about the artists

FEATURED ARTISTS TO DATE

EVA ZÖLLNER

GUEST SPEAKERS/PANELLISTS TO DATE

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Soprano JULIET FRASER specialises in the gnarly edges of contemporary classical music. Internationally recognised as a committed interpreter of new music, she regularly appears as a guest soloist with ensembles Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Plus-Minus and Talea. She is also a core member of EXAUDI vocal ensemble, which she co-founded in 2002 with composer/conductor James Weeks. Juliet is an active commissioner of new repertoire and has worked particularly closely with composers Pascale Criton, Michael Finnissy, Bernhard Lang, Cassandra Miller and Rebecca Saunders. Her recordings have been released on labels such as NEOS, Kairos, Hat Hut, NMC, HCR and Another Timbre. Juliet is the founder and artistic director of eavesdropping, programme director of VOICEBOX and co-director with Newton Armstrong and Mark Knoop of all that dust, a little independent label for new music. She was recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Southampton in recognition of her contribution to the industry.

SEASON 5 (2024) | FEATURED ARTISTS

FARIDA AMADOU is a self-taught bass player based in Brussels, Belgium. The electric bass has been her main instrument since 2011. In 2013, she has started to explore a lot of different musical genres, including blues, jazz and hip-hop; soon she dived into improvised music, and was rapidly identified by local collectives and musicians. After a year (2017) as bass player in the Belgian punk band Cocaine Piss, Farida decided to focus on her solo improvisation practice and collaborations with musicians such as Steve Noble, Thurston Moore, Peter Brötzmann, Terrie Ex, Lukas Koening, Pat Thomas and Julien Desprez, among others, occasionally also featuring with groups such as Jerusalem in My Heart and Moor Mother.

The recipient of the 2023 Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer award, ANNA DENNIS’s opera performances include Katie Mitchell’s New Dark Age at the Royal Opera House, Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at Drottningholm Slottsteater and Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee: An English Opera. She recently created the title role of Violet in Tom Coult’s debut opera, premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival. In concert she has sung with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Orchestra of St Luke’s in New York, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Orquestra Gulbenkian and Sinfonietta Riga. Notably, Anna sang in Britten’s War Requiem at the Berlin Philharmonie and in Thomas Ades’ Life Story, accompanied by the composer, at New York’s White Light Festival. This season she has performed Antony Burgess’s setting of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland with Benedict Cumberbatch and Britten Sinfonia at the Charleston Festival, Bach’s Mein Herze Schwimmt im Blut with Kristian Bezuidenhout in Riga, and premiered Julian Anderson’s Nunca Vi Granada with BCMG.

SANDRA KAZLAUSKAITĖ is a Lithuanian-born sound artist, researcher and DJ working across the disciplines of sound and music performance, installation, as well as theory-led projects in auditory culture. Her work explores the relationship between sound, gender and space, questioning the concepts of silence/silencing, gendered soundscapes as well as the politics of sonic space. Sandra’s works have been exhibited and performed in the UK, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Germany and the United States. Her research work has been published by MIT Press, Bloomsbury Press and VDA Press.

Dr SOOSAN LOLAVAR is a British Iranian composer whose music draws on ideas from western and Iranian traditions. Despite these influences, her music moves far beyond metaphors of “fusion” or assumptions of a binary opposition between east and west. Instead, she aims for a deeper, lifelong conversation between these musical traditions wherein her lifetime of personal experience, creative work and academic writing intertwine to produce something uniquely diasporic. In essence she aims to create work which speaks to the experience of living in the in-between. She often devises unique tuning systems for her work with the help of the infinite capabilities of the santoor. In 2023 she was selected to represent the British delegation at the ISCM World Music Days Festival in South Africa, released an album of solo violin music on all that dust and published a book with Routledge exploring arts-practice as a means for theorising diaspora.

lisa minerva luxx is an award-winning poet, playwright, political activist and essayist of British Syrian heritage. In 2021 luxx released Fetch Your Mother’s Heart, an innovative and critically acclaimed poetry collection. They have written three verse plays including what the dog said to the harvest (an experimental opera-installation-performance for decolonial climate justice), and their Channel 4 short film Lesbian. won five awards including Best LGBTQ short at Independent Shorts Awards. They are a Gold certified lyricist, signed to Maison Arts record label in LA. In 2020, luxx founded Nehna Hon, an anti-racist collective in Beirut to set-up free daycare, job support, rent and food assistance plus urgent action for victims of the kafala system (human trafficking and slave trade). Before that they were co-founder of eLaa Beirut, an international organisation of mental health professionals; the organisation supported mental health services in Lebanon after the Beirut Blast. They are also an active part of Palestine Action in the UK.

