Materials & Makers: Sounds of Human Creation, Craft, and Solidarity

Holden Bitner and Isaac Pyatt are thrilled to present Materials & Makers, a concert of music for cello and percussion celebrating human creativity and resilience. Materials & Makers will feature the music of Caroline Shaw, Annie Gosfield, Donnacha Dennehy, and an original arrangement of Arvo Pärt’s Fratres.

Isaac Pyatt is a percussionist, educator, and composer based in Lexington, Kentucky. He serves as percussionist for Triad-based contemporary ensemble Catchfire Collective, and performs regularly with Lexington, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Salisbury Symphonies. A fierce advocate for new music, he has premiered over 25 new solo & chamber works in the past five years, as well as numerous regional premieres. He can recently be heard on Nathan Hudson’s Music for Falling and Flying, available on Neuma Records.

Holden Bitner lives an eclectic musical life - holding chairs in and performing with symphony orchestras across the southeast, also working for years in Nashville as a studio musician and freelancer, recording and performing with artists of a wide variety of genres. He performs regionally as a solo artist and with his band Lava Lamb, which released their debut EP, Music for Sheep in 2024.

Holden and Isaac are both Doctoral Teaching Assistants at the University of Kentucky, where they met performing with the UK’s New Music Ensemble, becoming friends over their shared passion for modern, curious music and engaging, collaborative performance.