About Me

The Loose Filter Project is an arts think tank focused on creating wider cultural engagement for concert music and musicians. It is a space to help bring substantial, notable music and ideas to your attention via informative and entertaining podcasts, writing and blogging.

Stuart Sims, founder of the LF Project, is a conductor, teacher and writer known for outstanding performances of standard repertoire and a fierce commitment to new music. Frequently collaborating with composers, Sims has since 2003 commissioned--in whole or in part--and premiered fourteen new works by nine different composers, and has pioneered several new models of concert presentation and cultural engagement.

He is Associate Professor of Music and Coordinator of Instrumental Studies at California State University, Stanislaus, where he conducts a variety of instrumental ensembles and teaches courses in conducting and music literature. Sims holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting from Arizona State University, studying with Gary W. Hill. He also has received a Master of Music degree in conducting from the University of Michigan, studying with H. Robert Reynolds, and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette.

Dustin Soiseth was an adjunct faculty member at California State University Stanislaus from 2007-2011, where he directed the symphony orchestra, opera, and new music ensemble, as well as taught courses on topics ranging from world music to orchestration. He has degrees from CSU Stanislaus, and from the Meadows School at SMU, were he studied orchestral conducting with Paul Phillips. He has served as a cover conductor for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and is cofounder of the Loose Filter Project. He lives in Oakland.