Outside the Box

March 22-28 | 2025

Now in its eighteenth 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

Erin Cameron

Erin Cameron enjoys a diverse career as a clarinetist, composer, and educator. She serves as Assistant Professor of Clarinet at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Cameron has worked with young musicians and artists at the Arkansas Governor’s School, The Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire, and as a Teaching Fellow at the University of North Texas. An avid proponent of new music, she has performed over 40 world and regional premieres of new works. Cameron is a founding member of the Bantam Winds, an all-female chamber ensemble based in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and she regularly performs with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and the F-Plus Trio. She is also a founding member of the free improvisation trio Sonoren, which released its debut album, Charm the Winds, in May 2023.

Website: erincameronmusic.com/

Tim Crist

Timothy Crist is a Professor of Music at Arkansas State University where he teaches composition, electronic music, music theory, classical guitar, and conducts/directs the AState New Music Ensemble and Guitar Ensembles. He is the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts 2003 Individual Artist Fellowship for Music Composition. He has composed over 300 musical works for various media including solo, chamber, orchestral, band, and electronic media, and is published by Cimarron Music. Crist received M.M. and D.M.A. degrees from the University of Georgia, Athens. Crist’s music is performed throughout the United States and has been featured on National Public Radio, SEAMUS conferences, Southeastern Composers League, the Electronic Music Midwest Festival, the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, and the Society of Composers, Inc. conferences. His students have been selected and received monetary awards to graduate programs at such prestigious institutions as Arizona State University, Bowling Green University, University of Indiana, University of Louisville, The Cleveland Conservatory of Music, and Brown University among others. Among his contributions to Arkansas State University is the development of the first ever Arkansas State Guitar Orchestra, a group whose membership has grown from 20 to over 80.

Crist served as director of the Arkansas State University Lecture-Concert Series from 2010-2020 and Fowler Series Director in 2020. During that time, Crist developed more than 300 community events that included concerts, classes, workshops, lectures, master classes, private lessons, collaborative projects with area schools, class visitations, and other activities on the Arkansas State campus as well as in the community. Crist worked with area teachers and administrators in arranging numerous area school visitations by notable string ensembles (including the Harlem, Parker, and Juilliard String Quartets), woodwind, brass, and guitar soloists and ensembles, Indian dancers, Tuvan throat singers, Baroque ensembles, early music specialists, African drumming ensembles, and flamenco, Persian, Chinese, and Japanese musicians. All of these events were offered to the university, community, and area schools free of charge. The celebration of diversity is vital to the health of a pluralistic society as it inspires the seeking of individuality, contributes to a mode of “seeing” one another, builds tolerance and wonderment, and forms a clearer sense of a diverse global reality. It is therefore critical to continue to provide substantial resources in the mission to engage our community with diverse arts events that reinforce an awareness of life’s great depth, vibrancy, and sophistication. Nowhere is that sophistication better and more fully celebrated, assimilated, and represented than in the artistic experience.

Website: timothycrist.com/

Ryan Gaston

Ryan Gaston (b. 1990) is a performer/composer, instrument designer, and writer who makes devices and music that combine sonic elements of noise, free improvisation, and experimental electroacoustic music. Gaston's creative work explores temporal perception—memory, preconception, time travel, and the concept of the "present"—by using chaotic, unpredictable electronic structures as the conceptual basis for both electronic instruments and musical compositions. His writing focuses on the history and techniques of experimental electronic music and electronic musical instrument design, with a special focus on American west coast trends in the second half of the 20th century.

Gaston holds an MFA in Music Composition and Experimental Sound Practices from the California Institute of the Arts (2016) as well as a BA in Music Composition from Hendrix College (2012). His writing and instruments have been featured at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference, the Canadian Electroacoustic Community's eContact!, the Southern California Institute of Architecture's Offramp, the CalArts Digital Arts Expo, and elsewhere. He is the editor of and frequent contributor to Signal, an online publication managed by California- based electronic musical instrument retailer Perfect Circuit.

Website: ryangastonmusic.com/

Kathleen Ginther

Kathleen Ginther is a Chicago-based composer, educator and passionate new music advocate. Her works have been praised as ‘music of ethereal delicacy’ and ‘otherworldly rapture’; ‘haunting, gauzy and mysterious music, creating a realm of strangeness, as if we were genuinely traveling through the sleeping corridors of the mind.’ Her music is searching and contemplative in nature, but often displays a streak of playfulness and whimsy.

Performances of her music have taken her to Italy, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Thailand, Singapore, China, Japan and Brazil, as well as New York, Boston, Washington, Cleveland, Aspen and Los Angeles. She has been a Visiting Composer at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Bowling Green New Music Festival, the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University, Festival of Women Composers at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Donne in Musica (Fuiggi, Italy), the Utrecht Conservatory, Nigata University (Japan). In 1989 she presented lectures and performances of her music at three Chinese universities (Northeast Normal University in Changchun, Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, and Xian University) at the invitation of the Chinese government.

