"Rebecca Toal is a versatile and accomplished freelance trumpet player based in London. She is proud to have performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Britten-Pears Orchestra and brass ensembles, Arch Sinfonia, and at the BBC Proms with The Juilliard School and the Royal Academy of Music. Alongside exploring the symphonic repertoire, Rebecca is particularly interested in both baroque and contemporary music. She has further developed this enthusiasm through projects and performances with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Belsize Baroque, Academy of Ancient Music, and the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Apartment House, London Sinfonietta Academy, An Assembly, and the Echo Ensemble respectively.

Rebecca graduated with a first class Master of Arts degree from the Royal Academy of Music in 2020, and prior to this, she also studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she received her Bachelor of Music Honours degree. She is extremely grateful to have been supported by Help Musicians UK, Countess of Munster Musical Trust, The Wolfson Foundation, The Craxton Memorial Trust and scholarships from both of her alma maters.

Teaching also plays an important role in Rebecca's life, and as well as teaching privately, she also works for Music Education Islington, Enfield Music Service and participates in projects with Newham Music Service. Rebecca completed the LRAM teaching diploma at the Academy and is registered with the DBS update service. She also feels proud to have contributed towards a 100% pass rate for her student's' graded exams.

Rebecca is passionate about discussing and raising awareness of mental health issues, and as such is training to become a qualified counsellor. She also co-hosts the podcast Things Musicians Don't Talk About, which aims to destigmatise conversations that are often considered taboo within the Arts.

In her down time, Rebecca is a newly-enthused but clumsy climber, and she lives in North London with her partner and their three insane cats. She hates talking on the phone and loves the gossip on her neighbourhood online forum."

"Playing bass clarinet, various saxophones, and other unusual woodwind instruments Chris splits his time between the UK where he lives and Canada. He has toured internationally with Cold Specks, Timber Timbre, Guillemots, and Fyfe Dangerfield and regularly accompanies songwriters such as Little Annie, Baby Dee, Devon Sproule, and Edd Donovan. His practice extends from popular music to theatre, experimental and improvised performances and he has appeared on over sixty commercial recordings. Recently Chris has started to release a series of albums under his own name.

Chris grew up in Medway, Kent and was drawn into the local music scene at a young age where he become friends with Billy Childish - artist, musician, and founder of Hangman Records & Books. During visits to Childish's kitchen Chris was exposed to the exploits of homemade music-making. This formative period instilled a DIY approach and by the time Chris was 14 he had already started out as a street busker. After hearing the Eric Dolphy Memorial Album he took up bass clarinet. He is self-taught.

He went on to study painting at Cheltenham art college. During this period he began to establish experimental projects including Grace & Delete - a duo with fellow painter and electronics musician James Dunn. He also started to explore self-developed playing techniques such as multi-phonics, circular breathing, micro tonality and generally speaking a more tactile approach to the instrument. This led him to working with composers including Thanos Chrysakis, and Pete M Wyer. At Cheltenham he also met songwriter Fyfe Dangerfield who he has continued to collaborate with on a number of occasions since - most notoriously as an additional saxophonist for the Mercury Prize nominated indie-pop group Guillemots.

Other projects include several albums with electronica group Longstone and performing music for Nofit State Circus. One off sessions have seen Chris performing with Moby, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Vieux Farka Touré, Fatoumata Diawara, Alexander Hawkins, and Lisa Hannigan. He has also written theatre music and recently worked with composer Jon Nicholls on an original soundtrack for Florian Zellar's The Mother starring Gina McKee."

Raymond Brien is a clarinetist, Composer and Artistic Director of the Thinking Minds Project.

"Jason Alder is a low clarinet specialist and holds degrees in clarinet performance (Michigan State University- US), bass clarinet performance (Conservatorium van Amsterdam- NL), creative improvisation (Artez Conservatorium- NL), as well as post-graduate study in the application of the advanced rhythmic principles of South Indian Karnatic music to contemporary Western classical and jazz music (Contemporary Music and Improvisation through Non-Western Techniques). He is currently conducting PhD research on the sonic possibilities on the contrabass clarinet (Royal Northern College of Music- UK). He is well-established as a performer of contemporary music and frequently works with composers to develop and premiere new works either as a soloist, with his flute-clarinet Shadanga Duo, the Four New Brothers Bass Clarinet Quartet, or in a variety of other formations. As well as composed music, Jason regularly performs internationally as an improviser, electroacoustic musician, and in world music and jazz bands. He is often found performing, lecturing, or on panel discussion at festivals around the world, including the International ClarinetFests, European Clarinet Festivals, Istanbul Woodwind Festival, American Single Reed Summit, Netherlands Gaudeamus New Music Festival, Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, Havana Festival of Contemporary Music, and Leeds International Festival of Artistic Innovation. He is also sought after as a recording engineer for many classical and jazz musicians around Europe. Originally from metro-Detroit, Jason has lived in Europe since 2006 and is an endorsing Artist for Selmer clarinets, D'Addario reeds, Behn mouthpieces, and Silverstein ligatures."

