"Frank Denyer is an English composer whose brilliantly coloured and imaginatively rich compositions fall between several and into none of the accepted categories of contemporary music.

Born in London in 1943, he was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral by the age of nine, the director of the experimental music ensemble Mouth of Hermes in London at the age of twenty-five, and a Doctoral student in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University, Connecticut at the age of thirty. He has lived and worked in east Africa and India.

Denyer's music is distinguished by a keen sensitivity to sound. Each of his works is written for a unique combination of instruments, more often than not a combination that no composer has dreamed of before. Each work finds its own individual form, laying down the path for its journey as it proceeds. In some cases even such basic musical materials as the scales and the tuning system are invented from scratch.This music is handmade in every detail; it is engaged in a complex process of affirmation and negation, accepting no easy solutions.

For Denyer, a fine pianist who has composed not one note for his own instrument since his student days, the whole question of musical instruments is a central one. His compositions present an astonishingly varied array of sound sources - new instruments of his own invention, adapted instruments, instruments of non Western traditions, rare or virtually extinct instruments, and conventional Western instruments. This whole concern with what his friend Morton Feldman called 'the instrumental factor' is not a postmodern mixing-and-matching of instruments from different 'ethnic' traditions: rather, his work suggests that all instruments bear the imprint of the tradition of which they are a part, whether that tradition be nascent, mature or decaying, and that at the beginning of the twenty-first century we cannot afford to be complacent about which musical traditions we consider to be 'ours.' Neither is his music that of a composer making do with ready-mades or whatever lies to hand (like Cage's percussion ensemble works of the 1930s and early 1940s). Nor, at the other extreme, does one have the sense of the composer gradually assembling an instrumentarium of his own, creating the illusion of an alternative musical universe (like Harry Partch): for one thing, Denyer's assembly of new instruments hardly ever plays together; for another, they rarely recur from one work to the next - each new composition wipes the slate clean and starts afresh. The instruments are like flowers that suddenly spring up between the cracks in a wall; they seem to be there because the opportunity has arisen for them to exist, to fill the gaps between isolated islands of instrumental sound.

Denyer's concern with musical instruments can also be seen as a metaphor for the larger question of what can be salvaged, artistically, from the chaos of civilization as we begin our new century. Compositions like A Monkey's Paw (1987-88) and Finding Refuge in the Remains (1992) confront this central issue - the sense of new life emerging from a morass of dead or decaying matter - an urgent issue for him both compositionally and culturally."

Elisabeth Smalt is a Modern Classical living in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands. She is a member of The Barton Workshop, Musica ad Rhenum, Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet, Oxalys, Trio Scordatura, and Zephyr Quartet.

"Founded in 1996 by Didier Aschour, Dedalus is a set of contemporary music established in Montpellier since 2011. Dedalus is together associated with the GMEA, National Center of Music Creation Albi-Tarn.

His repertoire is based on free instrumental scores from contemporary North American and European experimental music from the 1960s to the present.

The ensemble performs in Europe and the United States, including the Instants Chavirés, Roulette (NYC), and in festivals such as Music We'd Like to Hear (London), Musique Action (Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy) Angelica (Bologna), Elektricity (Reims) ...

His concerts and recordings have been hailed by critics around the world (New York Times, The Wire, Movement, Revue & Corrigée ...)"

"Jos Zwaanenburg (1958) studied at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, flute with Joost Tromp, composition with Wim de Ruiter, and finished his studies with distinction in 1985. He was one of the prize winners of the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition 1984. He gave numerous solo concerts in Europe, USA, South-America (solo-recitals, as soloist with various orchestras and as member of different chamber music ensembles like the Barton Workshop, the Gaudeamus Solisten Ensemble, the Xenakis Ensemble, the Cornelius Cardew Ensemble and The Interval Chamber) and made radio and TV recordings. Although he concentrates on present-day music, his repertoire contains works from all style periods.

He teaches at the Amsterdam School of Arts and the Music Department of University College Bretton Hall (Leeds, G.B.), where he is also artistic leader of their ensemble in residence The Cornelius Cardew Ensemble. Furthermore he is guest teacher at the University of Oxford Brookes. His compositions were published by Donemus and Ascolta Music Holland.

