"Linda Catlin Smith grew up in New York and lives in Toronto. She studied music in NY, and at the University of Victoria (Canada). Her music has been performed and/or recorded by: Tafelmusik, Other Minds Festival, California Ear Unit, Kitchener-Waterloo, Victoria and Vancouver Symphonies, Arraymusic, Tapestry New Opera, Gryphon Trio, Via Salzburg, Evergreen Club Gamelan, Turning Point Ensemble, Vancouver New Music, and the Del Sol, Penderecki, and Bozzini quartets, among many others; she has been performed by many notable soloists, including Eve Egoyan, Elinor Frey, Philip Thomas, Colin Tilney, Vivienne Spiteri, and Jamie Parker. She has been supported in her work by the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Chalmers Foundation, K.M. Hunter Award, Banff Centre, SOCAN Foundation and Toronto Arts Council; in 2005 her work Garland (for Tafelmusik) was awarded Canada's prestigious Jules Léger Prize. In addition to her work as an independent composer, she was Artistic Director of the Toronto ensemble Arraymusic from 1988 to 1993, and she was a member of the ground-breaking multidisciplinary performance collective, URGE, from 1992-2006. Linda teaches composition privately and at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada."

"British violist Emma Richards is based in Manchester and performs internationally as a soloist and chamber musician. As an undergraduate she studied at the Royal Northern College of Music with �sd�s Valdimarsdottir and Simon Rowland-Jones. She has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and prizes including the Cecil Aronowitz Memorial Award and the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. Emma pursued her postgraduate studies at the Hochschule f�r Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main.

Emma�s primary passion is chamber music and she combines work as a guest performer with projects with her duo partner, acclaimed pianist Cordelia Williams. Upcoming concerts include Mozart�s Kegelstatt Trio at the Wiltshire Music Centre and duo recitals at Malmesbury Abbey, City University, Reading University and at Kendal Midday Concert Club. She has performed with the Tippet Ensemble, the Benyounes Quartet and often with pianist Duncan Honeybourne.

Recent concerto performances include the Walton Viola Concerto with the Wiltshire and Swindon Youth Orchestra and Mozart Sinfonia Concertante with the Neston Festival Orchestra. As a soloist Emma has performed at the Hindemith Tage Festival in Frankfurt-am-Main (Germany) and at the 37th International Viola Congress in Stellenbosch (South Africa). Emma has recently attended festivals such as the International Musician�s Seminar, Prussia Cove, Fr�hlingsakademie (Neustadt an der Weinstra�e) and Dartington International Summer School.

As an orchestral musician Emma has worked with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and has recently become an extra musician with the Deutscher Kammerakademie Neuss

Emma is sought after as an interpreter of contemporary music and believes strongly in promoting the music of today. She is a founding member of Manchester-based Distractfold Ensemble and is a guest violist with two contemporary ensembles in Paris � soundinitiative and No Input Ensemble.

As a soloist, Emma is dedicated to commissioning new works alongside performing the established repertoire. Recent solo performances include Tre Notturni Brillianti by Salvatore Sciarrino, Embellie by Iannis Xenakis as well as recent solo pieces by John Croft, Mauricio Pauly, Chris Swithinbank and Andrea Sarto.

In 2014 Distractfold became the first British ensemble ever to win the prestigious Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at the Darmstadt International Festival for New Music . The coming season will take Emma to Florence, Poznan, Gdansk, Chicago, Boston, New York, Darmstadt and Pontevedra as well as to England for concerts in London, Huddersfield and Manchester.

In 2014 Emma performed on two CDs for Another Timbre � Grizzana with Ensemble Grizzana and Pneuma with Distractfold Ensemble. 2015 brings further exciting collaborations with Another Timbre plus a summer of recording with Distractfold Ensemble."

"Simon Limbrick's involvement in music embraces performance, composing and education.

