"Simon Allen is a composer and interpreter of new music using improvisation, computer, pencil and paper with equal measure. As composer and director, his Resonance At The Still Point Of Change for multiple moving images, lighting, voices and ensemble, was premiered as part of the Cultural Olympiad. In performance, film and theatre settings his collaborations include work with John Tilbury, Christian Wolff, Nigel Osborne, David Toop, Katie Mitchell, FOLK///projects and as a member of Swedish based ensemble Skogen, with Magnus Granberg and David Sylvian."

"Bridget Carey studied jointly at the Royal Academy of Music and London University and has pursued a varied freelance career based in London, and has developed a particular reputation in the field of new music.

For 15 years she premiered new chamber opera for the Almeida, whilst working in dance scores with Siobhan Davies and Rambert companies, classical contemporary with Opus 20 and Music Projects/London and new complexity with Ensemble Expose. From 1995-2005 she was viola player with the Kreutzer string quartet. More recently, her chamber music interests include Okeanos and the RPS award-winning experimental music group Apartment House, with whom she continues to add to her chamber music discography. She has been a member of Britten Sinfonia for the last 20 years, and is a regular guest with London Sinfonietta and BCMG, among others."

"An active and ever-growing repertoire that encompasses such composers as Beethoven, Berg, Brahms, Debussy, Schubert and Stravinsky reinforces pianist Nicolas Hodges' superior prowess in contemporary music. As Tempo magazine has written: "Hodges is a refreshing artist; he plays the classics as if they were written yesterday, and what was written yesterday as if it were already a classic."

Born in London and now based in Germany, where he is a professor at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart, Hodges approaches the works of Classical, Romantic, 20th century and contemporary composers with the same questing spirit, leading the Guardian to comment: "Hodges' recitals always boldly go where few other pianists dare... with an energy that sometimes defies belief."

Nicolas Hodges' virtuosity and innate musicianship give him an assured command over the most strenuous technical complexities, making him a firm favourite among many of today's most prestigious contemporary composers. Collaborating closely with such contrasting figures as John Adams, Helmut Lachenmann and the late Karlheinz Stockhausen is central to Hodges' career, and many of the world's most revered composers have dedicated works to him, including Thomas Adès, Gerald Barry, Elliott Carter, James Clarke, Francisco Coll, Hugues Dufourt, Pascal Dusapin, Beat Furrer, Isabel Mundry, Brice Pauset, Wolfgang Rihm and Miroslav Srnka. Hodges enjoys a particularly close relationship with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, who recently described him as "becoming like my Peter Pears." In September 2018, it was announced that the eminent composer, and long-term collaborator of Nicolas Hodges, Rebecca Saunders, had been selected by Roche Commissions as the 10th recipient in their commissioning series. The new commission, a piano concerto for Hodges, will be premiered at the Lucerne Festival, by Hodges and the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, in late August 2020, and will subsequently be toured in Europe.

Recent performance highlights for Nicolas Hodges have included the premiere of Simon Steen-Andersen's award-winning Piano Concerto, performed with Francois-Xavier Roth and the SWR Symphony Orchestra Freiburg Baden-Baden as part of the Donaueschingen Festival in 2014, as well as the world premiere of Variations from the Golden Mountains by Sir Harrison Birtwistle at London's Wigmore Hall. Hodges also recently gave the world premiere of Gerald Barry's Piano Concerto, with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Peter Rundel, and the UK premiere with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Adès in Birmingham, followed by a repeat performance at the Aldeburgh Festival. He also gave the world premiere of Thomas Adès' own piano concerto In Seven Days with the London Sinfonietta, followed by further performances of the work with orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Further performance highlights for Hodges have included the world premiere performance of Elliott Carter's Dialogues for piano and orchestra, with the London Sinfonietta and Oliver Knussen, as well as the US and Berlin premieres of the work, with the Chicago Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras respectively - both conducted by Daniel Barenboim - and the New York premiere, at Carnegie Hall, with the MET Orchestra.

