Described in publications such as Washington Post, Gramophone, San Francisco Examiner, Charleston Post and Courier, and The Boston Intelligencer as “ceaselessly compelling”, “exceptional beauty and imagination”, “a hybrid sonic labyrinth”, and “beautiful and haunting and thought-provoking,” and praised for its “21st century sensibilities,” Kui Dong‘s music has been performed and commissioned by numerous ensembles and has received honors and prizes from a wide spectrum of prestigious institutions, including the Central Ballet Group of China, The Orchestra and Chorus of the National Performing Art Center of China, Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television, Japan’s Public Interest Incorporated Foundation and Fukuyama Arts Foundation, Spain’s Tenerife Symphony Orchestra, Austria’s Ars Electronica, The Tanglewood Music Center and Festival, Nancy Karp Dance company, the Arditti Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, Volti, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Melody of China, the USA Commissioning Award, The IDEA Grants from the National Opera Center, The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, Meet the Composer, ISCM, and ASCAP. Dong’s compositions span diverse genres and styles and include ballet, orchestral and chamber works, chorus, electro-acoustic music, film scores, multi-media art, and free improvisation. Her works written in the United States increasingly show a unique synthesis of influences from avant-garde experimental, jazz, and other ethnic music, and at the same time maintain a profound respect to Western classical music and a deep cultural connection with her roots. She sometimes incorporates theatre, as well as Chinese and non-western instruments and musical concepts into contemporary settings. Her music can be found on three full-length albums: Pangu’s Song (New World Records 2004) and Hands Like Waves Unfold (Other Minds Records 2008), and Since When Has The Bright Moon Existed (Other Minds Records 2011), as well as included in compilation albums on a variety of labels. A collection of her chamber works was published in 2015 and a collection of her large choral music was published in 2021 by Central Conservatory of Music Press in China. Her two large choral works, Shui Diao Ge To & Song and Painted Lights are featured in the documentary film Su Tong Po which aired on China’s Central Television Channel 9 in July 2017. Her most recent work Spring, for orchestra, chorus, and organ (Commissioned by Phoenix Television) opened The Spring Festival Musical Gala for Chinese Around the World 2019; the concert was subsequently broadcast throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. Kui Dong is a professor of Music Composition and served as Music department Chair (2018-2020) at Dartmouth College. When she is not writing music, she occasionally performs free improvisation on piano and also writes prose fiction. Her first novel The Story of a Little Soldier will be available through Knowledge Press under the Encyclopedia of China Publishing House later this year.

Chen Yi

Miguel del Águila

James Lee III

Helen Grime

Born in 1981, Helen studied oboe with John Anderson and composition with Julian Anderson and Edwin Roxburgh at the Royal College of Music. In 2003 she won a British Composer Award for her Oboe Concerto, and was awarded the intercollegiate Theodore Holland Composition Prize in 2003 as well as all the major composition prizes in the RCM. In 2008 she was awarded a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to study at the Tanglewood Music Center where she studied with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read Thomas. Grime was a Legal and General Junior Fellow at the Royal College of Music from 2007 to 2009. She became a lecturer in composition at the Department of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, in January 2010. Helen has had works commissioned by some of the most established performers including London Symphony Orchestra, BCMG, Britten Sinfonia, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center. Conductors who have performed her work include Daniel Harding, Pierre Boulez, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Sir Mark Elder. Her work Night Songs was commissioned by the BBC Proms in 2012 and premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Oliver Knussen. In 2011 she was appointed Associate Composer to the Hallé Orchestra for an initial tenure of three years. Her first commission for them, Near Midnight, was premiered on May 23, 2013 and a recording of her orchestral works performed by the Hallé was released as part of the NMC Debut Disc Series in 2014, which was awarded ‘Editors Choice’ by Gramophone Magazine. Upcoming highlights in May include the world premieres of Aviary Sketches (after Jospeh Cornell), a string trio commissioned by Wigmore Hall and Chamber Music Society Lincoln and the Hallé Orchestra, conducted by Markus Stenz will perform a newly commissioned Double Concerto. Summer 2015 also sees a BBC Proms performance of A Cold Spring given by Thierry Fischer and the London Sinfonietta and a performance of Everyone Sang given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo at the Aldeburgh Festival. Helen's music is published exclusively by Chester Music.

