Trifarious Ensemble

trifarious

The compositions of Stephen Goss are utterly captivating – The Independent

Flair, quick thinking and a feel for colour are everywhere – BBC Music Magazine

Stephen Goss’s music receives hundreds of performances worldwide each year. It has been recorded on over 80 CDs by more than a dozen record labels, including EMI, Decca, Telarc, Virgin Classics, Naxos, and Deutsche Grammophon. His output embraces multiple genres: orchestral and choral works, chamber music, and solo pieces. He is considered ‘One of the guitar’s finest living composers’ (International Record Review).

Goss’s work is marked by a fascination with time and place – both immediate and remote – and the musical styles that evoke them. In many of his compositions, contrasting styles are juxtaposed through abrupt changes of gear. As BBC Music Magazine noted ‘Goss weaves together an eclectic range of influences – at once retrospective and forward-looking’. His compositional voice is shaped by his parallel career as a guitarist – that is to say, as a performer, transcriber, arranger, improviser and collaborator with other composers and performers. Not surprisingly, his music often tests the boundaries between all these activities and original composition.

Recent work includes several projects with the legendary guitarist John Williams, who has recorded and toured Steve’s Guitar Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Describing the concerto in an interview for Soundboard, Williams said ‘I don’t know of any guitar concerto which is as consistently successful on all fronts’.

Steve’s music has been performed by many of the world’s leading orchestras including: The Russian National Orchestra (under Mikhail Pletnev), The China National Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, The State Symphony Orchestra ‘New Russia’, The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, The Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra. In his role as composer-in-residence for the Orpheus Sinfonia, Steve wrote the Piano Concerto, (released by Signum Classics in 2013), and the Concerto for Five (for the unique combination of violin, saxophone, cello, bass, piano and orchestra). Steve’s Albéniz Concerto for guitar and orchestra was released to great critical acclaim on EMI Classics in 2010. A Concerto of Colours, for guitar and wind ensemble, was commissioned by a consortium of 13 American wind orchestras in 2017. Most recently, Steve has written the Koblenz Concerto for two guitars and orchestra (for SoloDuo) and the Theorbo Concerto for Matthew Wadsworth: the first concerto ever written for the theorbo. In 2021 Steve was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award.

Other commissions have come from: percussionist Evelyn Glennie, cellist Natalie Clein, flutist William Bennett, and tenor Ian Bostridge, as well as guitarists David Russell, Xuefei Yang, Zoran Dukić, Miloš Karadaglić, Aniello Desiderio, and Lukasz Kuropaczewski. Steve’s project with Charles Jencks, The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, was profiled on The South Bank Show, the UK’s premier Arts TV programme. Steve’s eclectic approach has led to collaborations with artists as diverse as Andrew Lloyd Webber, Alt-J, and Avi Avital.

As a guitarist, Steve has worked with many leading composers (such as Toru Takemitsu, Hans Werner Henze, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Elliott Carter) and toured and recorded extensively with the Tetra Guitar Quartet and other ensembles.

Born in Wales in 1964, Stephen Goss studied at the Royal Academy of Music (where he won the Julian Bream Prize) and the Universities of Bristol and London (where he completed his doctorate). His composition teachers included Edward Gregson, Robert Saxton, Peter Dickinson and Anthony Payne, and he studied guitar with Michael Lewin. Steve is currently Professor of Composition and Director of the International Guitar Research Centre at the University of Surrey, UK, and a Professor of Guitar at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 2018 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, an honour limited to 300 living people. He is an Arsenal season ticket holder.

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Adam Gorb was born in 1958 and started composing at the age of ten. At fifteen he wrote a set of piano pieces – A Pianist’s Alphabet – of which a selection was performed by Susan Bradshaw on BBC Radio 3. In 1977 he went to Cambridge University to study music, where his teachers included Hugh Wood and Robin Holloway. After graduating in 1980 he divided his time between composition and working as a musician in the theatre. In 1987 he started studying privately with Paul Patterson, and then, from 1991 at the Royal, Academy of Music where he gained an MMus degree and graduated with the highest honours, including the Principal’s Prize in 1993.

His works have been performed, broadcast and recorded worldwide. Notable pieces include Metropolis for Wind Band (1992), which has won several prizes including the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize in the USA in 1994. Prelude, Interlude and Postlude for piano, won the Purcell Composition Prize in 1995. Kol Simcha, a ballet given over fifty performances by the Rambert Dance Company and Awayday (1996) for Wind Band which, along with Yiddish Dances, (1998) also for Wind Band have had thousands of performances world-wide, and many commercial recordings. Yiddish Dances also exists in arrangements for piano duet and guitar quartet. A Violin Sonata was premiered at the Spitalfields Festival in London in 1996. Reconciliation for Clarinet and Piano was commissioned for the Park Lane Young Artists New Year series in 1998, and Elements, a Percussion Concerto written for Evelyn Glennie and the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Ensemble in 1998 was released on CD in 2001.

