Richard Barrett is internationally active as composer and performer, and also teaches in The Hague and Leiden. Recent compositions include everything has changed/nothing has changed for orchestra, given its premiere by the SWR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Rundel in February 2017, and natural causes for 16 performers, premiered in May 2017 by Ensemble Musikfabrik. Richard Barrett's principal composition teacher was Peter Wiegold, and he currently resides in Belgrade. His work as composer and performer is documented on over 40 CDs.
Christian Carey is Associate Professor of Music Composition, History, and Theory at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey (www.christianbcarey.com).
Stephen Chase composes, improvises, and walks quite a lot. Collaborators have included EXAUDI, Quatuor Bozzini, Philip Thomas, Choir Brevis, Music We'd Like to Hear, Ryoko Akama, Patrick Farmer, Ross Parfitt, BBC Singers, Coastguard All Stars, murmuration, piggle, and Freaking Glamorous Teapot. He is co-editor of Changing the System: The Music of Christian Wolff (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).
Athena Corcoran-Tadd (1989) grew up playing Irish music somewhere in the depths of county Cork, Ireland. In 2012 she graduated from the University of Oxford with a First Class BA in Music, and pursued the study of composition and conducting at the Conservatorio G. Verdi di Milano. Her compositions have been performed across Europe and the US, and, now based in Paris, she currently works as a composer, translator and Irish fiddler.
Laurence Crane was born in Oxford in 1961 and studied composition with Peter Nelson and Nigel Osborne at Nottingham University. Since the mid-1980s he has lived and worked in London. His music is mainly written for the concert hall, although his list of works includes pieces originally written for film, radio, theatre, dance and installation. There are five portrait CDs of his work commercially available; piano music recorded by Michael Finnissy and ensemble music recorded by Apartment House, Cikada, asamisimasa and the Ives Ensemble. He is currently working on new pieces for asamisimasa and Cikada.
Christopher Dromey is the author of The Pierrot Ensembles: Chronicle and Catalogue, 1912–2012 (London: Plumbago Books, 2012). He has also published on Benjamin Britten, Alexander Zemlinsky and Peter Maxwell Davies, and is currently co-editing a volume for Routledge on the classical music industry. Since 2005 he has been a member of the music staff at Middlesex University in 2005, having previously taught at the Open University, the Royal Opera House, King's College London and Birkbeck College, University of London.
Max Erwin is a musicologist and composer originally from Franklin, Tennessee. His research is primarily focused on the post-war European avant-garde, especially so-called ‘total serialism’. His concert music has been performed in North America, Europe and Australasia, and he has scored more than 30 film, TV, video game, commercial and multimedia projects. He graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California on a Presidential scholarship in 2013 and is currently pursuing a PhD in musicology at Leeds University, funded by a Leeds Anniversary Research Scholarship.
Michael Finnissy was born in London in 1946 and started to write music almost as soon as he could play the piano, aged about four and a half. At the Royal College of Music he studied composition with Bernard Stevens and Humphrey Searle, and then in Italy with Roman Vlad. He was a member of the ensembles Suoraan and Ixion, appearing with both as pianist and conductor. His music is published in a number of imprints, including edition modern, Universal Edition, United Music Publishers, Oxford University Press and Composers Edition. From 1990 until 1996 he was President of the ISCM, and has since been elected to Honorary Membership of the society. He is Professor of Composition at Southampton University.
Ben Harper is an Australian composer and writer now living in London. His work is based upon the study of feedback circuits (electronic and otherwise), the conscious imitation of others to observe the nature of originality, and the removal of technique as a vehicle for expression.
Aaron Holloway-Nahum is a composer, conductor, recording engineer and writer. He has composed for ensembles such as the BBCSO, LSO, Third Coast Percussion and HOCKET, and held fellowships at Copland House, Aspen and Tanglewood. As managing director of Coviello Music Productions, he's produced and edited recordings with ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet and Ensemble Intercontemporain. He is the artistic director of The Riot Ensemble, through which he has conducted more than 50 world and UK premieres since 2012.
David Kim-Boyle is an Australian composer and new media artist whose music is widely recognised for its delicately nuanced sonic qualities and innovative use of technology. His work has been presented throughout North America and Europe and he has been a guest artist at major computer music research facilities including ZKM (Karlsruhe), SARC (Belfast) and STEIM (Amsterdam). His creative practice focuses on the development of real-time graphic scores that explore the musical possibilities of extended open-forms. Current projects include a new work for the ELISION ensemble featuring a real-time reactive score and a collection of piano etudes whose score uses k-d trees for parametric mapping.
