Alex Wand is a Grammy Award-winning musician and composer who performs as a solo artist and in bands Desert Magic and the PARTCH Ensemble, performing at venues and festivals from California to Tibet such as REDCAT, the Bootleg Theater, and the Xinghai International Poetry Festival. He studied composition at the University of Michigan and at CalArts with composers Bright Sheng, Michael Fink, Ulrich Krieger, and Wolfgang von Schweinitz. His music has been described as having “melody lines that can circle through one’s head for days after listening, begging to be rewound and re-listened and timbres and layers that are supremely joyful and poignant and at times absolutely laid bare in their sincerity” (New Classic LA). His compositions combine interests in alternate tunings, poetry, storytelling, folk, and world music. In 2017, MicroFest Records released his chamber music song cycle, The Great Hunt. Alex composed music for KCET’s Lost LA documentary television series and The Harvest Run, a full-length documentary about wheat and corn harvesters in the Midwest. He has worked extensively with choreographer Jay Carlon on ways of amplifying dance movement, most recently at REDCAT’s NOW Festival in 2018. In the fall of 2018, Alex completed a 2,000 mile bicycle ride that followed migratory paths of the monarch butterfly from Los Angeles to Michoacan, Mexico. Throughout the trip, he posted annotated videos each day on his blog, Camino de las Monarcas. The videos contain ecological discoveries, bike adventure tales, field recordings, and original music, and investigate non-anthropocentric outlooks on ecology.