In Chicago her music has been performed widely in concerts at the Ravinia Festival, The Art Institute of Chicago, Symphony Center, Northwestern University, DePaul University, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Constellation, Experimental Sound Studio, Epiphany Center for the Arts, MoMing Performing Arts Center and Artemisia Gallery, among many others.

Dr. Ginther received her M.M. in Composition from DePaul University, where she studied with George Flynn, and her D.M.A. in Composition from Northwestern University, where her teachers were Alan Stout and M. William Karlins. She spend the summers of 1984 and 85 at the Aspen Music School studying composition and working in the Electronic Music Studio, and attended the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik during the summer of 1988. She has been an Associate Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts for three residencies (June, 1989, Associate of Jacob Druckman; March, 1998 and March, 2002, Associate of Bernard Rands).

Throughout her career, Dr. Ginther has worked with a series of composer-based advocacy groups in an effort to help expand performance opportunities for underrepresented composers and to expand the audience for new music. As President and Program Director of American Women Composers Midwest in Chicago, she presented concerts and worked with other performing and presenting groups to integrate works by little known women composers into their repertoires. While at Southern Illinois University she founded and directed an annual festival of new music called ‘Outside The Box.’ A long-time member of the innovative Chicago Composers’ Consortium she now serves as President of that organization.

Website: www.kathleenginther.com/

Angela Kim

Angela Kim, hailed by international press as "a pianist of the highest technical standard," is an artist who shows her versatility through vivid imagination and profound musical expression. Ms. Kim is a passionate advocate of the transformative power of music and education. As a highly sought-after pedagogue, Ms. Kim was honored with induction into the Steinway & Sons Teacher Hall of Fame in October 2023.

Ms. Kim is driven by a continuous pursuit of musical excellence and the quest to develop original expressions. Her ongoing performance initiatives encompass commissioning solo works by BIPOC composers, exploring electronic music, multimedia collaborations integrating dance and video art, and her ensemble group 48 St. Stephen with violinist Clara Kim.

Embracing her role as a classical pianist in the 21st century, she is committed to programming traditional masterpieces alongside new compositions by sought-after living composers. Throughout her career, Ms. Kim has premiered compositions by influential figures such as Steve Reich, Gunther Schuller, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Carrick, and Yoon-Ji Lee. Recent premieres highlight her collaboration with Christopher Stark (2022 Rome Prize Fellow), Leilehua Lanzilotti (2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist), and Molly Herron (Vanderbilt University). Looking ahead to 2024-2025 season, Ms. Kim anticipates premiering new pieces by Dan VanHassel, Xavier Beteta, and Juantio Becenti.

In 2022, Ms. Kim was honored with the Classical Commissioning Grants from the Mellon Foundation’s Chamber Music America, one of the largest grants for chamber music in the United States. Her accolades also include the prestigious Henry Cobos Endowed Piano Prize from the Eastman School of Music, and an Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club, a venerable institution supporting arts, science, and literature in Boston, MA.

Ms. Kim has performed extensively throughout the United States, South America, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Korea. She earned academic honors, completing her Bachelor's, Master's, and Graduate Diploma at the New England Conservatory of Music. She went on to achieve her Doctorate of Piano Performance and Literature at the Eastman School of Music. Following graduation, she immediately held a teaching position at the New England Conservatory of Music as a Professor of Theory.

Currently, Ms. Kim serves as an Associate Professor of Piano and Director of the Keyboard Area at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. In the academic year 2022-2023, she held the position of Visiting Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music.

Website: www.angelakimpiano.com/

Sarah Belle Reid

Sarah Belle Reid is a performer-composer who plays trumpet, modular synthesizer, and an ever-growing collection of handcrafted electronic instruments. Her unique musical voice explores the intersections between contemporary classical music, experimental and interactive electronics, visual arts, noise music, and improvisation. Often praised for her ability to transport audience members through vivid sonic adventures, Reid's sonic palette has been described as ranging from "graceful" and "danceable" all the way to "silk-falling-through-space," and "pit-full-of-centipedes" (San Francisco Classical Voice). Reid holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from California Institute of the Arts, with a research focus on the development of new electronic instruments and musical notation systems as interfaces for exploring temporal perception and co-creation. Her debut album for trumpet and interactive electronics, "Underneath and Sonder," was released on pfMENTUM in October, 2019. In March 2024 she released a tape-music inspired electroacoustic record titled “MASS”, featuring trumpet, voice, electronics, and amplified objects, on Aurora Central Records. As a soloist, Reid frequently performs her own original music for trumpet and electronics across North America and Europe, often presenting work in quadraphonic or multi-channel surround sound. She has performed as a featured artist/collaborator with Julia Holter, Charlie Haden, Carolina Eyck, Vinny Golia, David Rosenboom, James Fei, Todd Barton, Kris Tiner, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, among many others.