In 1999 his Clarinet Concerto for Nicholas Cox was premiered with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and in 2000 A Distant Mirror for Brass Band at the Cheltenham festival, Weimar for chamber ensemble, 2000 and Downtown Diversions, a trombone concerto, in Texas in February 2001. Other works include String quartet no. 1 for the Maggini Quartet, which was premiered at Bromsgrove music club in February 2002, and Towards Nirvana, which received its first performance by the Tokyo Kosei Wind Ensemble in October 2002, winning a British Composer award in the Wind and Brass ensemble category in 2004. Diaspora for eleven strings was given its premiere by the Goldberg Ensemble in February 2003, and November 2003 saw the first performance of Dances From Crete at the Royal College of Music in London.

2004 saw the premieres ofFrench Dances Revisited in Minnesota, USA, andLa Cloche Felee for soprano and piano in the Purcell Room. Burlesque for clarinet ensemble, was first played in the USA in 2005. 2006 was notable for the first performance ofAwakening for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra andAdrenaline City for the USA Air Force Academy Band. This work went on to win another British Composer Award in 2008. Fasolt’s Revenge for the Tennessee Tech Tuba Ensemble andA Better Place for the Zephyr Ensemble of Great Britain were also premiered in 2006.

In 2007/8 a cantataThoughts Scribbled on a Blank wall(based on the experiences of the political prisoner John McCarthy who co-wrote the libretto with Ben Kaye) received several performances in prestigious venues including Canterbury Cathedral and Kings College Cambridge. Two more Wind Band works:Midnight in Buenos Aires and Farewell(winner of a third British Composer Award in 2009) have seen the light of day along withSerenade for Spring(2008) for small orchestra which had its premiere at the Hampstead and Highgate Festival. Later that yearInto The Light for eight cellos was premiered at the RNCM, andString Quartet no. 2was played by the Tippett Quartet.

2010 saw the premieres of Absinthe for piano andEternal Voices; a large-scale choral work with words by Ben Kaye which was premiered at Exeter cathedral in November 2010 with the Exeter Festival Chorus and the Band of the Royal Marines. Another Wind Ensemble work: Repercussions was premiered in Colorado in August 2011. Love Transforming which was written for Timothy Reynish’s 75th birthday in March 2013.

He has collaborated for a third time with Ben Kaye on an operaAnya 17which was premiered by singers from the RNCM with the RLPO 10/10 ensemble Liverpool and Manchester inMarch 2012. – there have subsequently been productions in Germany in and the USA.

Works from 2013-15 include a cello concerto, A Celebration for the Northern Chamber Orchestra and Velocity for the pianist Clare Hammond. Recent wind ensemble works, all USA commissions includeSpring into Action(2014), Boat Trip(2016) and Pike’s Peak (2017). In 2016In Solitude, For Company, an extensive revision of Awakening was played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and Melange a Trois was premiered by the Pleyel ensemble. Adam Gorb spent much of 2017 writing a second opera The Path to Heaven (libretto by Ben Kaye) which received its premiere in Leeds and Manchester in 2018, with productions in the USA in 2019 and 2020. A Saxophone Quartet Let Them Play was also performed at the World Saxophone Congress in Zagreb in 2018.

A CD of piano music: 24 Preludes (composed 2019 – 20) and Velocity with the pianist Clare Hammond was released on Toccata classics in 2022.

Recent works include a song cycle: Beggars Belief, his fifth collaboration with librettist Ben Kaye, Long Distance Call for the Australian saxophonist Katia Beaugeais and a concerto for violin, viola and Wind Ensemble premiered in the USA in 2022. During the Covid pandemic in 2020-21 he adapted several of his wind band works, including Yiddish Dances and Bohemian Revelry for smaller ensembles.

ProfessorAdam Gorb is Head of School of Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.He has a PhD in Composition from the University of Birmingham and has taught at universities in the USA, Canada, Japan and many European countries.

Saxophonist-composer Andy Scott initiates creative projects and collaborations, writing to commission and performing worldwide, and embraces elements of classical music, jazz, funk, Latin styles which blend to create an individual voice.

Andy is a multi-nominated and British Composer Award winner, a founder member of the Apollo Saxophone Quartet (est.1985), Tutor of Saxophone & Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, equally at home free improvising with Duo partner percussionist Dave Hassell to tackling contemporary works (with ensembles such as Psappha).

Dedicated to composing, performing, commissioning and recording new music Andy has recorded with Decca (Argo), Naxos, Basho, Chandos & NMC record labels, with works being premiered at Carnegie Hall NYC, the Southbank Centre, Royal Albert Hall & Wigmore Hall, London, with an enviable catalogue of works that are published by Astute Music. Andy is a long-standing endorsee of Selmer Paris Saxophones & Vandoren.