"Tim Hodgkinson (b. 1949) studied social anthropology at Cambridge, and co-founded the politically and musically radical group HENRY COW with Fred Frith in 1968. In addition to composing, he has a long involvement in improvisation, and came back to anthropology in the 1990's with research into music and shamanism in Siberia.

He has participated in many concerts with Iancu Dumitrescu's Hyperion Ensemble both as bass clarinetist and composer and conductor. His compositions have been interpreted in such international festivals as: Spectrum XXI (Brussels, Paris, Geneva, , Berlin, London), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (U.K.) where he was a featured composer in 2007, Craiova and Ploiesti Festivals (Romania), Guarda Festival (Portugal), Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte di Montepulciano (Italy), Konfrontationen Festival (Austria), Nordlyd Festival (Norway), Musique Action (France) and the European Symposium of Experimental Music at Barcelona.

His Piece for Harp and Cello was selected for the SPNM shortlist in 2005. His composition SHHH was accepted for the IMEB electroacoustic music archive at Bourges in 2006. His piece Fragor appeared in the Martin Scorsese film Shutter Island in 2010. He has worked with Hyperion Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Ne(X)tworks, the Bergersen String Quartet, London Sinfonietta, Insomnio Ensemble, Phoenix Ensemble, Basler Schlagzeug Trio, Nidaros Slagverkensemble, Bindou Ensemble.

As an improvising musician on reeds and lap steel guitar Tim Hodgkinson has performed all over the world with many of the most acclaimed artists in the field, and continues to be fully engaged in the celebrated Konk Pack trio with Roger Turner and Thomas Lehn. In 2009 he released KLARNT - a CD of solo clarinet improvisations.

With Ken Hyder, and Gendos Chamzyryn from Tuva, he works in the K-Space project: numerous tours of Europe and Siberia and CD releases - including INFINITY, a set of recordings that uses customised software to re-compose the music with each listening. In 2009, K-Space developed a sound-installation for the exhibition Shamans of Siberia at the Museum of Ethnology in Stuttgart.

As a writer, he has published articles and reviews on improvised music, musique concrète, spectralism, the ethnomusicology of shamanism, and the aesthetic problems of the impact of new technology on contemporary music - in, amongst others, Perspectives of New Music, Arcana, Contemporary Music Review, Musicworks, The Wire, Cambridge Anthropology, Variant, Rer Quarterly, and Resonance Magazine. His book, MUSIC AND THE MYTH OF WHOLENESS will be published by MIT in January 2016.

He has given lectures, workshops and seminars at Cagliari and Lyon Conservatoires, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, at Goldsmiths College and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, at Istanbul, Edinburgh and Cornell Universities, and art schools in several European countries, at COMA summer school, and at the Verband für Aktuelle Musik in Hamburg where he was artist in residence in 2010."

"Saxophonist, flautist and composer Julie Kjær's edgy and thoughtfull playing and 'dark, otherworldly imagery' (Jazzwise) has become incerasingly evident around Europe, inhabiting ground between composition and free improv. Experimenting with extended techniques, sound and rhythm she pushes her instruments to their limits.

She has toured internationally and recorded with Django Bates and his band StoRMChaser. Currently her main focus is on her trio, Julie Kjær 3, with bass player John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble. Their debut album 'Dobbeltgænger' was just released on 14th March '16 on Clean Feed Records.

She tours internationally with Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and his Large Unit. Other main projects are a trio with Rachel Musson and Hannah Marshall and Danish-English sextet 'Pierette Ensemble', which she co leads with Danish composer and piano player Signe Bisgaard. The ensemble's debut was cd released February 2014. She plays with London Improvisers Orchestra and is a leader and sidewoman of several other English and Danish ensembles.

She associates herself with prized performers like Mark Sanders, Dave Douglas, Louis Moholo-Moholo, John Russel, Dave Liebman, Laura Jurd, 'Leafcutter' John, Mira Calix, Veryan Weston and Steve Beresford."

"Info

Yoni Silvers plays the bass clarinet (extended/constricted/strangulated), as well as alto sax, violin, piano, voice, some computer fiddlings and some general fiddlings. Improvisation, composition, performance, and much in-between.

These are some of the combos I am a part of these days:

- Hyperion Ensemble, led by Rumanian Hyper-Spectralist composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram.

- Denis D'or, with Grundik Kasyansky on electronics and Tom Wheatley on double bass

- Trio with Mark Sanders on drums and Tom Wheatley on double bass

- Duo with Steve Noble

I also play or have played with people such as Jean Claude Jones, Harold Rubin, Steve Noble, Eddie Prevost, Angharad Davies, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O'Malley, Eran Sachs, Alex Drool, Maya Dunietz, Wolfgang Fuchs, John Edwards, Toshimaru Nakamura, Ghédalia Tazartès, Ehran Elisha, Alex Ward, Sharon Gal, Mark Sanders, Günter Baby Sommer, Eyal Maoz, Daniel Davidovsky, Ofer Bymel, Damon Smith, Birgit Ulher, Fritz Welch, Daysuke Takaoka, Neil Davidson, Tim Hodgkinson, Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides, Seymour Wright, Catherine Lamb, Hannes Lingens, Tom Wheatley, Dylan Nyoukis, Yonatan Avishai, Steve Beresford, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, London Improvisers Orchestra, Thanos Chrysakis, Mazen Kerbaj, Heiner Metzger, Ute Kanngiesser, Dominic Lash, Ariel Shibolet, Eivind Lønning, Sophie Angel, Grundik Kasyansky, Konzert Minimal, Crank Sturgeon...

I've composed and arranged music for film directors Avi Mograbi ('Z-32'), and Josef Pitchhadze ('Year Zero'); theatre director Ariel Efraim Ashbel (The Empire Strikes Back); artists Alona Rodeh ('Over and Above') and Gilad Ratman ('The Workshop' for Venice Biennale 2013); and poets/spoken-word-artists Roman Baembaev and Pyotr Shmugliakov. Also did arrangements for singer-Israeli songwriters Rona Kenan, Shlomi Shaban, and others have been played by ensembles such as the Israeli Philharmonic and Tel Aviv Soloists Ensemble, and been a member of the Israeli rock band Habiluim and metal/circus-core band Midnight Peacocks.

I've also composed pieces for ensembles such as the Israeli Contemporary Players, and numerous ad-hoc ensembles."

"Thanos Chrysakis' output consists of composition, performance, and installation. He was born in Athens in 1971. After residing in the UK between 1998-2014 he moved in 2015 to Belarus. With several albums to his name his work has appeared in festivals and events in several countries, including CYNETart Festival, Festspielhaus Hellerau - Dresden, Academy of Arts / M:AI (Museum für Architektur und Ingenieurkunst NRW)- Berlin, TU - Berlin, Diapason Gallery - New York, ohrenhoch - der Geräuschladen Gallery - Berlin Neukölln, Spazioersetti Gallery - Udine, XXII "Sound Ways" International New Music Festival - St. Petersburg, Artus Contemporary Arts Studio - Budapest, CRUCE Gallery - Madrid, Fylkingen - Stockholm, Relative (Cross) Hearings festival - Budapest, ZEPPELIN festival - Barcelona, IVM (Institut Valencià de la Música) - Valencia, Motus/Festival Futura 2013 / 21 édition - Crest-Vallée de la Drôme-Diois, Xposed Club - Cheltenham, Festival de Música Contemporanea "Ramiro Guerra" - Monterrey, FACT Centre - Liverpool, Association Ryoanji - Salle Des Fêtes - Ahun, The Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Chosen Vale/International Chosen Vale Trumpet Seminar 2014 - Hanover-New Hampshire, Frost School of Music - Clarke Recital Hall - Coral Gables/Florida, XIII Festival Internacional de Música Nueva - Monterrey, Splendor - Amsterdam, VI European Clarinet Festival - Camerino - Italy, Logos Foundation - Ghent, Palacio de Bellas Artes - Mexico City, "On the Edge of Perceptibility - Sound Art" Műcsarnok Kunsthalle - Budapest, Festival del Bosque GERMINAL - Mexico City, Noise & Fury Festival - Moscow, Oosterkerk - Amsterdam, Center for New Music - San Francisco, Västerås Konstmuseum - Västerås, Störung festival - Barcelona, BMIC Cutting Edge concert series - The Warehouse - London.

His music has been frequently aired by RAI Radio 3, BBC Radio 3, Radio Portugal Antenna 2, Radio Nacional de España Radio 3, Ireland's RTÉ Lyric FM, Polskie Radio (Warsaw), RTS - Radio Belgrade 3 (Serbia), FM Brussel, Elektramusic (Strasbourg), CKCU FM - (Ottawa), Undae! Radio and Onda Sonora - Radio Circulo de Bellas Artes (CBA) (Madrid), Radio Horizon (Johannesburg), Motus/Radio Saint Ferréol -Les Territoires Du Son (la radio du Val de Drôme), Radio Nova (Oslo) among others. In addition, his texts have been also appeared in the Leonardo Music Journal (MIT Press), the Vague Terrain Journal, and in the volumes The Book of Guilty Pleasures and The Idea of the Avant Garde - And What It Means Today (Manchester University Press) edited by Marc James Léger. He composes for electronic and acoustic instruments, as well environmental sounds, focusing on the structural, aesthetic and transfigured capacity of sonic matter.

His formal training encompasses percussion (Dimitris Tzafestas), Sonic Arts (Hugh Davies) at the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts and a PhD in composition from Goldsmiths, University of London (EMS/Michael Young) as well as private studies in orchestration with Dmitri Smirnov. However it is the yearning of the creative praxis itself that transmitted the crucial aspect of artistic practice: that something has to be staked, that something must be ventured.

His work was amongst the selected works at the 32nd International Competition de Musique et d'Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges 2005, in the category œuvre d'art sonore électroacoustique, while received an honorary mention in 2006 at the 7th International Electroacoustic Composition Competition Musica Viva in Lisbon (the jury was constituted by Morton Subotnick (USA), François Bayle (France), and Miguel Azguime (Portugal).

He has written music for distinguished musicians such as Philippe Brunet (flugelhorn, trumpet), Wilfrido Terrazas (flutes), Chris Cundy (baritone saxophone, bass clarinet), the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Jason Alder (bass clarinet), Alexander Bruck (viola), Yoni Silver (bass clarinet), Natalia Pérez Turner (cello), Nadia Ratsimandresy (Onde), Mikael Rudolfsson (alto trombone), Matias Karlsen Bjornstad (soprano saxophone), Liam Hockley (clarinets), Michael Pelzel (church organ), Kate Ryder (piano, prepared piano), Tzenka Dianova (piano), Claire Chase (bass flute), Peter Evans (trumpet), Julie Kjaer (alto saxophone/alto, Luis Tabuenca (percussion), Philip Chase Hawkins (trumpet).

Recent compositions amongst others, include: Above the Hidden Track an Endless Blaze (Aural Terrains 2015), Terra Firma (for Mikael Rudolfsson [alto trombone] 2015), Astraea (for the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, 2013), Undercurrent (for Liam Hockley [clarinet in A] 2014), Arché (for Chris Cundy [baritone saxophone] 2014), Nocturnal Flight (for Nadia Ratsimandresy [onde] 2014), Ingress (for Yoni Silver [bass clarinet] 2015), Canto Intrare (for Philippe Brunet & Philip Chase Hawkins [duo trumpets] 2015), Μήτε το Κύμα / Νé da'll onde (for Wilfrido Terrazas & Natalia Pérez Turner [bass flute / cello] 2014].

He has recorded/performed with a number of improvisers including among others Wade Matthews, Dario Bernal-Villegas, Jerry Wigens, James O'Sullivan, Philip Somervell, Jamie Coleman, Chris Cundy, Zsolt Sőrés, Sebastian Lexer, Javier Pedreira, Julie Kjaer, Artur Vidal, Christian Kobi, Christian Skjødt, Yoni Silver, Nuno Torres, Kurt Liedwart, Ernesto Rodrigues, Abdul Moimême. Furthermore, he has also closely collaborated with the visual artists Pascal Dombis, and Villő Turcsány. Since 2007 he operates the record-label 'Aural Terrains' focusing in electroacoustics, composed and improvised music.

He has held residencies at the Visby Centre for Composers (twice) and at the Artus Contemporary Arts Studio in Budapest. His work has been supported by PRS for Music Foundation and the Swedish Art Council.

Current and upcoming projects for 2016-17 include a residency at the Porticello Artist Residency in Calabria/Italy, a series of compositions for the Hyperion Ensemble, Tim Hodgkinson (bass clarinet), Yoni Silver (bass clarinet), Tibi Cenuser (trombone), for the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, for Konus Quartett, for Liam Hockley (clarinets in A and E♭), Laura Faoro (bass flute), Philippe Brunet (trumpet), Elena Kakaliagou (french horn), Stephan Vermeersch (bass clarinet), Alexander Bruck (viola), Natalia Pérez Turner (cello), Chris Cundy (bass clarinets), Markus Wenninger (clarinet E♭), Serge Bertocchi (Tubax E♭), Shadanga Duo (alto flute/alto clarinet), Katalin Szanyi (alto flute), Jason Alder (contra bass clarinet), Alejandro Tello (oboe), Wilfrido Terrazas (flutes), Dana Jessen (bassoon) as well a new electronic music CD entitled 'Equinox'."

"John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992) was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.

Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work's challenge to assumed definitions about musicianship and musical experience made it a popular and controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics of art and performance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces. The best known of these is Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48).

His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933-35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in various East and South Asian cultures. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controlled music, which he started composing in 1951. The I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text on changing events, became Cage's standard composition tool for the rest of his life. In a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music, he described music as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living"."