artists

Composer Brayden Meng (b. 2005) has served as the youngest artist-in-residence at the Aranya Theater Festival twice as well as at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, where he received the Wagner Fellowship for Music and Performance Art. For his compositions, Meng has won first prize of the 2024 Berkeley Piano Club Emerging Artist Grant, the 2024 ISU Music Now Contest, and received honors like the 2025 Tribeca Emerging Composer award and was a Golden Hornet Smackdown semifinalist. Meng also has pieces premiered at the Yellow Barn Music Festival, Interlochen Arts Academy, at the Palladium Center for the Arts and by the Invoke quartet. Among those premieres was playing solo violin for his own violin concerto, and his music has been featured on award-winning films by directors like Kevin Jin Kwan Kim. He also is working on MBODY, making custom clothes for musicians.

Ezekiel (Zeke) Sokoloff is a 19 year old violinist from Salt Lake City, Utah. A four year recipient of the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Scholarship, he has performed with the Utah, Seattle, and Vancouver symphonies, as well as the Chicago Arts Orchestra and the Vienna Opera Ball Orchestra. He has won first prize in events such as in the national MTNA junior string competition, the Vancouver Symphony Young Artist Competition, Seattle Symphony Young Artist Competition, the International Young Artist Concerto Competition, and the Ronald Sachs International Music Competition. He was also a National YoungArts finalist in 2023. Zeke has performed in venues such as the New World Symphony, Carnegie Hall, and the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and attended the Morningside Music Bridge festival. He has performed in masterclasses for artists such as Midori Goto, Augustin Hadelich, Julia Fischer, Noah Bendix-Balgley, and Arnold Steinhardt. He is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in violin performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, studying with Simon James.

Peyton Dexter is a San Francisco-based new-music composer, pianist, and collaborative artist. In 2022 he was a featured artist at the Wintergreen Music Festival at which various works of his were premiered by the Wintergreen Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Erin Freeman. He has written works for the Telegraph Quartet (Bealtaine), members of the WSO (Suburbiana), Sara Kapps (Aria), Erica Meyers, Tyler Ono (5 Twain Songs), and Jon Lee (Bagatelle) among others. He has worked as a collaborative pianist and educator since 2023. He was mentored by Daron Hagen before attending the San Francisco Conservatory of Music to study composition. He currently studies with Mason Bates and Maya Miro Johnson.

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Thomas Stenzel is dedicated to raw artistic expression through composition, performance, and sonic production. They have performed original compositions on Spokane Public Radio and produced works for multimedia projects. He has been featured on the front page of the Spokesman Review, performing a composition that was “filled with a vibrant energy”. He writes, produces, and plays in a wide range of styles from metal to electronic to contemporary jazz and classical. They study with Lennie Moore at San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Edward (Eddie) Chen is a 19-year-old Taiwanese American dancer studying Computer Science at Stanford University. Trained in choreography and freestyle since age 7, he’s won 1st place in Hip Hop competitions and ranked Division 1 nationally in Ballroom Latin Formation—experiences that inspired his TEDx Talk, “Embracing Your Whole Self with Freestyle Dancing.” Eddie is a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts and a 2023 National YoungArts Winner with Distinction in Hip Hop Dance. At Stanford, Eddie has taught and choreographed for the Department of Theater and Performance Studies and Alliance Dance Crew and has created his own dance collective, Haven, to expose the community to new possibilities through dance. Eddie also co-founded Dancing Moves the Heart and has taught Hip Hop dance to more than 700 underserved youth in California and Taiwan. Eddie believes that “passion begets passion” as he continues to inspire change across local and global communities.

Hello! My name is Kay Karsono and I’m a Media Studies student at UC Berkeley with a career interest in film and digital marketing. Whether it be working on live sets or editing in post production, I’ve spent the last three years learning about filmmaking and pursuing various other creative ventures including photography and graphic design. This has led me to a variety of different projects ranging from interviews, videography gigs, and even directing short films. I’m constantly looking for a new project to work on and am eager to collaborate with other like-minded creatives. I’m always open to working on a variety of jobs and broadening my experiences no matter how big or small the role/project, I love seeing creative visions come to life!

Chloe is a professional independent photographer focused on capturing real moments with clarity and style. She approaches every event with a creative eye and a steady hand to deliver timeless, authentic images.