Hodges's has established successful relationships with many of today's leading orchestras and ensembles, and engagements include regular performances with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony, MET Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, Philharmonia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, St Louis Symphony, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and WDR Sinfonieorchester Cologne, and ensembles such as ASKO/Schoenberg, Amsterdam, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Contrechamps Geneva, International Contemporary Ensemble New York and the Remix Ensemble, Porto.

Among the distinguished conductors with whom Nicolas Hodges regularly collaborates are Thomas Adès, Daniel Barenboim, George Benjamin, Martyn Brabbins, Sylvain Cambreling, James Levine, Susanna Mälkki, Cornelius Meister, Jonathan Nott, Emilio Pomarico, David Robertson, Pascal Rophé, François- Xavier Roth, Peter Rundel, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Pierre-André Valade, Ilan Volkov and Ryan Wigglesworth.

Also an avid chamber musician, Hodges has performed in Berlin (Musikfest), Brussels (Ars Musica), Hamburg (Ostertoene), Helsinki (Musica Nova), London (Barbican Centre, Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre and the BBC Proms), Lucerne (Festival), Madrid (INAEM), Melbourne International Arts Festival, New York (Carnegie Hall and Mostly Mozart), Paris (IRCAM and Festival d' Automne), Rome (IUC), Salzburg (Festival and Biennale), Strasbourg (Musica), Stuttgart (Eclat), Tanglewood (Festival), Tokyo, Vienna (Wien Modern) and Zurich (Tage für Neue Musik). He also collaborates regularly with the Arditti Quartet, Adrian Brendel, Colin Currie, Ilya Gringolts, Anssi Karttunen, Michael Wendeberg, Carolin Widmann and has been a member of Trio Accanto since 2013.

Nicolas Hodges' varied discography includes Thomas Adès' piano concerto In Seven Days, with the London Sinfonietta and Thomas Adès (Signum Classics); two discs of works by Harrison Birtwistle; and a live recording of Luca Francesconi's piano concerto with the Orquestra Sinfónica Casa da Musica. On the Wergo label, Hodges has recorded "Voces Abandonadas", comprising works by Walter Zimmermann; a disc of works by Brice Pauset entitled "Canons for solo piano"; and "Songs and Poems", which includes repertoire by Hans Thomalla, Walter Zimmermann and Wolfgang Rihm with Trio Accanto."

"David Ryan is a visual artist and writer based in London and Cambridge, who is also actively involved in contemporary music. He studied at Liverpool and Coventry Polytechnics, and also on a travelling German Scholarship to Hamburg, Lubeck and Berlin. His extensive writing on art and music includes pieces on Jessica Stockholder, Bernard Frize, John Riddy, Shirley Kaneda, Fabian Marcaccio, Franz Ackermann, David Reed, Katherina Grosse, Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, Helmut Lachenmann and Jonathan Lasker for various art publications including Modern Painters, Dissonanz in Switzerland, Leonardo Music Journal, San Francisco, Art Papers USA, Contemporary Visual Arts, Contemporary, London, Artpress, Paris, and Tempo, and Art Monthly, London. Catalogue contributions include Hybrids for Tate Liverpool, and Jessica Stockholder/Fabian Marcaccio for Sammlung Goetz, Munich. He has given lectures on abstract painting including venues such as the UNAM (National University of Mexico), Mexico, Warwick Arts Centre, Forum Konkrete Kunst, Erfurt, Germany, Dahl Gallery, Lucerne, Switzerland, and Tate Liverpool, UK. His publication Talking Painting: Dialogues with 12 Contemporary Abstract Painters (2002) is published by Routledge. He has lectured at Christies, Sothebys, and is currently reader in Fine Art at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. He has exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery (Open Exhibition), London, British Abstract Painters, Flowers West, Los Angeles, USA; Painting and Time at the Nunnery Gallery, London, British Abstract Painting 2001 at Flowers East, London, Surface Connections, Holden Gallery Manchester, Illuminate at Jasmine Studios, Hammersmith, London, Flux at London Bridge Tunnels, On the Way to Things at Churchill College, Cambridge, Lines of Enquiry at Kettles Yard, Cambridge, and Transfer at Keith Talent gallery, London.