2020 saw the release of three saxophone-based albums; ‘Westland – the music of Andy Scott’, performed by Grammy Award winning American saxophonist Tim McAllister and Duo partner pianist Liz Ames, ‘Home – music for tenor saxophone by Andy Scott’, performed by João Pedro Silva & friends, and ‘Ever Open Door’ a CD of ballads that features Supertramp saxophonist John Helliwell performing originals & arrangements from Andy that are scored for saxophone/clarinet, string quartet & Hammond organ.

In addition to performances with the Apollo Saxophone Quartet, Apollo-Artvark Saxophone Octet, Super Big Tramp Band, Apitos & others, Andy is developing collaborations with a younger generation of musicians, leads music courses in France, and co-direct the RNCM Saxophone Day.

www.andyscott.org.uk

Edmund’s music draws on a huge range of styles and influences and he is equally at home writing for film/tv and the concert hall. Whether it’s the main focus or accompanying pictures, his music has the capacity to connect and move the listener.

Recent commissions include pieces for the London Chinese Children’s Ensemble, Odense Percussion and Oxford University Press Collections. His choral music has been performed by many prestigious choirs, including the ORA Singers, Magdalen College Choir Oxford, The Choir of Brick Church New York, The Nonsuch Singers, The Choir of the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace and the Amadeus Choir Toronto. In 2019 he won first prize at the 40th Ithaca College Choral Composition Competition and the Freudig Singers Choral Composition Competition. He was awarded third prize (from 344 entries) in the Progressive Classical Music Award. See ‘Prizes‘ for a full list.

He has been writing music to picture for twenty years, both in the UK and internationally. Many of his projects have been nominated for or won numerous awards, including BAFTAs. He wrote the score to the ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’ (BAFTA nominated) and was nominated for an RTS Craft and Design Award for his score for the BBC film ‘Elizabeth at 90’. He often writes with composer Julian Hamlin (HamlinandJolliffe). Major series they have composed music for include ‘Who do you think you are?’ (BBC1), ‘Homestead Rescue’ (Discovery), ‘Sort your life out’ (BBC1), ‘Grand Designs: The Street’ (C4), ‘Crazy Delicious’ (C4/Netflix), ‘Long Lost Family’ (ITV1) and ‘Unreported World’ (C4).

Edmund studied music at Oxford University and completed a Masters in Film Composition at the Royal College of Music under Joseph Horovitz and Academy Award winner Dario Marianelli. He also studied on the Advanced Composition Course at Dartington International Summer School (supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust) and has attended composer residencies at the Banff Centre, Canada (Gladys and Merrill Muttart foundation scholarship for artistic residency) and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, New Mexico. He is a fellow of the ISM and full member of the PRS and MCPS.

His music is published by: Oxford University Press (Choir), Stainer & Bell (various), ABRSM (piano), Banks Music (choir), Tetractys (flute), Spartan Press (clarinet, brass), Svitzer (percussion), Cimarron (brass) and Recital Music (double bass). He has written 12 production/library music albums and his music has been heard on shows such as ‘Saturday Night Live’ (NBC), ‘Eastenders’, ‘Hollyoaks’ and ‘Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway’. His music was widely used over footage during the mourning period of the Queen.

Barbara was born in Oxford and educated at Queen’s College, Harley Street, London and the Royal College of Music, where she studied clarinet, piano, flute and composition. Whilst retaining a strong interest in classical music, Barbara was captivated by the jazz work of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane and developed a consuming passion for the saxophone. She formed her own group Paraphernalia in 1977. The band , still touring and recording despite Barbara being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1997, became one of the major instrumental attractions on the European concert scene. Barbara’s original and inventive compositions and soaring saxophone and flute improvisations, have earned her international acclaim, while the originality of the music has appealed to a wider audience than solely contemporary jazz buffs.

Millions throughout the world have heard the sound of her haunting saxophone playing the title theme to the TV Series, ‘A Touch of Frost’.

Barbara featured on Colosseum’s ‘Live O5’ album alongside a DVD of her band Paraphernalia live at the Theaterhaus, Stuttgart that same year. She released her 17th album with Paraphernalia “Never Say Goodbye” in 2007. Barbara’s battle with Parkinson’s caused her to retire for some years from public performance and focus on her work as a contemporary classical composer.

‘Perpetual Motion‘, dated 2012, features 10 of her compositions played by the 12 piece Apollo Saxophone Orchestra. Another album ‘Russian Roulette’ featuring her compositions played by ‘Trifarious‘, a clarinet trio with piano and violin led by virtuoso Tim Redpath, was released in 2015.

Barbara Thompson MBE passed away peacefully on the morning of Saturday 9th July 2022 after a 25 year battle with Parkinson’s disease alongside complications with her heart in recent years. She was just 18 days shy of her 78th birthday.

Barbara’s incredible full life story can be followed here

From the London Mozart Players to Don Weller, throughout her extensive performing career Rachel Calaminus has demonstrated her ability to perform in all music genres. In great demand as both violin and viola player she leads a busy performing schedule and works with many of the UK’s leading orchestras and ensembles including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal Ballet Sinfonia. She has featured on a huge array of recordings spanning across the whole musical spectrum including classical, jazz, world and popular music.

