"Hyperion Ensemble is a chamber music ensemble based in Bucharest, founded in 1976 by composer Iancu Dumitrescu As a starting point, Hyperion explored possible connections between the most archaic Romanian music - Byzantine music, folk music collected by Bartok, etc. - and today's avant-garde music. Over decades of work the group evolved a playing tradition which allowed it to change players whilst remaining fundamentally intact. Actually the core of the ensemble is formed by internationally renewed artists from Romania, Israel, UK, USA, France... It is a tradition of performance, of interpreting each new score as a provocation of the spirit, and a quest for new domains of sound.

Aesthetically, at the heart of this work is the notion of spectrality as it developed in the work of Dumitrescu, Avram and other composers - that is: a specifically transformational spectrality, as opposed to the structural spectrality of the French Itinéraire Group. Hyperion has performed all over Europe and USA, and recorded numerous LPs and over 35 Compact Discs and DVDs."

"Born in Israel in 1976, Ilan Volkov began his conducting career at the age of 19. He was appointed Principal Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2003 and subsequently became its Principal Guest Conductor in 2009. He took up his current appointment as Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra at the beginning of the 2011/12 season.

Ilan Volkov's arrival in Iceland coincided with the opening of Harpa, Reykjavík's visually striking new concert hall. In March 2012 he curated and directed a three-day festival of contemporary music, 'Tectonics', celebrating the centenary year of John Cage. This combined contemporary classicalmusic with other new music genres, such as improvisation, electronics and rock. This year, 'Tectonics' will take place in both Reykjavík and Glasgow, featuring the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and BBC SSO respectively.

A frequent guest with leading orchestras worldwide, Ilan Volkov works regularly with a wide range of ensembles, including the Israel Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the Oslo Philharmonic, the SWR Sinfonieorchester Freiburg and Ensemble Modern.

His many recordings with the BBC SSO include two CDs of Stravinsky's ballet scores, a Gramophone Award-winning disc of Britten's complete works for piano and orchestra with Steven Osborne, and a survey of Liszt's three Funeral Odes. His CD of works by Jonathan Harvey, Body Mandala, received a Gramophone Award in 2008, and the release of Harvey's Speakings won the Monaco Prize and the Prix Caecilia de l'Union de la Presse Musicale Belge in 2001.

Ilan Volkov is one of the guiding forces behind Levontin 7. This performance venue, among the most adventurous in Tel Aviv, brings together diverse genres, including classical, jazz, electronic and rock music. The enterprise reflects his determination to keep alive the creative spirit and sense of artistic adventure that shaped so many works composed during the opening decades of the last