ELIZA MCCARTHY is a London-based pianist dedicated to performing new and experimental music. She plays in concert halls, art galleries, car parks and living rooms across the UK, Europe and US as a soloist and band member. She has worked with, commissioned and premiered music by John Adams, Thomas Adès, George Crumb, Tansy Davies, Kit Downes, Andrew Hamilton, Nico Muhly and Laurie Spiegel, among others. Eliza regularly collaborates with Mica Levi (Under the Skin, Jackie) and their album 'Slow Dark Green Murky Waterfall' was released in 2018 on Slip. Recent performance highlights include Morton Feldman’s 90-minute solo piano work Triadic Memories at the Southbank Centre and, in June 2023, the US premiere of Limina, a piano concerto written for her by Donnacha Dennehy, at National Sawdust with New York-based ensemble Contemporaneous. Eliza has released music on NMC, Milan Records, Slip, Diatribe Records, Entr’acte, Foom, WW Records and Clay Pipe Music.

The Germany-based Brazilian drummer, singer, composer and producer MARIÁ PORTUGAL has been active in the São Paulo music scene for more than 20 years. She recorded, performed and toured throughout South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania with artists such as Elza Soares, Metá Metá, Arrigo Barnabé, Quartabê, Maggie Nicols, Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Nick Dunston and Tomeka Reid. As a composer, she has been performing and composing original music for dance, theatre and cinema. Since 2021 she has been one of the curators of the Soundtrips-NRW free improvisation program.

During the late noughties CRYSTABEL RILEY toured Japan and Europe using drums, electronics and make-up in power-noise trio Maria and the Mirrors. This was the start of her interest in patterns on skins — human and drum. An interest in dimensional patterns existing on (and off) different surfaces has continued to evolve through exploring the idea of 'care and uncare' of various skin surfaces. Crystabel has been a long-term collaborator with Sue Lynch who welcomed her into the Horse Improvised Music Club and later played in the London Improvisers Orchestra. She is currently working on the multi-format duo project @xcrswx with Seymour Wright and recently released a split vinyl with Lolina.

DAFNE VICENTE-SANDOVAL is a bassoonist who explores sound through contemporary music interpretation and electroacoustic performance. Her research has translated into an intuitive investigation of the bassoon’s complex acoustic properties, embracing the elusive behavior of overtones as well as the countless possibilities in timbral shadings and idiosyncratic tunings. Her instrumental practice has led to the creation of a significant body of solo pieces in close collaboration with a handful of composers (Éliane Radigue, Jakob Ullmann, Alvin Lucier, Peter Ablinger, Phill Niblock, Catherine Lamb, Tashi Wada). A graduate of the Paris Conservatory and the Musik-Akademie Basel, Vicente-Sandoval currently lives in Paris. She has published essays in Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik, Revue et Corrigée, Blank Forms and Sound American magazines. Recent releases include Ullmann's Müntzers stern/Solo II on Edition RZ, Niblock's NuDaf on XI Records and Minos Circuit on Portraits GRM.

ELLIE WILSON is a violinist and composer. Her work melds contemporary classical, folk and electronica and her output ranges from live performances to immersive sound installations and music for theatre. Her music has been described as ‘beautiful … absolutely wonderful’ (Cerys Matthews, BBC 6Music), ‘haunting…impressive’ (Fringe Review) and ‘rich, ancient and rootsy’ (Elizabeth Alker, BBC Radio 3). Her solo album ‘Memory Islands’, for violin, hardanger fiddle and electronics, was recently released on the Bigo and Twigetti label and explores the strange landscape of memory and the spirit of place. Other highlights include writing the music for Shakespeare’s Globe productions of Henry VI and Richard III, and a sound installation ‘Unearthing Stories of the Forest’, created as part of an Epping Forest/Waltham Forest’s London Borough of Culture project, which explored the human impact on Greater London’s ancient woodland through the centuries. Ellie is a former member of 5-time BBC Radio 2 Folk Award nominees Stick In The Wheel.

SEASON 4 (2023) | FEATURED ARTISTS

CHRISTINE ABDELNOUR lives in France but is of Lebanese origin. After discovering improvised music in 1997 she began a process of self-taught study and sound experimentation using the alto saxophone. She has developed a unique personal language, producing sounds that are close to those of electroacoustic music but on a purely acoustic instrument. She approaches sound as a malleable material, rich in concrete textures which combine breath, silence and countless acoustic distortions. She has developed extended techniques and complex patterns of sound production, exploring the microtonal aspects of the saxophone and its high-pitched tones. She employs subtle tonguing techniques, unpitched breaths, spittle-flecked growls, biting, slicing notes and breathy echoing sounds from the bell of her horn. Far from any narrative effects, her music addresses the relation between listening and concepts of perception, time and space.

SONIA ALLORI is a composer, performer, researcher and community music therapist. Her PhD in composition explored interactions between words and music through the lens of gender and the influence of Italian contemporary classical music post-1900. In 2019 she performed in Sound Symphony (IAP/ Oily Cart) and The Lost Thing (Royal Opera House/ Candoco). Sonia was Artist-in-Residence with Drake Music in 2020 and is currently Artist with Sonic Bothy, an inclusive experimental music ensemble based in Glasgow. She toured the UK in Spring 2022 as performer with the second production of Sound Symphony (IAP/Oily Cart) and is currently Artist with The Sensory Collective at Independent Arts Projects researching sensory arts. Sonia is deaf, a wheelchair user and insatiably curious. She is a multi-instrumentalist and her practice continues to have words and music at its core. In 2022 Sonia was part of Sound & Music’s ‘New Voices’ cohort.

LILJA MARÍA ÁSMUNDSDÓTTIR is an artist, composer and performer from Iceland. In her practice she often employs collaborative methods, working with artists from various fields. Her works include performative installations and sound sculptures, including the audio-visual sculpture Hulda, which was nominated for the President’s Student Innovation Award, and the sound sculpture Lurking Creature, which she developed in collaboration with the dancer Inês Zinho Pinheiro. Lilja María graduated with an MA in composition from City, University of London in 2018 and holds a B.Mus. in piano performance from Iceland University of the Arts. As of 2019, Lilja María is pursuing her PhD in composition at City, University of London, supervised by Claudia Molitor.

CEVANNE HORROCKS-HOPAYIAN is a composer, performer and multi-media artist whose work has been described as 'wide-ranging, dynamic and utterly unique' (BBC Music Magazine). Recent projects include a piece for wearable tech premiered at the BBC Proms, a show for the Royal Ballet and installations for Coventry City of Culture. Her latest recordings include Welcome Party (NMC Recordings) with the London Symphony Orchestra, featuring her British Composer Award-winning composition Muted Lines commissioned by saxophonist Trish Clowes, and Rites For Crossing Water with Crewdson (Accidental Records). She is a lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music and a Visiting Fellow of Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her practice of ‘Eye-Music’ scores, where visual structures create physical parameters for composition, has been developed through residencies at the Mahler-LeWitt studios, the Handel & Hendrix Museum and 575 Wandsworth Road with the LSO.

Born and raised in Tottenham, AMRIT KAUR's music has been described by OZY Magazine as the place 'where Aretha soul meets Punjabi folk'. She is a singer-songwriter, Sarangi player and power-house vocalist in the genres of soul, R&B and Punjabi folk. Praised by legendary record producer Rick Rubin for her live performance, Amrit has been named a BBC Music Introducing Artist and a BBC Asian Network Sound of 2020 Artist. Notable performances include Glastonbury Festival, Jaipur Literature Festival, TEDxSOAS and UN General Assembly alongside Skip Marley, with multiple appearances on the podcast 'The Guilty Feminist'. During the pandemic, she featured on the new version in support of UNICEF of 'One Love' by Bob Marley, alongside the Marley family and musicians from around the world. Amrit has composed music for BBC Television series and theatre productions. Her new single Five River Flow is out now.

KATE MOLLESON is a journalist and broadcaster who presents BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show and Music Matters. Her documentaries (BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service) have investigated music in Greenland, opera in Mongolia, lost recordings of Arabic classical music and the Ethiopian nun/pianist/composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. Her articles are published in The Guardian, The New Statesman, Prospect, The Herald, BBC Music Magazine, Opera, Gramophone and elsewhere. She grew up in various parts of Scotland and the north of Canada and studied clarinet performance at McGill University (Montreal) and musicology at King’s College London. Her book Sound Within Sound, a global history of radical composers in the 20th century, was published by Faber in 2022. She lives in Edinburgh.

NIKNAK regularly redefines and expands upon her role as a ground-breaking multidisciplinary artist. Her debut album Bashi was listed by Resident Advisor as one of their Best Albums in January 2021 and received airplay on BBC Radio 3, Worldwide FM and Threads Radio. Previously mentored by Shiva Feshareki, Anna Meredith and Supriya Nagaranjan, NikNak became the first Black turntablist in history to win the illustrious Oram Award in 2020. Her work has been featured in renowned publications such as Mixmag, Resident Advisor, Yorkshire Evening Post, Clash Magazine, Electronic Sound Mag, The Wire and DJ Mag. NikNak is dedicated to expanding her unique turntablism practice within immersive surround-sound compositions and improvised performances. She is also a DJ, radio presenter and producer, and a podcaster.

LUCY RAILTON is a cellist based in Berlin who works in composition, improvisation and electronic music, releasing her own work on Modern Love, Editions Mego - GRM Portraits, PAN (with Peter Zinovieff), Takuroku and SN Variations (with Kit Downes). She has recently performed with Rebecca Salvadori, Farida Amadou, Catherine Lamb, Kali Malone, Khyam Allami and Stephen O’Malley and Max Eilbacher. She is also involved in the presentation of works by Maryanne Amacher, Iannis Xenakis and Morton Feldman and music using Just Intonation; her engagement with this repertoire has occasioned extensive explorations of resonance, rational intonation and psychoacoustics, preoccupations that are ever present in her own work. Lucy established the Kammer Klang series at Cafe OTO, which ran for 10 years, and co-founded and co-directed the London Contemporary Music Festival from 2013-2016.

LETTY STOTT is one of the UK’s most exciting and versatile horn players, with a career spanning a wide variety of genres. As a classical French horn player, Letty has worked with many of the UK’s leading orchestras and opera companies. She frequently records as a session musician for television and film, recently featuring as a solo artist on Hollywood blockbuster The Northman, for which she performed on a range of Scandinavian horns. Her current collaborations include site-specific work with the Natural History Museum in London, performing on conch shells and natural forms of horn, and collaborative projects with composers Ying-Hseuh Chen, Lior Rosner and John Kenny, for performances in Copenhagen, Madrid and at Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall, respectively.

SILVIA TAROZZI is a violinist, vocalist, composer and improviser. The oral transmission of music and the form created through a deep immersion into the sound are traits of her musical research and find expression in collaborations with composers such as Éliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, Pascale Criton, Cassandra Miller, Martin Arnold, Pierre-Yves Macé and Philip Corner. Her music stems from a creative process of deliberate overcoming of canonical musical genres. Her songs and compositions manifest this through a wide palette of sounds and references, from folk, to chamber music, from contemporary music to pop. Her projects have been released by I dischi di Angelica, Unseen Worlds, New World Records, Potlatch and SHIIIN. Her concerts have been recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and France Musique. She performs regularly in festivals and venues in Europe, North America, Canada, Mexico.

FATHIMA ZAHRA is an Indian poet and performer based in London. She is a Barbican Young Poets and Roundhouse Poetry Collective alumna. Her poems have won the Bridport Prize, Wells Fest Young Poets Prize and Asia House Poetry Slam. Her debut pamphlet Sargam / Swargam (ignition press, 2021) was selected for PBS pamphlet choice.

SEASON 3 (2021) | FEATURED ARTISTS

KHABAT ABAS is an experimental cellist, improviser and composer from Kurdistan Iraq. She has a master’s degree in music performance and related studies from Goldsmiths, University of London. Khabat’s works are based on sound research, beginning with the acoustic cello, prepared cello and, recently, with adapted cello; she started developing works that respond to the questions revolving around 'what is out of bounds?' and 'what is error?', which raise the possibilities of sounds that cannot be controlled. This is in contrast to traditional musical values. Besides, she uses her childhood memory of swing machine symbols as material for her graphic notations.

RIHAB AZAR is a Syrian oud player based in London. Recognised by Arts Council England as a musician with Exceptional Promise, she is a graduate of the conservatoire of Damascus, holds an MA in Music Education from UCL and was a Chevening scholar. Rihab was the first woman oudist to perform accompanied by the Syrian National Orchestra for Arabic Music. Strongly influenced by Arabic music and a frequent collaborator with musicians, ensembles and orchestras with different genre focuses, Rihab has played and written music for projects involving storytelling, visual arts, TV programmes, radio and theatre plays.

British lyric soprano NADINE BENJAMIN is a charismatic and versatile artist who is in increasing demand on both the operatic stage and the concert platform. She is also developing great renown as an exponent of song, in particular Verdi, Strauss, Berg and contemporary American song. From 2018 to 2020, Nadine was an English National Opera Harewood Artist and she made her debut with the company as Clara (Porgy and Bess), followed by Musetta (La bohème) and Laura (Luisa Miller). Nadine made her Royal Opera House debut in October 2020 as a soprano soloist in New Dark Age, with works by Anna Meredith, Missy Mazzoli and Anna Thorvaldsdottir, directed by Katie Mitchell. Nadine is a mentor, certified High Performance Coach and Mind Coach, and she founded her opera and mentorship programme ‘Everybody Can!’ in 2015 to provide a platform to encourage and support others in recognising and achieving their own visions. An Ambassador for London Music Masters, Nadine was ‘highly commended’ at the 2016 Aviva ‘Women of the Future Awards’ and invited to both Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street in recognition of her work as a mentor and singer.

LAURA BOWLER, described as “a triple threat composer-performer-provocatrice” (The Arts Desk) is a composer, vocalist and Artistic Director specialising in theatre, multi-disciplinary work and opera. She has been commissioned across the globe by ensembles and orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, ROH2, Opera Holland Park, The Opera Group, Manchester Camerata, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini (Canada), Ensemble Phace (Austria), Ensemble Linea (France) and Omega Ensemble (Australia). Future projects include a 40-minute music theatre for Jessica Aszodi and London Sinfonietta with text by Cordelia Lynn and directed by Katie Mitchell; a 50-minute multimedia work for herself to perform with Decoder Ensemble commissioned by HCMF; a new opera for Ensemble Lydenskab to premiere in 2023 supported by Ernst Von Siemens Foundation and a multimedia work for pianist Zubin Kanga.

ANGHARAD DAVIES is a violinist with a practice rooted in improvisation, composition and performance, as a soloist and collaboratively. Her approach to sound involves attentive listening and exploring beyond the sonic confines of her instrument, her classical training and performance expectation. She has long standing duos with Tisha Mukarji, Lina Lapelyte and Dominic Lash and plays with Common Objects, Cranc and Skogen. She has been involved in projects with Apartment House, Tarek Atui, Tony Conrad, Richard Dawson, Gwenno, Roberta Jean, New Perspective theatre company, Eliane Radigue, Georgia Ruth and J.G.Thirlwell.

WINNIE HUANG is a violinist, violist and gestural performance artist currently based between Belgium and France. An active performer of new music, Winnie is a founding member and solo violinist of Paris based new music ensemble soundinitiative and co-founder and member of performative duo LookOut. She continually works with emerging and established composers and regularly performs with renown ensembles at international festivals. Career highlights have included solo performances at the Berlin Philharmonie (DE), KKL Lucerne (CH) and the Elb Philharmonie (DE), among many international ensemble tours. An engaging educator, Winnie has consistently taught in Australia, France and Belgium and has frequently guest lectured at many major institutions in Europe. Winnie’s strong interest in the performance of interdisciplinary works is explored through collaborations and solo compositions alongside her doctoral studies in musical-gestural works.

ANGELA WAI NOK HUI is a percussionist and multidisciplinary artist based in London and Hong Kong. She graduated from the Royal College of Music in 2016 (MMus) with distinction as a classically trained percussionist and timpanist, and has collaborated with many new music and contemporary classical ensembles in London. Angela loves being in the creative process and experimenting with different art forms. This predilection makes her more determined to continue forging her own narrative platform in order to support her wild imagination. She is always in search of different media, in which she can represent herself more fully. She has started to create her own work, which often engages with political references, identity-related issues all of which are placed directly within the strange and beautiful sound world that surrounds us all.

MEGAN STEINBERG is an experimental composer and abstract turntablist based in London. She works with found sound, chance procedures, graphic scores, quietness and microtonality. Originally a jazz guitarist, Megan studied Composition at Brunel University where she fell into experimental music. After discovering free improv using objects, violin and cello, in 2016 she began performing free improv and experimental music for single-deck, analogue turntable. She has composed for incredible performers including Heather Roche, Juice Vocal Ensemble, Distractfold, Apartment House and Lore Lixenberg. In 2016, she was awarded the FI Williams Prize for Composition for her piece The Dying Sakura Tree. Her music has been performed at Kings Place and IKLECTIK in London, Grachtenfestival in Amsterdam, and Arts by the Sea Festival in Bournemouth, as well as on BBC Radio 3, Resonance FM and Threads Radio. Megan is a dedicated advocate for accessibility and representation in new music.

LUCIE TREACHER is a composer and performer creating interactive sound experiences, both digital and theatrical, virtual and real. Her music is characterised by quirky and highly textural sound worlds, playfully woven together into multi-disciplinary work. For each of her projects she crafts bespoke samples and sounds from her creaky studio, using things she finds around her. Lucie has created work for Kings Place, the Saatchi gallery, Cadogan Hall, St Martin-in-the-Fields and Buckingham Palace as well as music to be performed in subterranean caves, bathrooms and beaches. As a composer Lucie has been involved in a spectrum of projects, taking her from experimental, improvisatory realms to opera and, more recently, video games. Lucie also runs the International Archive of Dreams, an archive which invites people to document their dreams and learn more about dreaming.

SEASON 2 (2020) | FEATURED ARTISTS

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, artist/activist/academic MARLO DE LARA (a.k.a. MARLO EGGPLANT) received a PhD in Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. Her artistic practice works within the realms of sound performance, visual distraction, and film. Working under the moniker marlo eggplant, her sound art is a production of textural compositions which develop from microscopic tone landscapes into dense and expansive states of noise and drone. Her works aim to blur the definitions of (un)intentional sound and music. As curator and organizer of the Ladyz in Noyz (LIN) international compilation series/collective, an ongoing project begun in 2008, she continues to promote emerging artists and musicians who are women. She most recently completed an artist residency at the CalArts Summer Institute and the Coaxial Foundation in Los Angeles.

CATHY EASTBURN has been playing Javanese gamelan (Indonesian bronze percussion) including gongs, metallophones, drum and voice, for over 20 years. She works as a professional Javanese gamelan musician, specialising in female vocals (sindhenan): this involves both traditional gamelan music and more experimental music using gamelan and electronics. More recently, she has been studying therapeutic sound, completing a year-long Practitioner Diploma in Sound Therapy with the British Academy of Sound Therapy. Cathy is also a mother of two teenage girls and has a longstanding interest in environmental issues, in particular the psychology of climate change. Since October 2018 she has been involved in Extinction Rebellion, working with others to raise public awareness of the imminent and grave threat of the climate and ecological breakdown now underway.

SOPHIE FETOKAKI is a singer, poet and interdisciplinary artist. In her practice she explores the experience of being a contemplative and desiring body, and the delicate process of moving from what is known to what can only be intuited. She approaches song as ritual and sacrament, and singing as a practice of recollecting, realising and transmitting embodied knowledge. Besides singing, she can be found writing and performing poetry, devising performance works, and dismantling pianos very slowly. She is currently preparing the release of her debut album ‘Abundance’ (featuring her own songs, folkloric songs from a range of traditions, and reinventions of Bach and Schumann), the publication of her poetry book epigraphē with 1913 press (U.S.A), and the submission of a practice-based PhD at Huddersfield University.

Soprano JULIET FRASER is an active commissioner of new music and has worked particularly closely with composers Michael Finnissy, Cassandra Miller, Matthew Shlomowitz and Rebecca Saunders. She has performed as a guest soloist with contemporary music ensembles Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Plus-Minus and Talea, and is a core member of EXAUDI vocal ensemble, which she co-founded with composer/conductor James Weeks in 2002. This season’s highlights include new works by Rebecca Saunders (Essen NOW!), Naomi Pinnock (hcmf//), Laurence Crane (Cafe OTO) and Cassandra Miller (Maerzmusik and Aldeburgh). Juliet is the founder and artistic director of eavesdropping, and co-director with Mark Knoop and Newton Armstrong of all that dust, a new label for new music.

RAGHAD HADDAD studied viola at the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus, graduating in 2005. Until 2016 she was based in Syria, performing and teaching in her native country and internationally. Raghad was a member of the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra and a founding member of the Symphonic Orchestra of the Opera House in Damascus. One of her career highlights was being part of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim. In June 2016 Raghad travelled with the Orchestra of Syrian Musicians on a European tour; their final destination was the UK. Nine members presented themselves at the border control desk and requested asylum. All were accepted and are now resident here. Raghad now plays with the Orchestra of All Saints MAS in Brighton and the London Syrian Ensemble, a group of Syrian professional musicians which performs traditional and classical oriental music around the UK. She also supports young people on the 'I Speak Music' youth inclusion programme in Surrey.

ROMINA LISCHKA studied viola da gamba with Paolo Pandolfo at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Basel) and Philippe Pierlot at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. In the 2012-13 season, Romina was chosen as the early music ‘ECHO Rising Star’ by the BOZAR (Brussels) and Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), resulting in solo performances at various European concert venues. She is this season’s ‘Portrayed Artist of Bozar’. Her début CD, Pièces de viole de Sietur de Machy, was awarded 5 stars by Diapason magazine. Romina also studied North Indian classical singing (dhrupad) at the World Music department at the Rotterdam Conservatory and in India (Delhi and Pune) with Ustad Fariduddin Dagar en Uday Bhawalkar. Combining all her musical interests, Romina formed the Hathor Consort in 2012 to perform Renaissance and Baroque consort music alongside modern works and world music.

SARAH NICOLLS is an innovative pianist and composer and inventor of the Inside-Out Piano, designed to enable ‘inside piano’ playing. In 2020, Sarah’s company Future Piano will be building a new lightweight model. Sarah will also be touring her ‘12 Years’ solo recital-story about climate change and our response to it, funded by Arts Council England, and premiering new collaborative works on the same topic in Norway and at PRiSM in Manchester. Sarah is a frequent soloist on the new music scene, performing in the PRSF New Music Biennial, Matthew Herbert’s 20 Pianos project, six world premiere piano concertos with London Sinfonietta, regular broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and on many CDs. She has had residencies at Southbank Centre’s Collision, Artangel’s Library of Water in Iceland, the Arvon writing centre, The Hurst and Snape Maltings’s Festival of New.

O YAMA O is a music project of London-based artists KEIKO YAMAMOTO and RIE NAKAJIMA. Using a combination of kinetic devices and found objects, they create soundscapes inspired by Japanese myth, ritual, anthropology and everyday, non-spectacular sound worlds. Works are often composed of Yamamoto singing while Nakajima constructs escalating micro-orchestras in direct response to unique architectural spaces. O YAMA O has enjoyed collaborations with Billy Steiger, Lau Nau and David Cunningham, and has performed at Cafe OTO, NoShowSpace, LCMF, Borealis Music Festival (Bergen), Mayhem (Copenhagen), Novas Frequencias (Brazil) and some other places. // ‘How often are we in such intimate closeness to the materials of sound, the physicality of a naked voice, without chairs, microphones, distance, so conscious of light, climate, atmosphere, the nearness of other bodies, the permeability of a structure that is outside as much as in?’ —David Toop.

‘The most original compositional voice to emerge from Ireland in the past 20 years’ (Irish Times) and ‘wild girl of Darmstadt’ (Frankfurter Rundschau), composer and performer JENNIFER WALSHE was born in Dublin. Her music has been commissioned, broadcast and performed all over the world. She has been the recipient of fellowships and prizes from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm, the Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstadt and Akademie Schloss Solitude among others. Walshe has written a large number of operas and theatrical works, including XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!, an opera for Barbie dolls, and TIME TIME TIME, with the philosopher Timothy Morton, which the Wire described as ‘a sprawling opus that spans the history of the planet… like Robert Ashley meets Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life’. Her visual work has been exhibited in the Chelsea Art Museum, New York, Project Arts Centre, Dublin and the ICA, London.

EVA ZÖLLNER studied classical accordion in Cologne and Copenhagen and is one of the most active accordionists of her generation. As an internationally acclaimed soloist she appears in projects ranging from experimental solo performances to concerts with renowned ensembles. An important part of her work is the close cooperation with composers of her generation. She has premiered more than 200 new works for her instrument. Lately she is particularly interested in the potential of the accordion within electro-acoustic music and multimedia art. Eva is based in Germany but lives as a nomadic musician, travelling around the world to explore her instrument in different cultures and contexts.

SEASON 1 (2017/18) | FEATURED ARTISTS

RYOKO AKAMA is a sound artist/composer/performer, who approaches listening situations that magnify silence, time and space and offer quiet temporal/spatial experiences. Her sound works employ small and fragile objects such as paper balloons and glass bottles, creating tiny occurrences that embody ‘almost nothing’ aesthetics. She composes text events and performs a diversity of alternative scores in collaboration with international artists. She runs melange edition label, amespace and co-edits mumei publishing.

SÉVERINE BALLON is currently working on developing extended techniques for the cello, and their appropriate notation; in addition, her research as an improviser has helped her to extend the sonic and technical resources of her instrument. She has collaborated closely with composers Helmut Lachenmann, Chaya Czernowin and Liza Lim, and has premiered many solo works, including those by Rebecca Saunders, Mauro Lanza and Franck Bedrossian. She is a member of Elision ensemble (Australia) and has worked with ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, musikFabrik, Ensemble Intercontemporain and Ictus. Séverine was a fellow at Harvard University in 2014/15, and in 2016-2017 she was a Visiting Artist at CCRMA/Stanford University. Her solo CD, 'Solitude', was released on Aeon in 2015 to critical acclaim. She composed and performed the original score for the feature-length film 'The Ornithologist' (2016) by João Pedro Rodrigues.

MIRA BENJAMIN is a Canadian violinist, researcher, new-music instigator, and rescue dog enthusiast. She performs new and experimental music, with a special interest in microtonality and tuning practice. She actively commissions music from composers at all stages of their careers, and develops each new work through multiple performances. Current collaborations include new works by James Weeks, Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad, Scott Mc Laughlin, Cobi van Tonder and Taylor Brook. Since 2011, Mira has co-directed NU:NORD, a project-based music and performance network which instigates artistic exchanges and encourages community building between music creators from Canada, Norway & the UK. To date NU:NORD has engaged 79 artists and commissioned 62 new works. Originally from Vancouver, Mira lived for ten years in Montréal, where she was a member of Quatuor Bozzini. Since 2014 she has resided in London, where she regularly performs with ensembles such as Apartment House and Decibel. Mira was the recipient of the 2016 Virginia Parker Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts.

ALBA CABRAL is a Brazilian musician based in London since 2009. She composes, performs and collaborates in several projects including her own Let Drum Beat, an all-female Afro-Brazilian-influenced percussion & vocals band, and Tonzee, a quartet that fuses Brazilian rhythms with pop and rock. She took a Masters Degree in Music Leadership at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and leads workshops on Body-Music, Collective Music Making and Percussion Ensembles in various settings - Institutions, Schools, Community Centres, Universities, Festivals around the UK and abroad. Alba recently won an award for a research trip in Palestine/Israel by Help Musicians UK.

ELEANOR CULLY is an artist based in Huddersfield, UK from Norwich, UK. She composes pieces for instrumentalists and vocalists, makes installation work, and performs her own work and the work of others. Her recent interests lie in the spaces between tiny ideas and experiences and the moments when they join together as forms.

JENNIE GOTTSCHALK writes, composes, talks, listens and transcribes. Experimental music is the most consistent focus of these actions. Some of the results can be found on soundexpanse.com, jenniegottschalk.com and in Experimental Music since 1970 (Bloomsbury, 2016). She got her doctorate in composition from Northwestern University in 2008 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts.

LOUISE GRAY (MARSHALL) writes for The Wire, Musicworks and other publications, covering, since the late 1980s, experimental and contemporary classical music. For the last three years, she has been an AHRC-funded doctoral student at CRiSAP, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, where she has focused on the work of a select group of female experimental musicians as a way of considering their strategic compositional practices as a way of redressing what the composer Annea Lockwood has identified as “the black hole of no info” (Tara Rodgers 2010:2) in respect of the musicological neglect of so much female-originated work. With an academic background that includes psychoanalytic studies, Louise is interested in developing a theory of listening that will extend Pauline Oliveros’s practice of Deep Listening into new sonic articulations.

The name NAALA means 'First Daughter'. It comes from a Ghanaian naming ritual, which is intended as a blessing; it means to be a leader, an educator, a guardian and a pioneer. Naala’s sound is an embodiment of these powerful words: layered and multi-sensory, an electronic contemporary landscape built from sounds that have been self recorded, processed and produced. Naala’s songs overflow with the delicate complexities of modern British and African storytelling. A hybrid between electronica and elemental RnB, it's music for sharpening the mind and blurring the senses. London-based, Naala is a multi-instrumentalist, and she likes to incorporate ‘found sounds’ to create dynamic layers forming a fresh new sound. She takes influence from artists such as Joni Mitchell, Bjork, Nina Simone and Grace Jones.

Born in Canada, clarinetist HEATHER ROCHE lives in London. As a soloist and chamber musician she appears regularly at European festivals. She is a founding member of hand werk, and has also played with Musikfabrik (Cologne), mimitabu (Gothenburg), Alisios Camerata (Zagreb), Apartment House (London) and ensemble Proton (Bern). She wrote her doctoral thesis at the University of Huddersfield, where she focused on collaboration between composers and performers. Her blog on writing for the clarinet attracts 90,000 viewers each year. Her debut solo CD, 'Ptelea', is out on HCR/NMC, and her CD featuring the clarinet works of Christopher Fox, 'Headlong', appears on Metier.

ANDREA YOUNG is a Canadian performer and composer specializing in experimental voice and live-electronics. She performs an acoustic, amplified, processed and resynthesized voice, as well as a re-purposed sound-controlling voice enabled through feature extraction and data-driven live electronics. While her work relies on digital innovation, her musical output relies on the integration of her digital interface with analogue and re-purposed electronic media. Andrea is co-director of EXO//ENDO, an international ensemble that pulls from classical, avant-garde, noise, industrial, krautrock and new music, who has premiered works in Canada for Vancouver New Music, Calgary New Works and Open Space New Music, as well as REDCAT in Los Angeles. Andrea studied vocal performance and composition at The University of Victoria (2001), electronic music at The Institute of Sonology, The Hague (2007), and completed a DMA from The California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (2014).

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