She has toured Europe, USA and the Far East enjoying performances in some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls and venues.

The ensemble has accrued original repertoire for a variety of instrument combinations from leading national and international composers.

The five sound worlds of clarinet, saxophone, violin, viola and piano are all at the disposal of both performer and composer and are complimented by a variety of extended platforms including Akai’s EWi (Electronic Wind Instrument) and acoustic instrument DPA microphones and amplification. The ensemble enhances its concerts with its own stage lighting and video projection.

The ensemble has performed throughout the UK and Europe, including performances at the International Festival Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain and The Bilbao Festival. The ensemble also ran an ‘InSpires’ concert series where it brought new music to local communities.

Recent highlights include a concert at The Union Chapel, London to celebrate the life and work of the late saxophonist and composer Barbara Thompson MBE. Trifarious will be performing alongside artists including Chris Farlow, Jess Gillam, Colisseum, Paraphernalia, and the Blue Sky Choir. In early 2025 Trifarious were invited to perform for York Late Music, presenting a programme of predominantly new works by David Power, Roger Marsh and Tom Armstrong. 2026 sees the launch RetroPerspective, of a unique project conceived during the ‘lock-down’ period. This collaboration between Trifarious and Tom Armstrong comprises exciting re-workings of compositions by Bach, Beethoven, Gonzaga and Chavalier de Saint-Georges (to name but a few!) and will involve the enhancements of video, light and sound - creating an exciting and immersive experience for the audience. The project is staged fully off-grid using only renewable energy, thus making it truly portable and able to be presented in the most remote venues around. Find out more here. Following two very successful trial performances in 2025, Trifarious are currently booking venues around the UK for a tour commencing in the Autumn of 2026. The tour will include an exciting multimedia music workshop with a local school at each of the concert venues.

As Artists in Residence at the University of Surrey for 2018/19, Trifarious worked with undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Music and Media Department, encompassing the composition, performance, Tonmeister and musicology courses. Recitals, workshops, lecture recitals, instrumental masterclasses and Q&A sessions were given throughout the residency. The residency culminated in a performance at the Guildford International Festival, featuring the world premiere of ‘Crunch Time’ by leading composer Stephen Goss commissioned by the ensemble. Trifarious also formed an ongoing collaboration with Tom Armstrong, also a composer and lecturer at the University, performing new works and arrangements of existing compositions, which include electro-acoustic and improvised compositional elements. Trifarious also played a key role in the David Lovatt Composers Competition. This included the added dimension of collaborating and performing with a professional opera singer.

The ensemble’s commitment to education in music is paramount. They have presented many composition and performance workshops at establishments including the Junior and Senior departments at the Royal Academy of Music and the composition department of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Trifarious has also presented workshops for GCSE and A Level students at many schools including residencies at St Catherine’s School, Bramley and Cranleigh School in Surrey.

Trifarious’ debut CD ‘Russian Roulette’ was released in 2015, and their forthcoming second album will feature works by Tom Armstrong, Stephen Goss, Barbara Thompson MBE, Edmund Jolliffe and Adam Gorb.

Original Repertoire list

Tom Armstrong

Andy Scott

Edmund Jolliffe

Barbara Thompson

Adam Gorb

Tim Brady

Peter Sculthorpe

Stephen Goss

Repertoire list

Consort Music

Two Tributes and a Dance

The Chief Inspector of Holes

Stride

Guitar Quartets (arr Scott)

Stalker

Russian Roulette

The Flying Dutchman

Mélange á Trois

Tango

Triple Riffing

Dream Tracks

Crunch Time

Repertoire list

Consort Music

Two Tributes and a Dance

The Chief Inspector of Holes

Stride

Guitar Quartets (arr Scott)

