiered works by Bright Sheng and Huang Ruo. She has also recorded Stravinsky’s Les Noces with JoAnn Falletta at the Virginia Arts Festival, performed as soloist with David Robertson conducting an all-Messiaen program at Carnegie Hall, and made her concerto debut with the Houston Symphony under the baton of Hans Graf in 2005.

Other performance credits include appearances at Portugal’s Tomarimbando Festival, the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in Ireland, the Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong, the Grand Teton Music Festival, Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and the Grachtenfestival in Holland.

In 2015, Ji Hye Jung was named Associate Professor of Percussion at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. She previously served as Associate Professor of Percussion at the University of Kansas for six years. An active educator and clinician, Jung has presented masterclasses at the Curtis Institute, the Peabody Conservatory, Rice University, Beijing’s Central Conservatory, and the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland.

Ji Hye Jung completed a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music and a Bachelor of Music degree at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, both under the tutelage of Robert van Sice.

website: https://jihyepercussion.com/

LEE VINSON

w. Lee Vinson is a multifaceted classical percussionist, music educator, and snare drum historian with an extensive background in symphony orchestra performance. From 2007 through 2011, he was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and from 2000 to 2004 served as a member of the United States Navy Band in Washington, DC. In 2012, Mr. Vinson performed as assistant timpanist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on their tour of Ontario and Quebec, and in 2013, performed with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall as part of the Spring for Music festival. He has also appeared as an extra percussionist with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, the Nashville Symphony, and the Alabama Symphony.

A dedicated music educator, Vinson was a guest lecturer at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York during the 2014 - 2015 academic year and also served on the music faculty of the University of Kansas in an adjunct capacity. He was previously a faculty member at Boston University and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and in the summer of 2011 taught at the Interlochen Arts Camp. He presently serves as Adjunct Associate Professor of Percussion at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music.

As a clinician and guest artist Mr. Vinson has appeared at colleges and universities across the United States including the Eastman School of Music, Florida State University, Indiana University, Michigan State University, the Hartt School, the Boston Conservatory, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In 2015 he presented a masterclass in Seoul, South Korea and gave a series of clinics across southern Poland including classes at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, the Academy of Music in Krakow, and the Karol Lipinski Academy in Wroclaw.

A versitle chamber musician, Vinson has performed with the southern California-based chamber music ensemble Camerata Pacifica, at the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Cortona, Italy, and with Nashville's new music ensemble Intersection.

Mr. Vinson is active within the Percussive Arts Society as a two-term member of the Symphonic Committee and was formerly Vice President of the Massachusetts Chapter. He has appeared at the PAS Day of Percussion in Maryland, Massachusetts, Kansas and Tennessee, and in the Fall of 2009 was a featured symphonic clinician at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. At the 2010 Convention he organized and moderated the Symphonic Panel Discussion entitled "Orchestral Percussion in the College Curriculum" and at PASIC 2016 presented a snare drum masterclass entitled "The Etudes That Make Us."

An avid vintage and antique snare drum collector and historian, Mr. Vinson has contributed articles to Not So Modern Drummer Magazine and Percussive Notes. His personal snare drum collection numbers greater than seventy instruments, more than forty of which were manufactured in Boston dating from the 1860s through the 1930s. In 2011 he authored and designed BostonDrumBuilders.com, a website dedicated to researching and preserving the instruments produced by the early 20th century Boston-based drum makers.

Lee holds a bachelor's degree from the Eastman School of Music where he was a student of John Beck, and did graduate study at Boston University. He also attended summer music festivals at Interlochen, Tanglewood, and the Brevard Music Center.

website: https://www.leevinson.com/

STEPHAN MOORE

Stephan Moore is a sound artist, designer, composer, improviser, programmer, engineer, teacher, and curator based in Chicago. His creative work manifests as electronic studio compositions, improvisational outbursts, sound installations, scores for collaborative performances, algorithmic compositions, interactive art, and sound designs for unusual circumstances. Much of his work is collaborative, most notably with sound artist Scott Smallwood in their duo Evidence and with choreographer Yanira Castro in the collective a canary torsi. He is the co-founder of the Chicago Laboratory for Electro-Acoustic Theater (CLEAT) at the Elastic Arts Foundation, which promotes and encourages the creation of multichannel audio works. He is also the president of Isobel Audio LLC, which builds and sells his Hemisphere loudspeakers. He was the music coordinator and touring sound engineer of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (2004-10), and has worked with Pauline Oliveros, Anthony McCall, and Animal Collective, among many others. He is a Professor of Instruction in the Sound Arts and Industries program at Northwestern University.

website: https://oddnoise.com

PAUL HERTZ

Paul Hertz explores algorithmic processes and intermedia in visual art and music. Living in Spain from 1971 to 1983, he began an ongoing practice of collaborative projects with actors and musicians. His most recent large-scale collaborations were the virtual world “Fools Paradise,” with composer Stephen Dembski, 2018, and the algorithmic animation “Campos | Temporales,” with composer Christopher Walczak, 2022. Hertz was the Spain/Chicago Artist-in-Residence at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago in 2023 and Edward E. Elson Artist-in-Residence at the Addison Gallery of American Art in 2025. His curatorial work includes Imaging by Numbers (2008), at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum, Northwestern University and La Finca/The Homestead (1995), one of the earliest art exhibitions on the WWW. His digital prints are included in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum, and various private collections. His new open source software library, PixelAudio, was used to design the electronic instruments for his performance at Outside The Box.

website: https://paulhertz.net/

2026 Concert Featured Performers from the SIU School of Music Faculty: