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NMGS 2026 Virtual Summit Participants
Keynote: 8-Bit Music Theory
8-bit Music Theory has been breaking down your favourite video game music and figuring out what makes it tick since 2016. With a combination of insightful emotional analysis and technical music theory knowledge, ‘8-bit’ looks to highlight the best musical moments in gaming and figure out exactly what makes them so impactful.
Panel 1: VGM in K-12 Education
Becca Michaelson
Becca Michaelson (she/her) is a vibrant K-5 general music teacher with a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education (Instrumental Emphasis) and a Master’s Degree in Differentiated Instruction. She has written music curriculum for her district and given state and nationwide presentations to other music teachers. Her latest presentation was “Incorporating Video Game Music in the Elementary Classroom”. She has won a district-wide 'Above and Beyond' award. Becca is the co-creator and current president of the Twin Cities Gamer Symphony Orchestra, a Minnesota nonprofit community orchestra that plays symphonic video game arrangements. Becca is a lifelong lover of video game music and hopes to use that to inspire others to find joy in different kinds of musical connections.
Chelsea Holmes
Chelsea Holmes is an instrumentalist and vocalist teaching string orchestra for the Loudoun County Public Schools. She received a Bachelors degree in Music Education and a Masters Degree in Music Performance from East Carolina University. Mrs. Holmes has taught K-12 instrumental and choral music in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Virginia for the past 14 years and is the Fine Arts Department Chair at Sterling Middle School in Sterling, VA.
Last year, she received grants from the Wolftrap Education Foundation and Loudoun Education Foundation to fund her project "Play On! A Collaborative Journey to the Crossroads of Classical and Video Game Music," which culminated in a student performance featuring the Videri String Quartet. She also teaches a studio of private musicians and has performed professionally with groups including Opera Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Singers, Opera Wilmington, and Maryland Lyric Opera.
Dr. Benjamin Taylor
Benjamin Dean Taylor is an award-winning composer known for his energetic, adventurous music. He is one of the few living composers today making his primary income from commissions and self-publishing his music. In addition to these core activities, he enjoys a diversified career leading seminars for music educators, providing clinics for ensembles, performing with his Dixieland Jazz Band, and teaching private composition lessons. Passionate about inspiring the rising generation of musicians, he is the founder and executive director of Music Creators Academy, a summer program that teaches music composition for video games in a virtual setting. He also serves as Program Director for the Indiana University Jacobs Composition Academy, which focuses on concert music composition.
Taylor received his doctorate degree from Indiana University and currently resides in Bloomington, Indiana with his wife and seven children. When not composing, Taylor can be found wrestling with his kids, hiking, backpacking, cooking, running 100+ mile ultramarathons, and doing insane burpee routines. Explore his music at benjamintaylormusic.com.
Panel 2: VGM in Higher Education
Dr. Elizabeth Medina-Gray
Dr. Elizabeth Medina-Gray is associate professor of music theory at Ithaca College. Her research focuses on analysis of music and sound in video games. She has presented her work at national and international conferences, including national meetings of the Society for Music Theory, the American Musicological Society, and the North American Conference on Video Game Music. She serves on the executive committee for the international Society for the Study of Sound and Music in Games. She was a founding Associate Editor for the Journal of Sound and Music in Games, and she served as Associate Editor and then co-Editor-in-Chief for this journal until 2024. Her work appears in Music Theory Online (2019), the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies (2024), The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound (2024), The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music (2021), and other edited volumes.
Dr. Christopher Cayari
Christopher Cayari’s (he/they; Twitter: DrCayari) research focuses on mediated musical performance, YouTube, informal music learning, virtual communities, video game music, and online identity. Their research agenda addresses marginalized voices in music education, specifically sexuality- and gender-diverse individuals (LGBTQIA+) and Asian Americans. They work at blending traditional and innovative research methodologies, particularly working with internet inquiry, performance-based research, autoethnography, and case study. They is an avid YouTube video creator. Christopher regularly publishes online performances, tutorials, and vlogs as well as video case studies about video game musicians. He enjoys collaborating with his students to make user-generated content for YouTube, and their students have virtually performed with other musical collaborators from across the world. His research on video musicians won him the Outstanding Emerging Researcher Award 2021 from the Council of Research in Music Education.
Ava Andrews
Ava Andrews recently graduated from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University with a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance. In tandem with her passion for classical violin, Ava holds an intense love for all things video game music. A founding member of the Music in Games Society @IU, Ava has been involved with countless concerts, panels, and seminars related to video game music. After gaining an interest for game music in high school, she sought ways to introduce more video game music into her community, and share in the joy everyone gets when they hear their favorite soundtrack performed live. Ava is working on her Diploma in Violin Performance, and hopes to join a major orchestra in her future.