Stalker

Russian Roulette

The Flying Dutchman

Mélange á Trois

Tango

Triple Riffing

Dream Tracks

Crunch Time

Violist Maggie Snyder is Professor of Viola at the University of Georgia, Principal Violist of the Chamber Orchestra of New York, with whom she records for Naxos, and is on the Artist-Faculty of the Brevard Music Festival. She has performed solo recitals, chamber music, concertos and as an orchestral musician throughout the United States and abroad in such halls as the Kennedy and Kauffman Centers, all three halls at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Spivey Hall, and the Seoul Arts Center, and in Greece, Korea, and Russia. She has performed under the batons of Yuri Temirkanov, David Zinman, Robert Spano, Leonard Slatkin, James dePriest, Julius Rudel, James Conlon, Keith Lockhart, and Michael Tilson Thomas, and at such festivals as the Brevard Music Festival, the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival where she was a Time Warner Fellow. In 2001, Ms. Snyder was a semi-finalist at the 8th Primrose International Viola Competition, and made her recital debut in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall with her sister duo, Allemagnetti in 2009. The group was called a "winning pair" with a "highly promising debut" by the New York Concert Review. She has performed chamber music with members of the Cleveland and Tokyo Quartets, Jonathan Carney, the Aspen String Trio, Jon Manassee, Ivo Van der Werff, Itamar Zorman, and Norman Kreiger, among others. Her solo recordings, "Modern American Viola Music" and "Allemagnetti – Music for Viola and Harpsichord" are represented exclusively through Arabesque Recordings and available through iTunes and amazon.com. Her latest solo recording, titled “Viola Alone: Old New and Borrowed,” was released on Arabesque Records in January 2018 and features the premiere of a new piece commissioned by Ms. Snyder by Libby Larsen. She was the 2018 recipient of the University of Georgia’s Creative Research Medal in the Arts and Humanities for her project commissioning and recording new works for viola. Her latest collaborative recording featuring the works written for her by Leonard “Chic” Ball titled “Worlds Translucent” with Tim Lovelace and Michael Heald, was released on PARMA in 2019. Ms. Snyder has given master classes, clinics, and recitals at universities and music schools throughout the country, including The Universities of Michigan, Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan State, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, Interlochen, Hartt, and Converse College, among others. Ms. Snyder earned graduate degrees from The Peabody Conservatory of Music, where she was the teaching assistant for Victoria Chiang. Her Bachelor's degree is from the University of Memphis, where not only she was born and raised, but where she was a Pressar Scholar.

Michael Heald is currently Associate Professor of Violin at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, University of Georgia. His performing career began in England where he was a member of the English String Orchestra for three years, recording with Nimbus. At this time he played regularly with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle, recording major repertoire for EMI. Other musical experiences included playing with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Philharmonia Orchestra, with artists such as Valery Gergiev, Mikhail Pletnev, Igor Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, Gil Shaham, Pierre Boulez, Yuri Termikanov, Bryn Terfel, Walter Weller, Yuri Bashmet, Stephen Isserlis, and Nigel Kennedy. In Michigan, he was concertmaster of both the Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestra and the Jackson Symphony Orchestra, and principal second violin of the Michigan Chamber Orchestra. As a member of the American Sinfonietta for five years, Michael performed close to one hundred concerts across Europe, appearing as assistant concertmaster on one of the tours. The orchestra was also in residence each summer at the Bellingham Music Festival in Washington. He has also been a guest concertmaster for the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra.

Michael has performed many solo and chamber concerts to critical acclaim across the United States and Europe, collaborating with such artists as Ralph Votapek, Arvids Klisens, and Ian Fountain. He was a member of the Arlington String Quartet and the Beaumont Piano Trio, and as a member of Quadrivium he was in residence at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for a season of innovative concerts connected to the various exhibitions. He is currently a member of the Franklin String Quartet, the faculty quartet at the University of Georgia.

Some of Michael’s other performance venues have included the Bellingham Festival, the Wintergreen Festival, the Methow Festival, Vanderbilt University, Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota, the College of Charleston, the Wagner Hall in Riga, Latvia, and in England at the Elgar Birthplace Museum, and St. George’s, Brandon Hill in Bristol. Michael had the honour of performing The Lark Ascending to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on one of her official visits to Hereford, England. He has appeared on BBC Radio as well as on various public radio stations in the USA.

Michael’s concerto performances include those by Bach, Bruch, Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Wieniawski, Elgar, Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 3, and Brahms' Double Concerto. He has also released a compact disc of sonatas by Elgar and Beethoven.

Michael has given public master classes at such places as the Royal College of Music in London, Michigan State University, and the University of Minnesota, and has also presented at the ASTA National Conference. He has been on the faculty of the Montecito Music Festival in California, and the Wintergreen Festival in Virginia. Most recently his article “What is the Point of Balance?” was published nationally in the ASTA Journal. In 2010 he was awarded a significant grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to present a chamber music festival of American music at the University of Georgia.

Michael studied violin in London with Emanuel Hurwitz, then at the Royal Northern College of Music with Richard Deakin. He received his masters and doctorate in violin performance at Michigan State University, studying with Walter Verdehr. As a student he performed in master classes with members of the Fitzwilliam, Vermeer, Kronos, Griller, Alban Berg and Amadeus Quartets, and with Joseph Silverstein, Maurizio Fuks, Yehudi Menuhin, Ida Haendel, Joseph Fuchs, Ruggiero Ricci, and Franco Gulli.

Alex Wilson is a musician with a passion for the unusual, new and unexplored: a versatile pianist with interests ranging from cutting edge new music to fascinating repertoire by forgotten composers. Alex is a former British Contemporary Piano Competition finalist, Park Lane Group Young Artist and performer of new music across Britain and Europe as soloist and chamber musician. His self-curated tour of music by the lost composers of World War One ‘The Banks of Green Willow’ has achieved large audiences and received critical praise. His CD of first recordings of the piano music of F.S.Kelly was released in June 2020.