As a performer Ryan has also been actively involved in contemporary music and performed for Danish Radio; Huddersfield International Contemporary Music Festival; New Music Marathon, Northwestern University, Chicago; The Barbican Art Centre, London (Cage Uncaged, 2004), Line-Point-Line, Los Angeles, and is Director of Dal Niente Projects which presents neglected modernist and contemporary experimental works in London. He has also collaborated with numerous improvising musicians such as John Edwards, John Butcher, Eddie Prevost and numerous others, and has a longstanding duo with clarinetist Ian Mitchell. Italian composer Nicola Sani collaborated on Non tutte ie Isole...an 'opera' for three instrumentalists and sound projection in October 2003, presenting a three-part video projection. Other collaborations with Sani include AchaB 3 at the 2006 Synthese Festival, Bourges France (a 3 screen video). He has also composed Prelude/Postlude 2, part of Sonic Illuminations presented at the BFI, London in 2008. Ryan has had numerous awards including Arts Council of England, Jazz Services, Britten-Pears; Holst and Hinrichsen Foundations; Sonora, Rome, as well as Italian and American Government grants. He was presented at the 2008 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with Nicola Sani's AchaB in a new version. His recent films include Knots and Fields (New Music at Darmstadt - with interviews with Pierre Boulez and Brian Ferneyhough), a collaboration directed by Andrew Chesher, and Via di San Teodoro 8 (2010 -11). Recent exhibitions and screenings include Crossing Abstraction, 2009 at the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethianen, Berlin; and screenings at Berlin Konzerthaus, 2011; International Music Institute, Darmstadt; Viewfinder, Seoul, Korea, 2011; Italian Cultural Institutes, London and Stockholm, De la Warr Pavillion, 2010/11, and All Frontiers Festival, Monfalcone, Italy 2011, and screenings scheduled for Brussels and New York in 2012."

"Nancy Ruffer was born in Detroit and received a Master of Music degree from The University of Michigan. She received a Fullbright-Kays Scolarship in 1976 to study at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and she has remained in London working as a freelance flautist specialising in contemporary music. Composers who have written for her include Michael Finnissy, Chris Dench, John White, Christopher Fox, Ian Wilson and Graham Fitkin. In 1984 she was awarded the Kranichsteiner Prize for Performance at Darmstadt and she was elected an Associate of the R.A.M. Nancy Ruffer is principal flute of the ensembles MusicProjects/London, Matrix, Almeida Ensemble and Topologies as well as performing with ensembles of the Royal National Theatre.

In addition she records regularly for the BBC and performs in festivals and concert halls throughout Britain and abroad. In 1999 she toured Canada performing works by, among others, Ferneyhough and Dillon, and in 2002 she toured Georgia and Tennessee with pianist Helen Crayford, performing works by British and American composers.

Ms Ruffer was awarded the Kranichsteiner Prize for Performance at Darmstadt in 1984 and was appointed an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music."

"Andrew Sparling has played guest principal clarinet with many UK orchestras, including the BBC Scottish, Philharmonia, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, London Sinfonietta, Sinfonia ViVA, New Kent Opera and Grange Park Opera.

Andrew also appears regularly with many of the most important Contemporary Music Ensembles in the UK, including the Almeida Opera, Apartment House, Chroma, Double Image, Ensemble Exposè, Gemini, Lontano and the Michael Nyman Band.

As a soloist and chamber musician Andrew performs regularly with the pianist, Thalia Myers and he has also joined the Brindisi Quartet to perform the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, and also the first performance of Gabriel Jackson's Quintet: In Prairial and Thermidor. Andrew has given solo and chamber recitals in the UK, Europe, USA, the Far East and the Middle East.

Andrew has been invited to give recitals at the London Festival of Chamber Music, run by the English String Quartet, every year since 2001

In May 2000, he made his concerto debut at the Royal Festival Hall with the Philharmonia playing the Capriccio Notturno by the French composer, Nicholas Bacri.