Claudia Molitor is a composer/artist whose work draws on traditions of music and sound art but also extends to video, performance and fine art practices. Exploring the relationships between listening and seeing as well as embracing collaboration as compositional practice is central to this work. Recent work includes Sonorama with Electra Productions, Turner Contemporary and the British Library, which received a British Composer Award in 2016, Vast White Stillness for Spitalfields Festival and Brighton Festival, The Singing Bridge, installed at Somerset House and Waterloo Bridge during Totally Thames festival and Walking with Partch for Ensemble Musikfabrik at hcmf//. www.claudiamolitor.org.
Claire McGinn is a third year PhD student, supervised by Professor Tim Howell and funded by WRoCAH at the University of York, where she completed an MRes in 2015. Her work explores the significance of what kinds of Baltic art music are represented in English-language discourse and how they are represented, addressing related concepts of gaze, export, and historiography. She contributes to various print and online platforms, including the Birmingham Post, York Press, and Deep Baltic magazine.
Genevieve Murphy studied at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire, Birmingham Conservatoire, and the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag (2013). Tutors include David Fennessy, Howard Skempton, Joe Cutler, Michael Wolters, Martijn Padding and Yannis Kyriakides. She is a composer and performer whose work is regularly performed in concert halls and galleries including Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Concertgebouw, and Stedelijk (Amsterdam), Sectie C (Eindhoven), Muzički salon SC (Zagreb), ESC (Graz), La Fenice (Venice) and MAXXI (Rome). Performers of her work include Slagwerk Den Haag, Camerata RCO, Storioni Trio, Ex Novo Ensemble and IEMA. In 2016 Genevieve was nominated for the International Rostrum of Composers and in 2017 was a member of the Ulysses Network. She recently received a two-year production subsidy, enabling production of a solo performance, premiering in May 2018.
British soprano Natalie Raybould studied at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, and the Royal Academy of Music, London, and was awarded an Associateship of the RAM in 2011 for her contribution to contemporary music. Natalie has worked with Opera North, Royal Opera House London, Welsh National Opera, Little Angel Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, The Old Vic, Aldeburgh Productions and many others in developing new operas, concert works, music theatre and plays. Recent credits include the EU and US tours of Yesterday Tomorrow (Annie Dorsen), Song Recital (Pierre-Yves Macé) for Festival d'Automne à Paris, Harawi (Messiaen) for London Philharmonia, and Star Me Kitten (Alexander Schubert) in Berlin and London for soundinitiative Paris.
Tim Rutherford-Johnson is author of Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017) and editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Music, 6th edition. He blogs about contemporary music at johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com.
Linda Catlin Smith grew up in New York and lives in Toronto. She studied music in New York and at the University of Victoria. Her music has been performed and recorded by, among others, Other Minds Festival, California Ear Unit, Eve Egoyan, Philip Thomas, Victoria and Vancouver Symphonies, Arraymusic, Tapestry New Opera, Evergreen Club Gamelan, Vancouver New Music and Quatuor Bozzini. In 2005 her work Garland (for Tafelmusik) was awarded Canada's prestigious Jules Léger Prize. She was Artistic Director of the Toronto ensemble Arraymusic (1988-93) and a member of the ground-breaking multidisciplinary performance collective, URGE (1992-2006). Linda teaches composition privately and at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Paul Steenhuisen is a composer, host of the SOUNDLAB New MusicPodcast (iTunes), and author of Sonic Mosaics: Conversations with Composers.
Lauri Supponen is a composer based in Finland. He grew up in Brussels and studied composition at the RCM in London and UdK in Berlin, graduating from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in autumn 2016. Lauri's works have been premiered by leading contemporary music ensembles such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern and BBC Singers at major festivals around Europe and North America. Close collaboration with instrumentalists forms the nucleus of his method. Lauri also regularly performs as an oboist and contrabassist, recently at the indie music festival Flow with Korvat Auki Ensemble and ainoregina.
James Weeks is a composer and conductor. His most recent portrait CD, Mala punica, was released on Winter & Winter in 2017, and he is currently writing for the violinist Mira Benjamin, Quatuor Bozzini and CoMA. He co-founded EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble in 2002 and maintains an international touring schedule with the group, as well as working with regularly with other new music ensembles as a conductor. In October 2017 he took up the post of Assistant Professor in Composition at Durham University, UK. www.jamesweeks.org
Arnold Whittall is Professor Emeritus of Music Theory and Analysis at King's College London. His latest books are The Wagner Style (London: Plumbago, 2015) and Introduction to Serialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). A contributor to Rethinking Britten (OUP 2013), Harrison Birtwistle Studies (CUP 2015) and Pierre Boulez Studies (CUP 2016), he continues to work on an extended series of articles on ‘British Music after Britten’, published in TEMPO and The Musical Times.