Sadie Harrison

Sadie Harrison’s music performed and broadcast internationally with works released to critical acclaim on Naxos, NMC, Cadenza, Sargasso, Toccata Classics, BML, Divine Art/Metier, and Clarinet Classics. For several years, Sadie also pursued a secondary career as an archaeologist - reflecting this interest in the past, many of Sadie’s compositions have been inspired by the traditional musics of old and extant cultures with cycles of pieces based on the folk music of Afghanistan, Lithuania, the Isle of Skye, the Northern Caucasus and the UK. Her focus during 2015-16 was on a substantial collaborative project (Gulistan-e Nur: The Rosegarden of Light), working with US Ensemble Cuatro Puntos (with whom she is currently Composer- in-Residence) and students from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (where she is currently Composer-in-Association). The project resulted in tours in Europe and the USA and a CD with Toccata Classics released in June 2016. BBC3 Record Review described the disc as ‘moving and intriguing’, and MusicWeb International as ‘engaging, mysterious, delightfully pointed dances.’ The 25 minute title work was broadcast complete on BBC Radio 3 in March 2017 as part of the PRSF Women Make Music 2016 celebrations. The project was supported by two Arts Council England Grants for the Arts, a PRSF Women Make Music Award, and grants from RVW, Hinrichsen, New Music USA and the Ambache Charitable Trust in acknowledgement of the unique nature of the project which brought together music and musicians from Europe, America and Asia. 2015 saw the release of a portrait CD by Toccata Classics, (Observer: ‘disc of glittering intensity’; BBC Music Magazine: ‘beautiful and intriguing’; Fanfare: ’a special, fragile space’) and a Guest Directorship of the Irish Composition Summer School. She was also appointed as Visiting Fellow to Goldsmiths College in recognition of her research work on Afghanistan. Recent performances have taken place at the International Mozart Festival in Johannesburg, Pietermaritzburg and Stellenbosch (Renée Reznek), Late Music York (Chimera, Kate Harrison-Ledger, Goldfield Ensemble, Albany Trio), Bergen, Nicosia and Tennessee (Peter Sheppard Skaerved), Club Inégales (Dr. K Sextet), Bristol (SCAW), Seaton (Trittico), Isle of Rasaay (Sarah Watts), Huddersfield (Nancy Ruffer), National Portrait Gallery, British Museum and Wiltons Music Hall (Peter Sheppard, Eve Daniel, Roderick Chadwick), Holbourne Museum (Elizabeth Walker/ Richard Shaw), Bristol, City University (Madeleine Mitchell/Geoff Poole/Ian Pace), The Forge (CHROMA), Almenucar, Granada (Frano Kakarigi), Sydney, Australia (Jenny Duck-Chong), the USA Hartford Women Composers Festival, Brighton Fringe Festival, Institute of Cultural Diplomacy, Berlin (Cuatro Puntos). Sadie’s symphonic work Sapida-Dam-Nau commissioned with funds from a Finzi Trust Scholarship was premiered by the Afghanistan Women’s Orchestra at the Closing Concert of the World Economic Forum, Davos in January 2017 with subsequent performances in Geneva, Weimar and Berlin. 2016-17 saw new works for violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved (..an amaranth from the shade..), double bass virtuosos Frano Kakarigi (A Book of Poems) and Dan Styffe (Hällristningsområdet), the latter released on Prima Facie Records in Summer 2017. SQUISH! King Kong’s Love Song (a celebration of the deaf community in Hartford, Connecticut) was premiered by Cuatro Puntos (USA) and The Murder (written in response to the artwork of Heather Nevay) was commissioned by New Music South West/Royal West of England Academy. Aurea Luce (Madeleine Mitchell/Nigel Clayton) was released on Divine Art in August 2017 (Pizzicato: ‘very lyrical’; The Whole Note: ‘Harrison’s lovely Aurea Luce’; The Strad: ‘The slow creep of plainsong in Aurea Luce builds to blistering richness’.) Sadie was appointed as the first Composer-in-Residence at the Bei Wu Sculpture Park, Berlin in 2017 supported by an Arts Council England/British Council International Development Grant and a PRSF Composer’s Fund Grant, with works for Concerto Brandenburg premiered at the inauguration of the Park’s Indigenous Australian Sculpture Gallery in June (as part of the Australia Now! Festival 2017). A new disc of piano music performed by Ian Pace, Philippa Harrison, Renée Reznek and Duncan Honeybourne was released in November 2017 (Prima Facie) and her carol As-salāmu ʿalaykum Bethlehem (Prima Facie December 2017) has been described as ‘daringly wild, so ebullient and confident in its expression of joy and optimism that the carol’s culmination sounds positively feral. Utterly amazing.’ (5:4) and ‘a riot of sound that bows least to the saccharine tendencies of the season. Even whilst pushing the harmonic envelope the result feels like a great shout of joy.’ (Composition Today) Sadie’s music is published by UYMP, ABRSM and Recital Music with works on examination board repertoire lists. She is a member of the British Music Collection’s Steering Group, the UK’s primary body for the curation and publicising of contemporary British composers and repertoire. She is also a composition mentor with the South West Music School and tutor with New Music South West.