Andrew also performs on period instruments, and plays principal clarinet in Charles Hazelwood's orchestra The Mozart Collective, taking part in the BBC 2 drama-documentary series "The Genius of Mozart" broadcast in 2004. Andrew acted the role of clarinettist Anton Stadler and the photo in Andrew's photo gallery (click on the RHS Photo Gallery link) shows him rehearsing Mozart's Clarinet Quintet with the composer. He has since played principal clarinet with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (including a run of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride at Covent Garden, on baroque clarinets), Classical Opera Company, Armonico Consort and the Tallis Scholars."

"John Tilbury (born 1 February 1936) is a British pianist. He is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman's music, and since 1980 has been a member of the free improvisation group AMM.

Tilbury studied piano at the Royal College of Music with Arthur Alexander and James Gibb and also with Zbigniew Drzewiecki in Warsaw. 1968 he was the winner of the Gaudeamus competition in the Netherlands.

During the 1960s, Tilbury was closely associated with the composer Cornelius Cardew, whose music he has interpreted and recorded and a member of the Scratch Orchestra. His biography of Cardew, "Cornelius Cardew - A life unfinished" was published in 2008.

Tilbury has also recorded the works of Howard Skempton and John White, among many others, and has also performed adaptations of the radio plays of Samuel Beckett.

With guitarist AMM bandmate Keith Rowe's electroacoustic ensemble M.I.M.E.O., Tilbury recorded The Hands of Caravaggio, inspired by the painter's The Taking of Christ {1602). In this live performance, twelve of the members of M.I.M.E.O. were positioned around the piano in a deliberate echo of Christ's Last Supper. The thirteenth M.I.M.E.O. member (Cor Fuhler) is credited with "inside piano" as he interacted and interfered with Tilbury's playing by manipulating and damping the instrument's strings, essentially doing piano preparation in real time. Critic Brian Olewnick describes the album as "A staggering achievement, one is tempted to call The Hands of Caravaggio the first great piano concerto of the 21st century."

Another notable recent recording of Tilbury's was Duos for Doris (like The Hands of Caravaggio also on Erstwhile Records), a collaboration with Keith Rowe. It is widely considered a landmark recording in the genre of electroacoustic improvisation (or "EAI").

In 2013 he collaborated with artist Armando Lulaj in FIEND performance at the National Theatre of Tirana (Albania)."

"Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 - July 2, 2002) was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of open form,[1] a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since-notably the downtown New York scene of the 1980s (see John Zorn) and generations of younger composers.

Among his most famous works are December 1952, an entirely graphic score, and the open form pieces Available Forms I & II, Centering, and Cross Sections and Color Fields.

Brown was born in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, and first devoted himself to playing jazz. He initially considered a career in engineering, and enrolled for engineering and mathematics at Northeastern University (1944-45). He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1945. However, the war ended while he was still in basic training, and he was assigned to the base band at Randolph Field, Texas, in which he played trumpet. The band included saxophonist Zoot Sims. Between 1946 and 1950 he was a student at Schillinger House in Boston, which is now the Berklee College of Music. Brown had private instruction in trumpet and composition. Upon graduating he moved to Denver to teach Schillinger techniques. John Cage invited Brown to leave Denver and join him for the Project for Music for Magnetic Tape in New York. Brown was an editor and recording engineer for Capitol Records (1955-60) and producer for Mainstream-Time Records (1960-73).

Brown's contact with Cage exposed David Tudor to some of Brown's early piano works, and this connection led to Brown's work being performed in Darmstadt and Donaueschingen. Composers such as Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna promoted his music, which subsequently became more widely performed and published.

Brown is considered to be a member of the New York School of composers, along with John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff. Brown cited the visual artists Alexander Calder and Jackson Pollock as two of the primary influences on his work. He was also inspired by author, Gertrude Stein, and by many artists he was personally acquainted with such as Max Ernst and Robert Rauschenberg.

Brown died in 2002 of cancer, in Rye, New York."