He has performed at venues including Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Cadogan Hall, and at the Rachmaninov Hall, Moscow, and has appeared on both BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 6 Music as a champion of contemporary music. As an orchestral pianist Alex works regularly with Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, BBC NOW, UPROAR new music ensemble and London Sinfonietta.

Alex directs, manages and performs with the Dr K. Sextet, curated the inaugural Cheltenham Music Festival Composer Academy and co-founded the music and visual arts collaboration ‘The Pierrot Project’. Alex believes strongly in taking professional, ambitious music projects out of the big cities and enjoys performing in the south-west (his home region) with local professional musicians and as a 'Live Music Now’ artist with ‘Duo Tutti’ alongside flautist Ruth Molins. Alex teaches piano at Colyton Grammar School, Devon.

Alex studied for a music degree at York University, and graduated from the Royal College of Music with a MA (distinction) in piano performance in 2011, following studies with Andrew Ball.

With her playing described as “sensational” [Gramophone], British pianist Nicola Meecham has been gaining international acclaim for her performances and recordings since her London debut for the Park Lane Group Music Series.

Her recording for SOMM of works by Janáček, Kodály and Enescu earned her top recommendation in the American Record Guide and exceptional reviews in Gramophone, International Record Review and International Piano Magazine.

SOMM have just released a second recital by Nicola, a disc of solo piano works by Tchaikovsky, including his rarely performed sonatas, a project indicative of her exceptionally wide-ranging recital repertoire.

Nicola has performed in all the major halls, including Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, and at prestigious international festivals including Exeter and King’s Lynn. Abroad, she has performed in Holland, Italy, Belgium and the Czech Republic.

She has premièred works by a number of contemporary composers for which she has received critical acclaim, notably works by Henyrk Gorecki, HK Gruber and British composers David Horne and Tom Armstrong.

In addition to recordings of music by Kurt Schwertsik and the American composer Louis 'Moondog' Hardin, Nicola has also given broadcast recitals for BBC Radio 3 and Dutch Radio, and has been featured on BBC 2 TV.

Born in Bath, Nicola started playing the piano at the age of four and gave her concerto debut at the age of thirteen. She went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music where she won numerous competitive prizes, including the Macfarren Gold Medal, the Academy’s highest distinction. Her teachers have included Hilary Coates, Hamish Milne and Andrzej Esterhazy.

Nicola currently teaches at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

Tim Redpath is highly respected as both clarinettist and saxophonist, and has been at the forefront of international contemporary chamber music for over thirty years. He has performed and collaborated with some of the most exciting and eclectic musicians around. These include Apollo Saxophone Quartet, London Saxophonic (touring and recording extensively with Michael Nyman and Moondog (Louis Hardin)), Moondog Big Band, Andy Scott’s Sax Assault & Bob Mintzer, Barbara Thompson, Joanna Macgregor, Django Bates and Iain Ballamy.

He has broadcast extensively on BBC television, BBC Radio 2, 3 & 4, Classic FM and has featured on over twenty CD albums. He has been guest principal clarinet and saxophonist with many of the UK’s leading orchestras including Opera North, BBC Philharmonic, Hallé, BBC Scottish, RTE, Philharmonia and London Chamber Orchestra. As founder member and soprano saxophonist with the highly acclaimed Apollo Saxophone Quartet for 23 years (1985 – 2008), Tim has amassed a large collection of awards including outright winner of the 1992 Tokyo International Chamber Music Competition (plus the Lufthansa Outstanding Performance Award), Erasmus Concours Netherlands, Countess of Munster Trust, Royal Overseas League, Tillett Trust and the Tunnell Trust Young Artists Scheme. The ensemble were awarded the valuable opportunity to participate in Sir Yehudi Menhuin’s Live Music Now! scheme in which they played a leading role for over ten years. The ASQ’s debut CD ‘First and Foremost’ was recorded by DECCA at Abbey Road Studios and reached number three in the Classical Music Charts. Collaborations have included projects with poet Lemn Sissay (culminating in the CD ‘Words and Pictures’, featuring an original composition titled ‘May Day’ by Tim Redpath for the quartet and Lemn Sissay), the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, and Keith Tippett with the BBC Singers.

Tim has composed for many instrumental combinations, and has works published by Astute Music, some of which have featured in the ABRSM and Trinity music exam syllabuses. As producer and engineer he has recorded many albums for a cross section of classical artists for labels including Naxos, Sony, Classic FM, DECCA, Signum Classics and Black Box.

In 2012 (along with his wife violist Rachel Calaminus) Tim established his new vibrant contemporary ensemble Trifarious.