A selection of compositions by Jos Zwaanenburg: Solo for prepared flute (1984), Texts for nothing (4 electronic flutes and tape) (1985), Paraphrasen über Grass (4 acting singers) (1986), Sol (concert for open-hole alto flute and ensemble) (1987), à Aphonie (organ) (1990), May be tomorrow (tenor saxophone) (1990), Manamanamania II (open-hole alto flute and life electronics) (1991).As far as the flute is concerned, the greatest number of playing possibilities is achieved on an "open-key" flute with a "B foot joint". Until now this system was only available on the normal C-flute. Hence the idea for the alto flute - which previously had a covered key system - by giving it similar keywork to the open-key flute, the possibilities became the same as the C-flute. The new alto flute was realised in 1986 by Kuiper-Kingma, flutemaker in Nederhorst den Berg, the Netherlands. Due to this system with keys with small holes, extra keys, and new playing techniques, the alto flute has become a very flexible instrument, possible of creating many tones. The new alto flute has about 192,000 fingering combinations - a dramatic improvement to the 8000 on the old alto flute. The "Zwaanenburg" model alto flute also is in production by Kuiper-Kingma. The alto flute project was made possible due to the support of the Ministerie van WVC/Raad voor de Kunst, The Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, and Foundation Gaudeamus. Special thanks to Dirk Kuiper, Eva Kingma and Henk Heuvelmans.

He composed Cherubs' Chirrup in 1992 by request of Joop van Goozen. The work is composed specifically for 31-tone organ, the aforementioned open-key alto flute (which can faithfully reproduce a 31-tone scale) and live-electronics. It's on the CD 50 jaar Stichting Huygens-Fokker. The 31-tone system is approximated here as an equal tempered scale wherein all 31 tones in the octave are equally important: no tonal principles are used.

Zwaanenburg succeeded Marian Van Dijk in 1998 as director of the Stichting Huygens-Fokker and fulfilled this job until September 2000 after which Ned McGowan became director. He currently teaches at the Conservatory of Amsterdam in "Contemporary Music Through Non-Western Techniques", "Advanced Rhythm" and "Live Electronics". Zwaanenburg is also guest lecturer at the music departments of the University of York and Oxford Brookes University."

"Juliet Fraser was educated at the Purcell School as a first-study oboist and then at Cambridge University where she read Music and History of Art. It was whilst a student there that she started singing, in the chapel choir of Clare College; subsequently she sang with professional choirs such as Polyphony, Tenebrae, the Monteverdi Choir, The King's Consort, The Tallis Scholars and BBC Singers. In early music, she has worked with European consorts Ensemble Polyharmonique and Gli Angeli Genève. She was a regular member of the soloists of Collegium Vocale Gent, directed by Philippe Herreweghe, for six years, performing and recording Renaissance polyphony by Lassus, Vitoria, Gesualdo and Byrd.

In new music, Juliet has performed as a soloist with Klangforum Wien, ICTUS, Plus-Minus, We Spoke: New Music Company, London Sinfonietta and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in festivals such as hcmf//, Tectonics Glasgow, Transit 20/21, Donaueschinger Musiktage, MaerzMusik and Wien Modern. Recently, she has created duo projects with pianist Mark Knoop and percussionist Maxime Echardour. She has premièred well over 100 works, many of which have been written for her, working particularly closely with composers Michael Finnissy, Bernhard Lang, Rebecca Saunders, Stefano Gervasoni, Frank Denyer, Christopher Fox, Matthew Shlomowitz, Cassandra Miller and Andrew Hamilton.

Juliet is principal soprano of EXAUDI, the acclaimed contemporary music vocal ensemble, which she founded in 2002 with composer/conductor James Weeks and with whom she makes regular appearances at major European festivals such as Aldeburgh, Spitalfields, hcmf//, ManiFeste, Festival d'Automne, Ars Musica, Wittener Tage and Darmstadt Ferienkurse. Opera roles include Neige in Catherine Kontz's NEIGE at Grand Théatre de Luxembourg (2013), Tina in Limbus Limbo by Stefano Gervasoni at Musica Strasbourg, Automne en Normandie, Opera de Reims and Opera Comique, Paris (2012), and Grace Hartigan in Larry Goves's I do this I do that (2011). Juliet has been nominated twice for an RPS Award in the Singer category and is currently supported by Aldeburgh Music's Open Space scheme. Her first dedicated solo disc, a recording of Morton Feldman's Three Voices, was released on the HatHut label in November 2016."