CompFest

Each year, Emory CompFest brings innovative national and international musicians to Emory and Atlanta. Featured artists have included Sam Pluta & Peter Evans, Natacha Diels, Timuçin Şahin, Annea Lockwood, Yarn/Wire, and others. During their residencies, the artists work with students and faculty and present their music in concert. We seek artists who work in ways that expand traditional compositional frameworks and who can offer exciting and meaningful creative exchanges with the community.

(Nicole Mitchell and Lisa E. Harris)

The work of award-winning African American science fiction author Octavia E. Butler becomes increasingly prophetic as we move through the challenges of the new century. Her novels Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1996) use fiction to illuminate a horrific unraveling of 21st-century America into a despotic chaos where its once-middle-class citizens struggle to survive in an incredibly violent and fragmented reality, void of normalcy, family, and resources. In the 1990s, Butler's Parables warned readers about a possible disintegration of American culture and infrastructure, among the many risks of tyrannical rule. Within Butler's storyline, the character Lauren Oya Olamina, a preacher's daughter of African heritage, helps to rebuild her community through offering EarthSeed, an egalitarian philosophy and spiritual practice which honors inquiry, independent thinking, and realistic acceptance of constant change.

Inspired by and in tribute to Octavia E. Butler, composers Nicole M. Mitchell and Lisa E. Harris have created their own sonic EarthSeed, also in response to the real chaos and horrific nature of our times. EarthSeed is the third of Mitchell's projects inspired by the literature of Butler and marks a first compositional collaboration between Harris and Mitchell. Mitchell's two previous recorded Butler-inspired works are Xenogenesis Suite (Firehouse 12) and Intergalactic Beings (FPE). EarthSeed was commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago and premiered on June 22, 2017. EarthSeed was presented in association with the exhibition of Cauleen Smith: Human_3.0 Reading List.

Watch the premiere of EarthSeed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jx0pn5Aqt4

Nicole Mitchell Gantt is an award-winning creative flutist, composer, conceptualist, bandleader and educator. A Guggenheim Fellow (2023), United States Artist (2020), Doris Duke Artist (2012), and a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2011) her research centers on the powerful legacy of contemporary African American culture and black experimental art. For over 20 years, Mitchell’s critically acclaimed Chicago-based Black Earth Ensemble (BEE) has been her primary compositional laboratory with which she has performed at festivals and art venues throughout Europe, Canada, and the US. The former first woman president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Mitchell composes for contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation and size (from solo to orchestra and large jazz band) while incorporating improvisation and a wide aesthetic expression. She is perhaps best known for her work as a flutist, having developed a unique improvisational language and having been repeatedly awarded “Top Flutist of the Year” by Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association (2010-2025). Mitchell initially emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late 90s, having started as a co-founder of the all-woman group Samana, and a member of the David Boykin Expanse.

Much of Mitchell’s creative process has been informed by literature and narrative, with a special interest in science fiction. Her album, Mandorla Awakening (FPE, 2017), combines Afrofuturism with intercultural collaboration and was selected by the New York Times as the #1 jazz album of 2017. Her latest album, Bamako Chicago Sound System (FPE 2024) celebrates intercultural collaboration with kora master Ballake Sissoko. As a composer, Mitchell has been commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Music NOW, French Ministry of Culture, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Art Institute of Chicago, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America, the Chicago Jazz Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and Bang on a Can. Mitchell has performed with creative music luminaries including Craig Taborn, Terri Lyne Carrington, Roscoe Mitchell, Joelle Leandre, Geri Allen, Mark Dresser, Anthony Davis, Myra Melford, Ed Wilkerson, Rob Mazurek, and Hamid Drake. Mitchell is a professor of music at the University of Virginia and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2025. Her first book, The Mandorla Letters, was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2022.

https://music.virginia.edu/people/nicole-mitchell-gantt

Interdisciplinary artist, musician, and researcher Li(sa E.) Harris uses voice, theremin, electronics, movement, improvisation, meditation, and new media to explore healing in performance and living. Li is trained as a classical voice/opera singer and performs across a wide range of genres and mediums. She is a certified facilitator of DEEP LISTENING®, the sonic philosophies of composer Pauline Oliveros.​ Li starred in the 2017 world premiere of The Nubian Word for Flowers- a Phantom Opera by Pauline Oliveros and Ione produced by the International Contemporary Ensemble,  and in 2023 made her Carnegie Hall debut in Pauline at 90, a celebratory concert led by flautist Claire Chase in honor of Oliveros' legacy. In 2025, Li returned to Carnegie Hall as a soloist in  Cosmic Music: the Celestial Songs of Alice Coltrane. 

The founder/creative director of the socially engaged creative arts studio, Studio Enertia, ​Li ha​s been the recipient of numerous awards that include a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts and the 2021 Dorothea Tanning Award in Music/Sound from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Recent solo exhibitions include Unlit: Sof Landin (Ballroom Marfa, 2023), D.R.E.A.M.= A Way to Afram (Diverse Works, 2023), and This is the Day (Lawndale Art Center, 2024).​ 

She wrote, directed and produced Cry of the Third Eye: a new opera film in Three Acts, a decade long meditation on legacy, loss, and gentrification in Third Ward Houston,Texas. Her albums include Life and That( Studio Enertia 2021) Cry of the Third Eye Original Soundtrack (Studio Enertia 2017), The Last Resort Original Soundtrack (2019), and EarthSeed, her co-composition with composer/flautist Nicole M. Mitchell (FPE Records 2020).​ She appears on pianist Jason Moran's Grammy nominated album All Rise: a Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller (Blue Note Records 2014) and Robert Glasper's Grammy Award Winning album Black Radio III (Blue Note Records 2022.) 

https://lisaeharris.com/project