Tom Armstrong (b.1968) studied composition with George Nicholson before reading music at York University, remaining to pursue a DPhil with Roger Marsh. He studied with Vinko Globokar at Dartington Summer School and with Magnus Lindberg, Colin Matthews and Oliver Knussen at the Britten-Pears School. He attended the prestigious International Course for Professional Choreographers and Composers at Bretton Hall in 1999 working with, amongst others, Kenneth Tharp and Wayne MacGregor. In 2011 Tom was selected for VOX3, part of the opera development programme at the Royal Opera House, where he worked with Dominic Muldowney and John Lloyd-Davies.

Tom’s instrumental and vocal music has been performed by leading ensembles and soloists including Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Sinfonia Viva, Endymion, Notes Inégales, Rarescale, the New Music Players, Psappha, the Composer’s Ensemble, [rout], Gemini, the Fidelio Trio, the Delta Saxophone Quartet, Stephen Gutman, Jane Chapman, Lionel Handy, and Martin Feinstein. The BBC Philharmonic and the pianist Andrew Ball have broadcast Tom’s music on Radio 3. Tom’s dance scores have been heard in the Lowry centre (FIBBA, commissioned by the National Youth Ballet in 2000) and Sadlers Wells (Black Maria 2007, Distant Beauties 2017). Tall Ship Tales (2001) was performed by the North and West Hertfordshire Youth Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall (South Bank Centre, London). Recent performances have taken place in Italy (the Festival di Londra, Ripatansone, and the Lagonegro Guitar Festival), France (the Carmago Foundation) and China (Tianjin Conservatory of Music).

Tom has worked on a number of large-scale projects and is no stranger to collaboration. Black Maria, by acclaimed children’s author Diana Wynne Jones, was created with choreographer Susan Crow and screenwriter Zara Waldeback as an evening length, multi-media work. Tom composed the one-woman show Catching the Sun with the playwright Stephanie McKnight (2007) and collaborated with the writer Sarah Diamond to create The Cathedral on the Marshes commissioned by the Crossness Engines Trust and funded by the PRSF, the RVW Trust, the Britten-Pears Foundation and Arts Council England. This work, for choir and concert band, celebrated the restoration of Joseph Bazalgette’s magnificent and ground-breaking sewage pumping station on the south bank of the Thames where it received its premiere by entirely local performers in 2012. That year also saw the release of Opened Spaces on CD (Songs Now, Meridian Records) and a staging of the operatic scene Do the Right Thing (lyrics by Bridget Minamore) as part of the ROH’s Exposure series.

Tom’s most recent work covers three areas of interest: establishing a more collaborative relationship between composer and performer, the creative possibilities of revision, and musical borrowing. Albumleaves (2013) for the Ligeti Quartet and trumpeter Simon Desbruslais and JPR (2015) for Trio Aporia (Stephen Preston - flute, Richard Boothby - viola da gamba and Jane Chapman - harpsichord) utilise indeterminacy and open form, handing the musicians more responsibility for the sound of the music in performance. JPR, Distant Beauties (commissioned by Images Ballet Company for their 2017 UK tour) and Tänze (for multiple keyboards) each borrow from pre-existing music (by Rameau, Tchaikovsky and Schubert respectively), subjecting it to processes of erasure to bring forth new material. Tom’s latest CD, Dance Maze (Resonus Classics 2018) is an investigation of the revision process in composition, with works recorded in different versions involving radically different approaches to the same materials. Shadow Variations (2019) for ukulele ensemble combines Tom’s interests in composer/performer collaboration and borrowing - it is a set of pieces that comment on and extend renowned ukulele exponent Samantha Muir’s The Dowie Dens of Yarrow - and reignites his commitment to music for amateurs and semi-professionals, an important strain of Tom’s work in pieces such as the Children’s opera The Buried Moon (1995-6) and Bounce (2004 - commissioned whilst resident on Making Music’s Breakout scheme). Two recent works, Berceuse 1917 (written for Kate Ledger and Anna Snow in 2020) and The Gramophone Played (written for the New York based cellist Madeleine Shapiro in 2020-21), draw on Robert Macfarlane’s book The Old Ways and its semi-fictional account of the last months of the poet Edward Thomas’ life; The Gramophone Played returns to the digital medium that Tom last explored in Black Maria.

Composer/performer collaboration, the revision process and borrowing are areas Tom has written about as part of his academic research. Recent writings include ‘Collaboration and the Practitioner-Researcher: A Composer’s Perspective’ (Palgrave Macmillan 2020) and ‘One Into Three: Context Method and Motivation in Revising and Reworking Dance Maze for Solo Piano’ to be published in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association in 2022. He has also run a research network (funded by the AHRC) on Music Composition as Interdisciplinary Practice that held events throughout 2016 and commissioned new work from a variety of innovative artists including London Topophobia and squib-box. Tom is a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Surrey where he teachers a wide range of composition-related topics at undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels.

February 2021

Sadie Harrison’s music performed and broadcast internationally with works released to critical acclaim on Naxos, NMC, Cadenza, Sargasso, Toccata Classics, BML, Divine Art/Metier, and Clarinet Classics. For several years, Sadie also pursued a secondary career as an archaeologist - reflecting this interest in the past, many of Sadie’s compositions have been inspired by the traditional musics of old and extant cultures with cycles of pieces based on the folk music of Afghanistan, Lithuania, the Isle of Skye, the Northern Caucasus and the UK.