Victoria Borisova-Ollas

Victoria Borisova-Ollas was born in 1969 in Vladivostok, a distance of over 9.200 km from Moscow, in the far eastern corner of Russia. In those years there was probably precious little to indicate that the Soviet Union would collapse within a couple of decades. Borisova-Ollas was born late enough to enjoy the freedom afforded by the new political system – such as the freedom to travel – but also early enough to profit from the advantages of the Soviet system of music education. A system which enabled the talented girl to move to Moscow, enrol in the Central Music School and then in the Tchaikovsky Conservatory where she mastered the craft of composition. At the Conservatory, Borisova-Ollas studied with a number of brilliant teachers. They included Nikolaj Korndorf (1947–2001), to this day a paragon she admires, as witnessed by the dedication of her orchestral work The Kingdom of Silence (2003), a kind of requiem in memory of her professor. The young composer continued her studies in Britain and in Sweden where she settled in 1992. Predictably enough, a question that is put to her again and again by journalists commissioned to write her portrait concerns the “nationality” of her music. Is she a Russian composer? To what extent has she been influenced by her studies in the West? Borisova-Ollas refuses to be pinned down to any unequivocal statement. Her music, she says, is “just a healthy blend of everything”, her idiom being closest to the cautious modernism of much of British music. Indeed, you cannot describe her idiom as “avant-garde” by any means. She writes music with the avowed aim of communicating images, sensations, perhaps even messages to her audience. The urge to communicate could derive from her Soviet or Russian background. In her native country, she says, artists, such as composers, feel a moral responsibility towards society. This is not always the case elsewhere where composers are often preoccupied with musical concerns of a technical nature. Unlike so many of her compatriots in exile who have over the centuries felt bound to their native country with passionate dedication, Borisova-Ollas is indifferent to the place where she happens to be living: the main thing is, she says, that it is equipped with a working musical infrastructure. Her messages are often of a religious nature, her main source of inspiration being the Book of Psalms. The titles she chooses for her compositions have frequently been drawn from sacred texts and she says the moment she has settled upon one, images flock to her: choosing a title is the first step, it determines the music she is about to write. Painting is another source of inspiration. A picture by Malevich gave her ideas for her first symphony, The Triumph of Heaven (2001); three paintings by Chagall are behind Roosters in Love (1999). Literature plays a role as well: Colours of Autumn (2002) is drawn from Nabokov’s Lolita and Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet is the basis of her eponymous composition which she calls “a staged performance for orchestra, singers and narrator” (2006). More recently, she drew on Shakespeare in writing a work for trombone and orchestra: Hamlet. A Drama (2007) has the soloist improvise and even recite from the play. Indeed, the idea for the work – the “show” – came from the trombone player, Elias Faingersh, who took an active role in elaborating the definitive version of the solo part. Victoria Borisova-Ollas “merely” provided the orchestral background. Sounds – especially as suggestive ones as bells – also give rise to musical ideas. The bells of Munich pealed in her mind, so to speak, when she set about composing a work for the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra: Angelus (2008)was commissioned to mark the 850th anniversary of the city’s foundation. Victoria Borisova-Ollas has over the years received a number of prestigious prizes, beginning with the Masterprize International Competition for Orchestral Composition where she came second in 1998, an Award of the Royal Swedish Academy for her Symphony No. 1 in 2005, an Award of the Swedish Music Publishers Association for The Ground Beneath Her Feet in 2008 and the Hilding Rosenberg Prize of the Swedish Composers’ Association in 2009. In 2011, Borisova-Ollas became the first woman ever to win the Swedish Christ Johnson Prize for Composition from the Swedish Royal Academy of Music. The prize was awarded for her clarinet concerto Golden Dances of the Pharaohs. The world première of Creation of the Hymn took place in 2013 in Stockholm at the Tonsättarweekend – a composer portrait dedicated to Borisova-Ollas. In December 2015 her work Vinden som ingenting minns for choir and orchestra was premièred at the Örebro Konserthus. On 13 February 2017 she was awarded Expressen’s annual Spelmannen culture award.

