Winter Solstice Celebration 2025

Praised by the Chicago Classical Review for her “standout” and “joyful” playing, Emma Hospelhorn is a flutist whose creative practices resist easy categorization. As a member of Ensemble Dal Niente, she has recorded works by composers including George Lewis, Hilda Paredes, Erin Gee, Jeff Parker, Igor Santos, Anthony Cheung, and many more. She is one half of The Machine Is Neither…, an electroacoustic duo centered around motion-catpure technology, which has created works including Terra Lingua (2019/2020) for dancers in motion-capture suits and live instruments, and Tree of Secrets (2018) for audience and listening lamp. She performs with a wide variety of improvising ensembles, folk, and pop groups, and additional collaborations include a working duo for instruments and homemade circuits with cellist Katinka Kleijn, as well as stints with Manual Cinema, the Neo-Futurists, Lookingglass Theatre, and Silk Road Rising. She also writes and performs experimental folk music as Em Spel.

Leah Shoshanah is a Chicago-based singer, songwriter and Spiritual musician whose deeply felt, soulful music grows from folk, pop, funk, rock and jazz. Over the past decade, Shoshanah has sung on historic stages in Chicago and across the world. Her original music has been featured in two documentaries, including Blown Away, an acclaimed German movie about two audio engineers who made an album while sailing around the world. In 2019, Shoshanah played a 51-date tour in Germany as part of the movie release. When she returned, she began writing the music for her latest album, To Be Free, which received funding from a Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs (DCASE) grant.

An active chamber musician and avid recital partner, Rick Ferguson was selected to be a senior fellow for the Chicago Chamber Musicians and has performed chamber music, solo, and concerto repertoire in the US and Europe. He maintains an active life as teacher, composer, and arts advocate as co-founder and artistic director of The Musical Offering in Evanston, Illinois, and formerly as classical piano instructor at the Chicago Academy for the Arts. On the composition side, Concerto Grosso on Dystopian Themes for youth orchestra is a commissioned work through Foundation 65 in Evanston, Illinois, which was premiered in May 2018. Additional pieces in the works are Equity Suite for concert band and Prelude, Toccata and Fugue for piano and percussion ensemble. Upcoming commissions include On Beauty for soprano, violin and piano on a text by Kahlil Gibran,

In 2020, Mr Ferguson helped co-found the Evanston Performing Arts Collective (EPAC) and is also a recording artist on the Southport and Albany Records. Mr. Ferguson is a strong advocate of STEAM-based education in the public schools. In his spare time, Mr Ferguson enjoys creating lecture-performance videos on his YouTube channel (Rick Ferguson Music).

Kaitlin Foley is a freelance performer and educator in the Chicagoland area. With joy, she conducts and directs at North Park University, Merit School of Music, People’s Music School, Niles West High School, and with the service-oriented retiree choir Women of Note.

She completed her undergraduate work in music education at the University of Missouri, after which she moved to Chicago to achieve her M.M. in Voice Performance from DePaul University. She worked as an Artist in Residence at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago, where she founded the Rockefeller Children’s Choir. Through various cultural exchange programs including Village Harmony and SongRoots, she has studied non-Western vocal traditions in Corsica, Republic of Georgia, Cuba, and Appalachia. She has served as a clinician across the US and in British Columbia.

Foley is a founding member of the genre-bending vocal theater ensemble Artemisia, for which she also composes and arranges. She is also a regular soloist and performer with Haymarket Opera, Grant Park Chorus, and Third Coast Baroque.

Tony Toneji Garrett is an experienced drummer, an understudy of master drummer Samba Ngom of Kaolak , Senegal W. Africa and also understudy Master drummer Teber Milandou- Sita of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is also experienced in Afro-Cuban drum techniques/ rhythm as well as Caribbean styles of music like. zouk, soca, and calypso.

Tony offers group and private instruction on djembe, djundjun, talking drum, ashiko, conga, bongo and handheld percussion instruments. He also offers drum circle facilitation services to corporate, educational and rehabilitation organizations.