F-PLUS is a violin, clarinet, and percussion trio committed to collaborating with today's most exciting composers to establish a diverse repertoire for their unique instrumentation. Formed in 2016 at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, the ensemble has performed all over the country, including Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Ear Taxi Festival, the International Clarinet Association "ClarinetFest," and the New Music Gathering. F-PLUS has premiered over 35 new works since its inception, including commissioned works by Chen Yi, Donnacha Dennehy, GRAMMY-winner Jessie Montgomery, Grawemeyer-winner George Tsontakis, Emma O'Halloran, Gemma Peacocke, Perry Goldstein, Matthew Ricketts, and Charles Peck, among many others. The ensembled has been the recipient of commissioning grants and additional funding from the Koussevitzky Foundation, Fromm Foundation, Chamber Music America, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, New Music USA, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Irish Arts Council and the New Zealand Arts Council. F-PLUS is committed to working with the next generation of composers and performers, and has held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Delaware, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Washington University (St. Louis), University of Texas-Austin, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, UNC-Pembroke, UNC-Wilmington, and Grand Valley State, Central Michigan, Stony Brook, Duke, and Illinois State Universities.
Hailed by Musical America for her “deliciously meaty” tone, violinist KATE DREYFUSS is an adventurous musician known for her “uncompromising commitment” and “fearless approach” (Cacophony Magazine) to performance.
A staunch advocate for the music of our time, Dreyfuss co-founded the violin-clarinet-percussion trio F-PLUS, is a core member of Contemporaneous, and has been a guest violinist with ETHEL and Hub New Music. She has premiered over 70 new solo and chamber music works, and has collaborated closely with such composers as Matthew Barnson, Shih-Hui Chen, Andreia Pinto Correia, Donnacha Dennehy, Perry Goldstein, John Harbison, Takuma Itoh, Missy Mazzoli, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Dan Trueman, and Julia Wolfe.
Dreyfuss has shared the stage with members of the Emerson String Quartet, Colin Carr, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and has held fellowships at the Bowdoin International Music Festival and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. She has also appeared at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival with F-PLUS, where the trio was mentored by the Emerson String Quartet and Eighth Blackbird as part of the festival’s Shouse Institute for young, emerging chamber ensembles. In 2019, she performed all four of Julia Wolfe's string quartets with ETHEL at The Jewish Museum in New York City.
Dreyfuss holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University, where she studied with Jennifer Frautschi and Arnaud Sussmann. She previously completed her Master of Music degree at Stony Brook, and earned her Bachelor of Arts in French literature, with honors, at Princeton University. Previous teachers include Elizabeth Chang and Louise Behrend at the Pre-College division of The Juilliard School, and Ryan Meehan of the Calidore String Quartet.
Praised as “beguiling” (Chicago Tribune) and a “superb performer” (Chicago Classical Review), percussionist Dr. Josh Graham has had the pleasure of performing throughout the United States and Canada. He serves as Percussion Program Coordinator and Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, directing one of the first university percussion programs in the United States. In addition, he serves as Executive Director and percussionist for the trio F-PLUS, Principal Percussionist of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra, and regularly collaborates with the Chen String Quartet (led by Chicago Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Robert Chen).
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Josh made his concerto debut in 2014 at the Aspen Music Festival with Steve Mackey’s “Micro-Concerto,” and his current project “Music and Literature” pairs new solo marimba works based on poetry and prose, premiered at the author’s homes. These recent works include pieces by Tina Davidson, Mike Conrad, and Griffin Candey based on the writings of Robert Frost, James Hearst, and Ernest Hemingway, respectively.
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Festival experience includes the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Ear Taxi Festival, the Chicago Duo Piano Festival, the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, and two summers as the percussionist with the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble at the Aspen Music Festival.
Dr. Graham is committed to serving the next generation as an educator. He served as Instructor of Percussion at the University of Northern Iowa from 2022-24, and previously served on the faculty of Triton College, Roosevelt University, and Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.
He is proud to endorse Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Marimba One instruments, Zildjian Cymbals, and Black Swam Percussion Instruments. He hold degrees from Central Michigan University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois.
Gregory Oakes is an exciting and energetic clarinetist performer and a passionate champion of the music of our time. From his Carnegie Hall debut with members of Ensemble Intercontemporain and Pierre Boulez to his performances as a member of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Oakes has been praised by critics for his “outstanding performance” (New York Times) and “jazzy flourishes” (Denver Post). His performance highlights include a concerto with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the Telluride Jazz Festival with Grammy® Award-winner Terence Blanchard, a concert at Amsterdam’s venerable new music hall De IJsbreker, and a solo feature at Berlin’s prestigious MaerzMusik festival. Oakes has performed at multiple International Clarinet Association ClarinetFests, the University of Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium, the New Music Gathering, and the International Computer Music Conference. He has performed throughout the United States, Brazil, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Thailand. He has held residencies at Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Aspen, and Amsterdam's STEIM. His CD Aesthetic Apparatus: Clarinet Chamber Music of Helmut Lachenmann appears on the New Focus Recordings label. His other recordings appear on Bridge, Centaur, CRI, Gothic, Karnatic Lab Records, and Naxos and broadcasts on National Public Radio. Oakes is on the faculty of Iowa State University and is principal clarinet of the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra. He is a Buffet Group USA and Vandoren Performing Artist.