Ryosuke Karaki

Even as a student in London, Ryosuke’s works were performed at various venues around the UK – these included the Red Violin Festival in Cardiff (performed by Alina Ibragimova and Cerys Ann Jones, coached by Professor Madeleine Mitchell), the Clore studio at Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Gallery in which all the works performed were his own compositions. His variation on Howard Skempton’s piece for piano four hands “Primary Colours“ has been published by ABRSM. His solo piano piece, “What I Saw in the Water…” has been performed by Professor Nigel Clayton and Kathron Sturrock in various UK venues and in Australia and Indonesia. Later on, this piece was made into a set of three pieces for piano solo under the name of VISION(S). Ryosuke has a particular passion for theatre music, especially ballet and opera, and in 2008 won a commission to compose for the Royal Ballet Draft Works at the Royal Opera House, a piece which he also conducted himself. After graduating from the RCM in 2009, his music was played in a concert that was part of JAPAN-UK 150 events held by the Japanese Embassy in the UK. In 2010, he was commissioned by Kathron Sturrock, Artistic Director of the Fibonacci Sequence (a chamber ensemble), and gave the world premiere in Cumbria (UK) as part of the Fibonacci Festival. In August 2010 he won the second prize in International Composing Competition “2 Agosto” with his piece for piano and orchestra “The Bird that Aspires to the Moon” and it was performed by the orchestra di Teatro Comunale di Bologna in Italy, and broadcast on Rai Radio. His Japanese art songs are highly regarded by many including a well-known Japanese soprano Mieko Sato and some of them have been sung by her repeatedly. Ryosuke became interested in weaving Japanese musical culture into his compositions, leading him to complete his first chamber opera in Japanese entitled Higekirimaru/髭切丸 in 2016. In this opera, he uses not only male singers but also Satsuma-Biwa, four instruments from Noh Theatre, and a Noh actor. More importantly, he applied some aspects of an ancient Chinese philosophy called Yin Yang Five Element Theory in this composition. The number of performers, selections of instruments (both Western and Japanese), and the construction of the opera have been determined by this theory. The following year, he gave a cocnert of his own (Japanese Art songs & piano pieces) in Bologna, Italy, and gave another concert in London in 2019 as part of events held by the Embassy of Japan in the UK called Japan-UK Season of Culture 2019-2020. In the summer of 2022, he gave his 4th concert of his own in Nara, Japan, where he introduced his Japanese Art songs and mono opera set to poems in the Kyoto dialect. In the concert, he also presented his arrangements for four hands from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, followed by a similar concert in Kyoto.

Naomi Pinnock

Naomi Pinnock’s music has been performed internationally by groups such as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Adapter, Quatuor Bozzini, Arditti Quartet, KNM Berlin, EXAUDI, London Sinfonietta, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and Schola Heidelberg. Her works have featured at festivals including Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Tectonics Glasgow, Ultraschall Berlin, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, ECLAT Festival Stuttgart, Heidelberger Frühling, Rainy Days Festival Luxembourg, Festival Musica Strasbourg, Only Connect Festival in Stavanger, Norway and Spitalfields Festival London. She studied composition in London with Harrison Birtwistle and Brian Elias and in Karlsruhe, Germany with Wolfgang Rihm. In 2015-16 she received a scholarship from the Berlin Senate Department of Culture for a six-month residency at the Cité internationale des Arts in Paris and in 2017 a PRS Foundation Composers’ Fund Award. In 2020 her first portrait CD – Lines and Spaces – was released on WERGO. Also in 2020, her work I am, I am, written for soprano Juliet Fraser and the Sonar Quartett, received the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Chamber-Scale Composition. She was awarded a Composer Prize in 2022 by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung. Current projects include new works for EXAUDI vocal ensemble and the Riot Ensemble.

Janet Davey

Janet began composing at ten years old. She is largely self-taught, although has received valuable advice from several acclaimed composers. Her music draws on wide-ranging life experience, including her initial career as a communicator in radio broadcasting. She made current affairs programmes first for BBC World Service, as a producer and reporter, and then reported for Radio Four programmes such as “Womans’s Hour”, “Today Programme”, and “The World Tonight”. Janet then specialised in health and science programmes, writing and presenting “Health Matters” BBC World Service for 13 years. She won awards for her programmes about autism, the brain and music. Piano miniatures (with and without recorded sound) exploring life through the eyes of a child and the elderly, form the core of her output. She works extensively within the community, including 12 years for Little Missenden Festival, for massed musicians and children at the Royal Albert Hall, and has had large scale works performed by COMA. Janet composed and performed the piano music for Radio3 dramas, including “Amy’s View”, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, and “Three sisters Two”, and is published by ABRSM. Her all-inclusive pieces for many pianos have been performed widely including BBC Radio3.