Website: www.sarahbellereid.com/

Stephen Andrew Taylor

Stephen Andrew Taylor composes music that explores boundaries between art and science. His first orchestra commission, Unapproachable Light, inspired by images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the New Testament, was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in 1996 in Carnegie Hall. Other works include the chamber quartet Quark Shadows, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony and premiered in 2001; and Seven Memorials, a half-hour cycle for piano inspired by the work of Maya Lin, featured at Tanglewood in 2006 with pianist Gloria Cheng. The Machine Awakes, a CD of his orchestra, chamber and electronic music was released in 2010 on Albany Records. Paradises Lost, an opera based on a novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, received its Canadian premiere in 2013, conducted by the composer. In 2015 the New York Times called his piano work Variations Ascending, premiered by Ian Hobson, “persuasive and powerful.”

Taylor also works with live electronics in pieces such as Inspiral for contraforte and 4-channel surround sound, premiered by Henry Skolnick in South Korea in 2019; and Ocean of Air (2017) for Detroit Symphony principal trombonist Kenneth Thompkins. He conducts the Illinois Modern Ensemble, and has also appeared as conductor with Sinfonia da Camera, the Nouveau Classical Project, and the Arizona Chamber Music Festival. As a theorist, he has written and lectured on data sonification, György Ligeti, African rhythm, Björk and Radiohead. In popular music he has collaborated on concerts and albums with Pink Martini, Lang Lang, Jimmie Herrod, rock singer Storm Large, The Von Trapps, and cabaret/performance artist Meow Meow; his arrangements have been performed by orchestras worldwide, including the Oregon Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the National Symphony (Kennedy Center), the Cleveland Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony.

Born in 1965, he grew up in Illinois and studied at Northwestern and Cornell Universities, and the California Institute of the Arts; his teachers include Steven Stucky, Karel Husa, Mel Powell, Bill Karlins and Alan Stout. His music has won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau, Composers, Inc., the Debussy Trio, the Howard Foundation, the College Band Directors National Association, the New York State Federation of Music Clubs, the Illinois Arts Council, the American Music Center, and ASCAP. Among his commissions are works for Northwestern University, University of Illinois, the Syracuse Society for New Music, the Jupiter Quartet, the Spoleto Festival, Pink Martini and the Oregon Symphony, the Quad City Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, Quartet New Generation, Piano Spheres, and the American Composers Orchestra. Taylor is Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he lives with his spouse, artist Hua Nian.

Website: www.stephenandrewtaylor.net/

Vinny Golia

Vinny Golia plays Soprillo, Sopranino, Db, C & G Piccolos, Db, C, Alto, Bass & Contrabass flutes, C, Bb & G Mezzo Soprano, Bb Curved Soprano, F Mezzo Soprano, Alto, Stritch, C Melody, Tenor, Baritone, Bass and Contrabass (tubax) Saxophones, Ab, Eb, C, Bb, A, A Basset Clarinet, Basset Horn, Alto, Bass, Contra Alto & Contra Bass Clarinets, along with various non-western aerophones, gongs, Himalayan Singing Bowls and a small amount of percussion, Bassoon & English Horn.

As a composer Vinny Golia fuses the rich heritage of Jazz, contemporary classical and world music into his own unique compositions. Also a bandleader, Golia has presented his music to concert audiences in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United States in ensembles varying dramatically in size and instrumentation. Mr. Golia has won numerous awards as a composer, including grants from The National Endowment of the Arts, The Lila Wallace Commissioning Program, The California Arts Council, Meet the Composer,Clausen Foundation of the Arts, Funds for U.S. Artists and the American Composers Forum. In 1982 he created the on-going 50 piece Vinny Golia Large Ensemble to perform his compositions for chamber orchestra and jazz ensembles.

A multi-woodwind performer, Vinny’s recordings have been consistently picked by critics and readers of music journals for their yearly “ten best” lists. In 1990 he was the winner of the Jazz Times TDWR award for Bass Saxophone. In 1998 he ranked 1st in the Cadence Magazine Writers & Readers Poll and has continually placed in the Downbeat Critic’s Poll for Baritone & Soprano Saxophone. In 1999 Vinny won the LA Weekly’s Award for “Best Jazz Musician”. Jazziz Magazine has also named him as one of the 100 people who have influenced the course of Jazz in our Century. In 2006 The Jazz Journalists Association honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. 2013 Vinny won the Downbeat Critic’s Poll in the “New Star” category for Baritone Saxophone.

2025 Concert Featured Performers from SIU School of Music Faculty:

Christopher Butler, Percussion
Anthony Gray, Piano
Yuko Kato, Piano
Richard Kelley, Saxophone
Eric Mandat, Clarinet
Christopher Morehouse Director of Bands