INSTRUCTORS
Join

I want to learn from

Working artists from the network, teaching live. The blank above names one of who’s here; click it to choose, and the list below follows.

…or teach here.

Most of our classes began as a proposal.

Tell us what you would teach. We shape it with you, and in this first season we help gather its first room.

Propose a Course
Role
13 instructors
Chris BottaFacilitator · New York CityChris Botta is a Queens-based producer and engineer, and the founder of Fer Sound, a mixing, mastering, and production studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn — named for Saint Christopher, the ferryman, in the spirit of carrying artists from one end of a musical journey to the other. With his interests positioned uncomfortably between contemporary chamber, electronic, and popular music forms, he has worked with artists including Yaeji, Dua Lipa, RM (BTS), Kelsey Lu, Balming Tiger, Gabriel Kahane, Roomful of Teeth, yuniya, Emily Wells, Arushi Jain, David Lang, and the JACK and Attacca Quartets, alongside longtime collaborator Shahzad Ismaily. Chris joined the FSN team in 2016 on the Dosti Music Project, and has since worked across programs including OneBeat US and abroad (Sahara, Borneo, and Taiwan), Mosaic, and Commercial as a facilitator, producer, and recording, mixing, and mastering engineer.TeachingOther Ears: Works In ProgressWorkshop ·
Christopher MarianettiFacilitator · Jackson Heights, United StatesChristopher Marianetti is a composer, filmmaker, and producer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose work uses collaborative art-making and technology to connect people across cultural and societal divides. He co-founded Found Sound Nation, a production company and nonprofit, and currently leads the American Musician Mentorship Program, developed in partnership with the Recording Academy/GRAMMYs®, supporting musician entrepreneurs and music industry professionals around the world. He previously co-founded and served as artistic director of OneBeat, a music diplomacy initiative that brought together over 800 artists from 80+ countries and raised more than $15 million for music-based programming globally. Christopher is a 2025 Creative Capital Award Winner, MacDowell Fellow, and TED Global Featured Artist. His work has been presented at Carnegie Hall, MASS MoCA, WOMEX, and the Lucerne Festival. His short film Wall Piano screened at 25+ festivals and won 10 awards.TeachingFSN's Project ClinicLab ·
Derek GripperFacilitator · Cape Town, South AfricaDerek Gripper is a guitarist from Cape Town, South Africa, known for his groundbreaking work translating the music of the West African kora onto six-string classical guitar. His practice bridges classical guitar, Malian repertoire, oral tradition, improvisation, and deep listening. Gripper has become widely recognized for his adaptations of music by Toumani Diabaté and other kora masters, expanding the vocabulary of the guitar while opening new conversations between African musical traditions and contemporary classical performance.TeachingThe Full Stop Belongs to God: Repetition, Kumbengo and Practice. Lab ·
Elena Moon ParkFacilitator · Brooklyn, New York City, United StatesI play music, swim in natural bodies of water, and think about urban policy.TeachingFSN's Project ClinicLab ·
Ezra TenenbaumFacilitator · New York City, United StatesEzra Tenenbaum is a New York-based music composer and producer. He has worked on releases for numerous independent labels including Captured Tracks, Fools Gold, Sinderlyn, Fire Talk, House of Feelings, Tugboat Records (Japan), Dinosaur City Records (Australia), Bobo Integral (Spain) and others. Working with Found Sound Nation since 2012, Ezra has helped to organize recording and performing residencies for global musicians throughout the U.S. and internationally, including in Lebanon, Algeria, Indonesia, Ghana, Taiwan, Italy and Haiti.TeachingProposing a course for next season
Your nameWorking artist · anywhereMost of our classes began as a proposal from someone in the network. Propose one; we’ll shape it with you.Propose a Course TeachingYour first course, next season
Found Sound NationFacilitator · Ridgewood, New York City, United StatesOver the past 15 years, Found Sound Nation has worked with a diverse array of institutions and partners, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Doris Duke Foundation, TED, MIT, The New School, and many more, to create music-centered socially impactful programming. These initiatives - from songwriting workshops with incarcerated youth to music-making & listening seminars for MIT entrepreneurs - cemented our belief in the transformative potential of co-creation across geographic, cultural, and demographic boundaries. In 2012, we launched OneBeat, a groundbreaking music diplomacy program in partnership with the U.S. State Department. OneBeat brought together outstanding musicians from around the world to collaborate, create, and develop new models for civic and social engagement through music.TeachingListening as CompositionMasterclass ·
JlinFacilitator · Gary, United StatesMy name is Jlin, and I am based out of Gary Indiana. I am an experimental electronic composer who loves making percussion vibe music.TeachingProposing a course for next season
Joy MoughanniFacilitator · Beirut, LebanonJoy Moughanni is a Beirut-based producer, engineer, and songwriter, as well as a partner at Beirut's Tunefork Studios. Transitioning to his solo career, he became a sought-after production collaborator in Beirut’s alternative scene, producing several albums for regional artists, exploring genres like Punk, Noise, Hip Hop, Electronic and Pop. Joy’s personal work explores sound in relational contexts, drawing from archives, his architectural studies and spatial sonic installations and collages. Recently, he has been sonically exploring themes of personal and political manipulation through his debut solo noise and ambient album “A Separation From Habit” Voted #48 on The Quietus 2025 Album of the year. The album is an introspective exploration of cyclical trauma that transcends the narrative of post-war identity. This collection of electronic performances and sonic collages draws from archival recordings made on tape by the late Georges Tarazi between 1975 and 1985. Through these fragments Moughanni confronts themes of occupation and the ongoing crises that have shaped the Lebanese experience since the first Israeli invasion in 1978, carrying through to the contemporary realities of October 2024, during which the album was created. Joy continues to build solidarity within Lebanon’s small but vibrant artistic community. TeachingDancefloor UtopiasLab ·