Adolphus Hailstork

Chen Yi

Behzad Ranjbaran

Elena Kats-Chernin

Stacy Garrop

Missy Mazzoli

Shawn E. Okpebholo

Shawn E. Okpebholo is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning composer whose music has been described as "devastatingly beautiful" and "fresh and new and fearless" (The Washington Post), “affecting” (The New York Times), “searing” (The Chicago Tribune), “staggering” (The New Yorker), “lyrical, complex, singular” (The Guardian) and “powerful” (BBC Music Magazine). Okpebholo's work as a composer and his music has been featured on PBS Newshour, and radio broadcasts all across the country, including NPR's All Things Considered, NPR's Morning Edition SiriusXM’s “Living American” series on Symphony Hall Channel, and Chicago's WFMT. His artistry has resulted in many prizes and honors, including The American Academy of Arts and Letters Walter Hinrichsen Award in Music, First Place Winner of the 2020 American Prize in Composition (professional/wind band division), and Second Place Winner in the 2017 American Prize in Composition (professional/orchestral division), First Prize Winner in the Flute New Music Consortium Composition Competition, Sound of Late Composition Contest, Accent06 International Composition Competition, and the Inaugural Awardee of the Leslie Adams-Robert Owens Composition Award. Okpebholo maintains a dynamic career as a composer, including performances on five continents, over forty states, almost every major U.S. city, at some of the nation's most prestigious performance spaces, including Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, and the National Cathedral. His music has been featured on Lyric Opera of Chicago recital series, Washington National Opera Inauguration Day Concert; three works at the Ear Taxi Festival; Festival of New American Music; Ravinia Music Festival; and performances with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; Urban Arias and the Inscape Chamber Orchestra; Fifth House Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente's Tara Lynn Ramsey and Kyle Flens, Lincoln Trio, Monte Music Festival (Goa, India); MusicX Contemporary Music Festival; The Uncommon Music Festival (Alaska), among others. Solo artists include vocalists J'Nai Bridges, Will Liverman, Michael Michael Mayes, Ryan McKinney, Robert Sims, and Tamera Wilson; pianists Paul Sánchez, Mark Markham, Craig Terry, and Robert Ainsley; euphonium virtuoso Steven Mead, flutists Jennie Oh Brown and Caen-Thomason-Redus, among others. Okpebholo regularly receives commissions from noted soloists, universities, and organizations, including UrbanArias (co-commissioned by Minnesota Opera, Colorado Opera, Dallas Opera, and Opera); Cincinnati Opera, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Fifth House Ensemble, United States Airforce Strings, International Tuba and Euphonium Association, The Meir Rimon Commissioning Program of the International Horn Society, Astral Artists, Oakland Symphony, Lincoln Trio, among others. His compositions have been featured on six commercially released albums, including his first album solely devoted to his music, Steal Away, a collection of re-imagined Negro spirituals. As a pedagogue, Okpebholo has given masterclasses at many academic institutions worldwide, including two universities in Nigeria, and has served on the faculty of summer music festivals, currently on the Fresh Inc Festival's composition faculty. His compositional and research interests have been a gateway for ethnomusicological fieldwork in both East and West Africa: studying the music of the Esan people in southern Nigeria, the Akambe people in the Machakos region of Kenya, and South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda. His field research has resulted in two chamber works, two symphonic works, transcriptions, and academic lectures. Grants from the Endowment of the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Tangemen Sacred Music Center, Wheaton College, and Pew Research Grant (Union University) have supported his work. He earned his masters and doctoral degrees in composition from the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) at the University of Cincinnati, where he also studied music theory. He completed a bachelor's degree in composition and music history from Asbury College. He had additional studies in film scoring from New York University through the Buddy Baker Film Scoring Program. Growing up, a significant part of his music education was through The Salvation Army church, where he regularly received free music lessons. Inspired by that charity, Okpebholo is passionate about offering his musical expertise to underserved communities. Currently, he is Professor of Music Composition and Theory at Wheaton College-Conservatory of Music (IL), having also taught at Union University (TN), Northern Kentucky University, and CCM. He’s also the Composer-in-Residence of the renowned Fifth House Ensemble and was awarded a residency with the Chicago Opera Theater (2021-2023 seasons), culminating with an opera commission with librettist Mark Campbell, librettist for the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Silent Night. He lives in Wheaton, IL, a suburb of Chicago, with his wife, violist Dorthy, and his daughters, Eva and Corinne.