Her focus during 2015-16 was on a substantial collaborative project (Gulistan-e Nur: The Rosegarden of Light), working with US Ensemble Cuatro Puntos (with whom she is currently Composer- in-Residence) and students from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (where she is currently Composer-in-Association). The project resulted in tours in Europe and the USA and a CD with Toccata Classics released in June 2016. BBC3 Record Review described the disc as ‘moving and intriguing’, and MusicWeb International as ‘engaging, mysterious, delightfully pointed dances.’ The 25 minute title work was broadcast complete on BBC Radio 3 in March 2017 as part of the PRSF Women Make Music 2016 celebrations.

The project was supported by two Arts Council England Grants for the Arts, a PRSF Women Make Music Award, and grants from RVW, Hinrichsen, New Music USA and the Ambache Charitable Trust in acknowledgement of the unique nature of the project which brought together music and musicians from Europe, America and Asia.

2015 saw the release of a portrait CD by Toccata Classics, (Observer: ‘disc of glittering intensity’; BBC Music Magazine: ‘beautiful and intriguing’; Fanfare: ’a special, fragile space’) and a Guest Directorship of the Irish Composition Summer School. She was also appointed as Visiting Fellow to Goldsmiths College in recognition of her research work on Afghanistan. Recent performances have taken place at the International Mozart Festival in Johannesburg, Pietermaritzburg and Stellenbosch (Renée Reznek), Late Music York (Chimera, Kate Harrison-Ledger, Goldfield Ensemble, Albany Trio), Bergen, Nicosia and Tennessee (Peter Sheppard Skaerved), Club Inégales (Dr. K Sextet), Bristol (SCAW), Seaton (Trittico), Isle of Rasaay (Sarah Watts), Huddersfield (Nancy Ruffer), National Portrait Gallery, British Museum and Wiltons Music Hall (Peter Sheppard, Eve Daniel, Roderick Chadwick), Holbourne Museum (Elizabeth Walker/ Richard Shaw), Bristol, City University (Madeleine Mitchell/Geoff Poole/Ian Pace), The Forge (CHROMA), Almenucar, Granada (Frano Kakarigi), Sydney, Australia (Jenny Duck-Chong), the USA Hartford Women Composers Festival, Brighton Fringe Festival, Institute of Cultural Diplomacy, Berlin (Cuatro Puntos).

Sadie’s symphonic work Sapida-Dam-Nau commissioned with funds from a Finzi Trust Scholarship was premiered by the Afghanistan Women’s Orchestra at the Closing Concert of the World Economic Forum, Davos in January 2017 with subsequent performances in Geneva, Weimar and Berlin. 2016-17 saw new works for violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved (..an amaranth from the shade..), double bass virtuosos Frano Kakarigi (A Book of Poems) and Dan Styffe (Hällristningsområdet), the latter released on Prima Facie Records in Summer 2017. SQUISH! King Kong’s Love Song (a celebration of the deaf community in Hartford, Connecticut) was premiered by Cuatro Puntos (USA) and The Murder (written in response to the artwork of Heather Nevay) was commissioned by New Music South West/Royal West of England Academy. Aurea Luce (Madeleine Mitchell/Nigel Clayton) was released on Divine Art in August 2017 (Pizzicato: ‘very lyrical’; The Whole Note: ‘Harrison’s lovely Aurea Luce’; The Strad: ‘The slow creep of plainsong in Aurea Luce builds to blistering richness’.)

Sadie was appointed as the first Composer-in-Residence at the Bei Wu Sculpture Park, Berlin in 2017 supported by an Arts Council England/British Council International Development Grant and a PRSF Composer’s Fund Grant, with works for Concerto Brandenburg premiered at the inauguration of the Park’s Indigenous Australian Sculpture Gallery in June (as part of the Australia Now! Festival 2017). A new disc of piano music performed by Ian Pace, Philippa Harrison, Renée Reznek and Duncan Honeybourne was released in November 2017 (Prima Facie) and her carol As-salāmu ʿalaykum Bethlehem (Prima Facie December 2017) has been described as ‘daringly wild, so ebullient and confident in its expression of joy and optimism that the carol’s culmination sounds positively feral. Utterly amazing.’ (5:4) and ‘a riot of sound that bows least to the saccharine tendencies of the season. Even whilst pushing the harmonic envelope the result feels like a great shout of joy.’ (Composition Today)

Sadie’s music is published by UYMP, ABRSM and Recital Music with works on examination board repertoire lists. She is a member of the British Music Collection’s Steering Group, the UK’s primary body for the curation and publicising of contemporary British composers and repertoire. She is also a composition mentor with the South West Music School and tutor with New Music South West.