He was a member of the cult systems orchestra The Lost Jockey and Man Jumping, recording for EG Editions and creating scores for leading dance companies, Second Stride, London Contemporary Dance, Rosemary Lee and Sue MacLennan. He has been in demand as a percussionist performing all over the world with the Nash Ensemble, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Endymion Ensemble, Composers' Ensemble and Fibonacci Sequence as well as recording with artists such as Alabama3, Gavin Bryars Pete Lockett and for Blue Note Records. He has been guest principal with the LSO and worked under conductors, Leonard Bernstein, Oliver Knussen, Simon Rattle and Tom Ades. He has featured on film and television including documentaries about Steve Reich and Kenneth MacMillan's award winning Judas Tree.Compositions created for him include works by Javier Alvarez, Brian Elias (Kenneth MacMillan's last ballet The Judas Tree), Vic Hoyland and Andrew Poppy. He has performed the world-premieres of solo pieces by James Dillon, Frederic Rzewski , Claude Vivier, Philip Cashian, Thea Musgrave, Harry de Wit, Howard Skempton, Michael Wolters and Ed Kelly. His solo performances have been broadcast by the BBC, RAI, Radio France, Dutch TV and radio.

Recently, he performed his own concerto Bulls Yard and Stockhausen's Zyklus at the Sage, Gateshead,(see review) solo steel-pan in Brian Elias' Judas Tree at Royal Opera House, London, in 2010 and directed his mixed-media project, dot-machine, a web-based musical construction accessible on www.marimbo.com. He created a 24 hour long piece surfaces with the composer James Saunders, with financial assistance from the Arts Council of Great Britain and premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2011.

In education, Simon has led workshops since 1982, and been a returning resident artist in festivals and organisations, including Blackheath Concert Halls, Aldeburgh Music, Sound It Out , Spitalfields Festival. Workshop projects have been led by him throughout Europe. As a fully-qualified teacher, he has led Music and Performing Arts in Secondary Schools for five years. He has led school and community projects for Aldeburgh Music. As Artistic Director, he helped establish In Harmony Norwich, creating mixed-ability orchestral pieces for professional and young student players. Until the School of Music closed in June 2014, he was Director of 'Musician in the Community' and 'Creative Leadership' courses at University of East Anglia.



As a composer, Simon has gained an MA in Electroacoustic Composition from City University and collaborated as a composer on a number of large scale works, including a project at Fort Dunlop, Birmingham, with Rosemary Lee and site-specific work with Dutch composer/sound sculptor Harry de Wit in Holland and Brussels.He has produced film scores for TV and film festivals and composed music for theatre productions at the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Companies. Groups he has created pieces for include Mary Wiegold's Songbook, Roger Heaton Group, Ensemble Bash, Network of Sparks, Endymion Ensemble, Richard Durrant, Ritmatic, Hooloo. The Brighton Youth Orchestra performed machina lumina , for string ensemble and vibraphone throughout 2009. His composition Machine for Living for Landesmusikrat/Splash was recorded at Deutschlandradio. He has produced recordings for wergo and others.Currently composing a large piece for jazz brass and marimba.

He has created the CDs, Steam, Hooloo, Clean, Ritmatik, Dot-Machine, Hammer, Rise and Fall, , between and Relay, which are frequently broadcast and available on well-known download sites. NEW RELEASE of a double CD RELAY, of contemporary steel-pan music in Sept 2014. Sound Composer for the film 3 Church Walk by the director Emily Richardson premiered on 18th Oct 2014 at The London Festival, BFI, London."

"Philip Thomas (b.1972, North Devon) specialises in performing new and experimental music, including both notated and improvised music. He places much emphasis on each concert being a unique event, designing imaginative programmes that provoke and suggest connections.

He is particularly drawn to the experimental music of John Cage, Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff, and composers who broadly work within a post-Cageian aesthetic. In recent years he has been particularly associated with the music of Christian Wolff, giving the world premiere of his Sailing By in 2014 and Small Preludes in 2009, the UK premiere of Long Piano (Peace March 11), having co-edited and contributed to the first major study of Wolff's music, Changing the System: the Music of Christian Wolff, published by Ashgate Publications in 2010, and currently recording all of Wolff's solo piano music for sub rosa. He is an experienced performer of John Cage's music, having performed the Concert for piano and orchestra with both Apartment House and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as well as most of the solo piano and prepared piano music, including a unique 12-hour performance of Electronic Music for piano

He has commissioned new works from a number of British composers whose ideas, language and aesthetic have been informed in some ways by the aforementioned American composers, such as Stephen Chase, Laurence Crane, Richard Emsley, Christopher Fox, Bryn Harrison, John Lely, Tim Parkinson, Michael Parsons, and James Saunders.