Panel 3: VGM Post-Graduation
Thomas Kresge
Thomas Kresge is a composer and orchestrator in games, film, and theater. Recent composing credits music for the officially licensed pinball tables of Toy Story 4 and The Godfather, produced by Jersey Jack Pinball, and the all-electronic score for Spygames, a live social gaming experience located in New York City and London.
Thomas has deep experience in orchestration, arranging, and music preparation, whose clients include Maclaine Diemer (Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure), Marco Beltrami (Deaf President Now!, Silent Night [dir. by John Woo], The Royal Stunt, Waiting for the Barbarians, The Shadow in My Eye, Nine Perfect Strangers, Bach by Beltrami), Diana Ross (Diana Ross with the National Symphony, Diana Ross Live at the Hollywood Bowl: Opening Night 2018, NBC's Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting), Michael James Scott (concert tour), Disney (The Incredibles 2 trailer campaign), Jacob Yoffee (Kohl's trailer campaign), and Robby Duguay (Broken Spectre, Treetop Adventure), among others, as well as fully arranging and orchestrating the scores for a number of musicals, including lead orchestrations on the upcoming new musicals including Girl in Flight and Esther.
Perhaps Thomas’s biggest passion is arranging, having created several hours of arrangements, especially of video game music. Since 2018, Thomas has served as The Game Brass’s primary arranger, producer, mix engineer, and manager, leading them through eleven studio albums, over one hundred music videos, and a live performance on the coveted Main Stage at MAGFest 2023 where he conducted the ensemble.
Outside of writing and arranging, Thomas has perfected the art of managing and mixing remote musicians and ensembles. He works as a session musician contractor, connecting composers with home recording artists to produce scores of any size, with almost any instrument you can imagine.
Thomas earned a Master’s in Film Scoring from the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program under the mentorship of Hummie Mann, and is originally from Boise, Idaho.
Eli Bishop
Eli Bishop is a Nashville-based violinist, composer, and arranger renowned for his versatility across genres. As a sought-after studio musician, he primarily records for video games, as well as film and television, with notable credits including Minecraft: Pirates of the Caribbean, Tokyo DisneySea's Peter Pan's Never Land Adventure (music by Joel McNeely), and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s release of Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown, and Beige. His work also spans commercials for Samsung and films such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Don Jon and Billy Crystal’s Here Today. In 2018, he released The Hit Points, an album of video game music arranged for bluegrass band, blending high-energy bluegrass with acoustic arrangements of iconic game soundtracks.
Eli has performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and, as a member of the Grand Ole Opry’s house band, he has accompanied Vince Gill, Luke Combs, Colbie Caillat, William Shatner, and many other artists.
Dr. Roger Neill
Roger Neill is an acclaimed composer and conductor known for his distinctive, genre-spanning scores in film, television, and video games. A longtime collaborator with the French electronic duo AIR, Neill worked on their landmark album 10,000 Hz Legend. Roger and AIR first appeared in concert together at the Hollywood Bowl in 2004.
Neill’s composing work spans film, television, video games, and live performance. His notable film credits include 20th Century Women, Beginners, Don’t Think Twice, Marie Antoinette (as arranger and music producer), Zoey 102, Darby and the Dead, and the award-winning documentary Sam Now (distributed by Criterion). In television, he is best known for scoring all thirteen seasons of King of the Hill (for which he received an Emmy Award) and Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle (Golden Globe winner).
In the video game world, Neill has contributed to major franchises such as Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Borderlands 2, Darksiders 2, the State of Decay series, and Warhammer.
A versatile artist, Neill has also worked extensively as an arranger, orchestrator, and conductor for a diverse roster of artists, including Michael Jackson, Sondre Lerche, Stereolab, The Kronos Quartet, Kygo, and David Sylvian. His satirical operetta The Beastly Bombing, created with writer/director Julien Nitzberg, earned the LA Weekly Theater Critics Award and has toured internationally.
Born and raised in Southern California, Neill started his musical journey playing flute, keyboards and guitar. He earned his Ph.D. in Music Composition from Harvard University and a Bachelor’s degree from USC’s Thornton School of Music. In recognition of his contributions to music in visual media, he was inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2020 and the Recording Academy (Grammys) in 2023.
In fall 2025, Neill joined the faculty of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music as Associate Professor of Music Composition.
Special Guests: Music in Games Society @IU!
Many talented performers from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music come together each year to put on video game music concerts, with ensembles ranging from string quartet, to trombone ensemble, to symphony and choir! A selection of these fine musicians will be playing past and present Music in Games Society arrangements at a special concert offering following the keynote.