Program Staff

  • Kenken Gorder | Program Director

    Kenken Gorder is a trumpeter and music educator based in Austin, Texas. His students have performed at the regional, state, and national levels. He is a member of the new music collectives Density512 and Black House Collective. Kenken also founded a mixed-instrument trio in 2022 called knawl, which is composed of saxophone, trumpet, and double bass. He earned a Master of Arts in trumpet performance from the University of Iowa and a Bachelor of Science degree in music education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

    More information about Kenken and his artistic projects can be found at www.kenkengorder.com.

  • Guillermo Delgado | Program Coordinator

    KMFA’s weekend Matinee host Guillermo Delgado is a Texas native who received his Bachelor of Music in voice performance from Stephen F. Austin State University and his Master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma. As a tenor, he has sung lead roles in operas such as Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Mozart’s Così fan tutte and The Magic Flute, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and Alexander Dargomhzkys’ Rusalka.

    After teaching voice in the greater Houston area for a year, he moved to Austin to teach elementary music in Cedar Park. Recently, he has performed in concerts with the Temple Symphony Orchestra and the Georgetown Festival of the Arts.

    Guillermo’s hobbies include playing guitar, winning his fantasy football league, and spending time with his dog Moonshine.

FACULTY

Each member of our faculty are leaders in their field and continue to innovate in their various domains in music performance, music education, and arts administration.

  • Sophie Mathieu is a composer and cellist based in Austin, TX. She specializes in creating ambient, ethereal, and immersive works about vast, expansive places in the natural world. Her music has won her numerous awards, including her orchestral work, moons, which recently received an ASCAP Morton Gould award. Sophie has collaborated with ensembles across the US, including Alarm Will Sound, yMusic, and Eighth Blackbird. As a performer, Sophie eagerly engages with anything that is hands-on and fun. She regularly appears with Less Than Ten and Density512, as well as the Austin-based folk band Middle Sattre and the indie-alternative band Maru. Sophie is passionate about teaching and is currently the Youth Director at Golden Hornet. Outside of music, she enjoys cooking plant-based food, playing Sid Meier's Civilization V, and watching psychological horror films in her free time.

  • An accomplished violist, mandolinist, singer, and composer, Karl holds various music degrees from Mercer University, the University of Maryland and the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a founding and current member of the award-winning touring ensemble, Invoke with whom he travels nationally and internationally as a performer and pedagogue. When he isn’t performing and teaching, Karl enjoys rock climbing, board games, and walking his dogs, Kora and Max. A huge baseball fan, he follows the Cincinnati Reds avidly and rarely misses a game. He is also an avid runner, a weekend Xbox player, lover of fantasy novels, and enjoyer of anything related to Dungeons and Dragons. As an orchestral musician, he served as the principal violist of the Central Texas Philharmonic from 2015-2023 and he regularly subs with the Austin Symphony among others. As a composer and arranger, he is in demand in Texas and beyond and very much enjoys weaving his background in folk and celtic music with the sounds of modern day chamber music and rock. You can often find him enjoying a beer at a trivia night somewhere in Austin, TX.