In recent years Philip has pursued a passion for freely improvised music, after significant encounters with the music of AMM and Sheffield-based musicians Martin Archer, Mick Beck and John Jasnoch. He has worked with improvisers in a variety of contexts and recently devised a programme of composed music by musicians more normally known as improvisers as well as others who have been influenced by improvisation in some form. This led to a CD release, Comprovisation, which featured newly commissioned works by Mick Beck, Chris Burn and Simon H Fell. Other CD releases include music by Martin Arnold, Laurence Crane, Christopher Fox, Jürg Frey, Bryn Harrison, Tim Parkinson, Michael Pisaro, James Saunders, Christian Wolff, as well as with improvisers Chris Burn and Simon H Fell.

Philip is a regular pianist with leading experimental music group Apartment House, with whom he has performed in festivals across the UK and Europe. He has also performed with the Quatuor Bozzini, and in duos with Mark Knoop, Ian Pace and John Tilbury (piano duet and two pianos) and James Saunders (electronics).

In 1998 Philip was awarded a PhD from Sheffield University in the performance practice of contemporary piano music. Between 2000 and 2005, he was Head of the Sheffield Music School whilst pursuing an active performing and teaching career. He joined the staff team at the University of Huddersfield in 2005, and became Professor of Performance in 2015. Philip is one of the Directors of CeReNeM, the University's Centre for Research in New Music. He continues to live in Sheffield, where he premieres the majority of his programmes, with his wife Tiffany and children Naomi and Jack."

"Diego Castro Magas was born in Santiago de Chile, in 1978.

He started music lessons (guitar performance and music theory) under the guidance of Chilean composer Fernando Carrasco in 1992. Later, he studied guitar performance in Catholic University of Chile with maestro Oscar Ohlsen (from 1993, obtaining the Diploma in Guitar performance with summa cum laude in 2000) and in University Ramon Llull with Ricardo Gallén and Fernando Rodríguez (MA in Guitar performance 2005).

He has also attended masterclasses from other guitarists such as Eduardo Fernández, Pablo Márquez and Magnus Andersson as well as from lutenist Hopkinson Smith. Also, he studied contemporary electric-guitar under Daryl Buckley.

Between 1998 and 2005, Diego was prize-winner in several classical guitar competitions such as 'Liliana Perez Corey Guitar Contest' in Chile, 'Maestro Abel Carlevaro Guitar Competition' in Uruguay, 'Manuel Ponce Gutar Competition' in Mexico, 'Stotsenberg Classical Gutar Competition' in USA and 'Miquel Llobet Guitar Competition' in Spain.

Since 2006, he has been focused mainly in contemporary music repertoire, introducing to Chilean audiences both solo and chamber music major guitar works by F. Donatoni, L. Francesconi, A. Clementi, G. Manca, H. Lachenmann, B. Ferneyhough, Chris Dench and M. Finnissy among others. Recently, he has also collaborated with Brian Ferneyhough, James Dillon, Michael Finnissy, Aaron Cassidy, Bryn Harrison, Eric Egan and Clemens Gadenstätter in performances of their solo guitar pieces, respectively.

He has performed in main contemporary and chamber music festivals in Chile, as well as in Festival Atempo in Venezuela, 24th Contemporary Music Festival in Cuba, Festival Ars Nova in Ravensburg, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Klang Festival in Durham, Tacit or Loud Festival for Artistic Research in Malmö and The Dark Precursor: Conference on Deleuze and Artistic Research in Ghent among many others. In recent years, Diego has given research seminars, lectures and workshops on contemporary performance at Nunc Conference in Northwestern University, Lund University, Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Leeds University, Brunel University London, Durham University and University of York.

