"Christopher Fox (born 1955 in York) is an English composer.

He studied at the universities of Liverpool, Southampton and York, where his teachers included Hugh Wood and Jonathan Harvey. He received a PhD in composition from the University of York in 1984. From 1984 to 1994 he was a member of the composition staff at the Darmstadt New Music Summer School. He is currently Professor in Music at Brunel University, a post he took up in 2006. His music is widely performed, broadcast and recorded. He is also a prolific writer on music. In addition to concert works, Fox has collaborated with artists on gallery works, and with the poet Ian Duhig on a "musical box".

An important aspect of Fox's music is its stylistic breadth-whilst his principal considerations may seem to be with systems music and adopting a systematic approach, his music also serves a political function, is deeply rooted in the post-war Darmstadt traditions of applying psychological and intellectual models to the structure and content of music and at the same time exists in a world of diverse musical attitudes, including references to the popular arts, to historical music and to cross-cultural music. The stylistic range of his works is very aurally apparent and includes complex microtonal chamber works, large-scale modernist ensemble pieces, tape cut-up collages and minimalistic pieces for guitars and saxophones.

His writings on music have also been published widely, in the journals Contact (of which he was an editor), Contemporary Music Review, Musical Times and Tempo, and deal principally with new music, in particular experimental, minimalist and complex tendencies in American and European music. He was co-editor of Von Kranichstein zur Gegenwart (1996, DACO Verlag, Stuttgart), a history of 50 years of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, and of Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy (1998, Ashgate Press, Aldershot)."

"John Snijders was born in Heemskerk (the Netherlands) in 1963. He studied at the Royal Conservatory The Hague with Geoffrey Madge (piano), Stanley Hoogland (fortepiano) and Louis Andriessen (composition).

In 1985 he won first prize at the Berlage Competition for Dutch chamber music. He performed as soloist with a.o. the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, The Brussels Philharmonic, The Hague Philharmonic, Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Radio Chamber Orchestra and Dutch Radio Symphony Orchestra. From 1988 until 2013 he was a member of the Nieuw Ensemble Amsterdam. In 1986 he founded the Ives Ensemble, of which he continues to be pianist and artistic director. Since 2013 he is a member of the contemporary music groups Ensemble7Bridges and E7B Soundlab.

Both as a soloist and with these groups he has performed extensively at most major music festivals in Europe such as Festival d'Automne (Paris) Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Wien Modern (Vienna), Ars Musica (Brussels), Musica (Strasbourg), Settembre Musica (Turin), Bienale di Venezia (Venice).

Furthermore he has worked extensively as a rehearsal coach for Netherlands Opera, Dutch Travel Opera, Holland Festival, WDR Köln, English National Opera. In 2008 he was teacher of piano and chamber music at the Festival Internacional de Inverno de Campos de Jordão (Brazil). Also in 2008 he was awarded the Muziekgebouw Prize 2008 for the performance of NYConcerto for piano and chamber orchestra by Richard Rijnvos.

Several composers wrote pieces especially for him such as Gerald Barry, Christopher Fox, Richard Rijnvos, Gerard Brophy, Ivo van Emmerik, Rodney Sharman, Richard Ayres and Clarence Barlow.

Since January 2013 he is head of Music Performance at Durham University.

His research interests focus on piano performance practice in the 19th century, the American avant-garde, especially Morton Feldman and John Cage, music of extended duration, establishing connections between contemporary music and contemporary visual arts, and sound art."