Kyla-Rose SmithFacilitator · New York City, United StatesI'm an arts leader, producer, and cultural strategist. Everything I've made started with a curiosity - what art does to people, and what people do when you hand them the means to make it? I began as a founding member of the South African band Freshlyground, which took me to some of the world's biggest stages, alongside Stevie Wonder, BB King, and Hugh Masekela. With Shakira, I co-wrote and performed "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)," the 2010 FIFA World Cup anthem that became one of the best-selling singles of all time. But performance has only been one part of my practice. My work has moved through sound-mapping projects, public engagements, and interactive installations. Each of these as a way of asking what art can hold. Today I'm the Executive Director of Found Sound Nation, building programs and platforms that connect artists across borders, lift up emerging voices, and take seriously the idea that making things together is how we learn to live togetherTeachingProposing a course for next season
NINA NINAFacilitator · Mexico City, MexicoDaniela Ordóñez Guerrero, aka NINA NINA, is a multidisciplinary artist with musical training and origins in hip-hop and house music. Their music travels through the Latin rhythms of her native Veracruz coast and the world, incorporating the fabulousness of vogue and the odysseys of electronic leftfield. From live concerts to playful and daring DJ sets, they propose eclectic journeys for audiences who love to party. Club queen of the queer underground, with a national and international presence, the language of NINA NINA is translated into synthesizers, mixers and rhythm machines. NINA NINA recently toured in Colombia, Uruguay and Argentina, where they are recognized in the LGBTQIA+ circles and underground circuits. They are also part of LAS HIJAS DEL RAP, an all female/non binary hip hop collective that re-appropriates tools of urban culture to strengthen joyful, pleasurable, and audacious feminist narratives in Latin America.TeachingDancefloor UtopiasLab ·
Samer Etienne ChamiFacilitator · Beirut, LebanonSamer Etienne Chami (a.k.a Etyen) is a Beirut-based composer, producer and sound designer. In addition to his solo project as Etyen, he has collaborated with a number of groundbreaking artists including the provocative Syrian-Filipino rapper Chyno. Weaving together samples from unlikely sources -- such as iconic Lebanese vocalist Wadih El Safi -- Etyen creates a unique sound universe that is at once global and rooted in his local scene. He describes himself as a music producer and "philosopher of sorts," finding great personal and political power in the act of musical expression. "Through creation, I found an escape; my ultimate form of expression. A means by which I could cope with the world and understand it and myself better. Making music helps me stay true to my feelings and myself, by understanding where the inspiration comes from, what motivates and drives it and myself to make it come to life in the first place."TeachingCaring for CatalogueWorkshop ·
Shahzad IsmailyFacilitator · Brooklyn, New York City, United StatesI'm a multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer based in Brooklyn, where I founded Figure 8 Recording, a studio built as much around community as around sound. Largely self-taught, with a master's in biochemistry picked up somewhere along the way. I have recorded or performed with so many incredible artists including Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Tom Waits, John Zorn, and Feist -- across more than 400 albums. I'm one third of the Grammy-nominated trio Love in Exile with Arooj Aftab and Vijay Iyer, and have been a OneBeat Collaborating Artist since 2017. I don't believe art is made by a heroic individual alone. Music is a conversation: every note responds to another. When I'm producing a record or in a room with other players, I'm working to make the space safe enough for the most vulnerable version of the music to appear, the one usually hidden even from the person making it. I try to keep my palms open, facing the people in front of me. By giving we both grow.TeachingOther Ears: Works In ProgressWorkshop ·
Zain AlamFacilitator · Brooklyn, United StatesZain Alam (b. 1990) is an artist and composer of Hindustani origin born in Flushing, Queens and raised outside of Atlanta. His work emerges from a lifelong question: in what ways can sound convey the ineffable? He contemplates especially the distance between the effable in one language and what lies beyond translation to another. His recording project Humeysha began during his year working as an oral historian for 1947 Partition Archive. Across video, performance, and installation, sound remains the central organizing principle in Alam's practice, in addition to collaborations in film, sculpture, and design. Alam’s work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Vice, Village Voice, and the New York Times. His performances have been staged at the Rubin Foundation, Creative Time, and Center for Arts, Research and Alliances (CARA). His installations have been exhibited by the Laundromat Project, American Cultural Association of Morocco, and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. He completed his graduate work in Islamic studies at Harvard University. He is a spring 2026 MacDowell fellow and a 2026 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Digital/Electronic Arts. His multi-channel installation work Meter & Light: Night was on view at The Shed as part of their summer 2025 Open Call exhibition. He will be conducting research in South Asia for the next installment of Meter & Light as a recipient of the 2026-2027 Creative Research Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He is the recipient of the Idle Hands Incubation Award and will be exhibiting his work-in-progress HOLY HANDS at Idle Hands December 11-13, 2026 in Wiliamsburg, Brooklyn, NY.TeachingThe Public Life of Your PracticeWorkshop ·