His first solo CD was released in 2009, featuring the first published recording of Ferneyhough's guitar duo "No Time (at all)" along side brilliant Chilean guitarist José Antonio Escobar.

In 2015, Diego released the CD 'Shrouded Mirrors' for Huddersfield Contemporary Records, distributed by NMC Recordings. The CD includes the recording premieres of solo guitar pieces by Michael Finnissy, Bryn Harrison, Matthew Sergeant and Wieland Hoban alongside pieces by Brian Ferneyhough and James Dillon.

Diego is lecturer in Guitar Performance at Catholic University of Chile since 2002. Also, he is a PhD candidate in Contemporary Performance at University of Huddersfield under the supervision of Philip Thomas."

"Mira Benjamin is a Canadian violinist, researcher and new-music instigator.

She performs new and experimental music, with a special interest in microtonality & tuning practice. She actively commissions music from composers at all stages of their careers, and develops each new work through multiple performances. Current collaborations include new works by Anna Höstman, Scott McLaughlin, Amber Priestley, Taylor Brook and James Weeks.

Since 2011, Mira has co-directed NU:NORD - a project-based music and performance network which instigates artistic exchanges and encourages community building between music creators from Canada, Norway & the UK. To date NU:NORD has engaged 79 artists and commissioned 62 new works. Through this initiative, Mira hopes to offer a foundation from which Canadian artists can reach out to artistic communities overseas, and provide a conduit through which UK & Norwegian artists can access Canada's rich art culture.

Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, Mira lived for ten years in Montréal, where she was a member of Quatuor Bozzini. Since 2014 she has resided in London (UK), where she regularly performs with ensembles such as Apartment House, Decibel, and the London Contemporary Orchestra Soloists, and is currently the Duncan Druce Scholar in Music Performance at the University of Huddersfield.

Mira is the recipient of the 2016 Virginia Parker Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts. The prize is awarded annually to a Canadian musician in recognition of their contribution to the artistic life in Canada and internationally."

"Cellist Anton Lukoszevieze (born 1965 in the UK) is one of the most diverse performers of his generation and is notable for his performances of avant-garde, experimental and improvised music. Anton has given many performances at numerous international festivals throughout Europe and the USA (Maerzmusik, Donaueschingen, Wien Modern, GAS, Transart, Ultima, etc.etc.). He has also made frequent programmes and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, Danish Radio, SR2, Sweden, Deutschland Rundfunk, WDR, Germany and ORT, Austria. Deutschlandfunk, Berlin produced a radio portrait of him in September, 2003. Anton has also performed concerti with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the 2001 Aldeburgh festival and the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with many composers and performers including David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, Amnon Wolman, Pierre Strauch, Rytis Mazulis, Karlheinz Essl, Helmut Oehring, Christopher Fox, Philip Corner, Alvin Curran, Phill Niblock and Laurence Crane, He is unique in the UK through his use of the curved bow (BACH-Bogen), which he is using to develop new repertoire for the cello. From 2005-7 he was New Music Fellow at Kings College, Cambridge and Kettles Yard Gallery. Anton is the subject of four films (FoxFire Eins) by the renowned artist-filmmaker Jayne Parker. A new film Trilogy with compositions by Sylvano Bussotti, George Aperghis and Laurence Crane premieres at The London Film Festival, October 2008. In November will premiere a new hour long work by Christopher Fox for cello and the vocal ensemble Exaudi commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and will also present new solo works for cello and live electronics. Anton is also active as an artist, his work has been shown in Holland (Lux Nijmegen), CAC, Vilnius, Duisburg (EarPort), Austria, (Sammlung Essl), Wien Modern, The Slade School of Art, Kettles Yard Gallery, Cambridge Film Festival and Rational Rec. London. His work has been published in Musiktexte, Cologne, design Magazine and the book SoundVisions (Pfau-Verlag, Saarbrucken, 2005). Anton Lukoszevieze is founder and director of the ensemble Apartment House, a member of the radical noise group Zeitkratzer and recently made his contemporary dance debut with the Vincent Dance Company in Broken Chords, Dusseldorf."