Ilan Volkov

Ilan Volkov, began his career as Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa, and was Chief Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra from 2003-2009. Since then he has been the orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor. 

He is a frequent guest conductor with orchestras around the world, including BBC Scottish, and his recordings have won critical acclaim as well as prestigious awards. Volkov is very active in the new music scene and has premiered many contemporary orchestral works, including compositions by Jonathan Harvey, Hans Abrahamsen, Unsuk Chin, Mark-Anthony Turnage and others. Ilan Volkov also works regularly with leading ensembles in modern music such as Ensemble Modern and Musik Fabrik. Volkov has curated various new music events in Israel over the last six years including Hafarot Seder and Hapzura. He has also collaborated with Iancu Dumitrescu, AMM, John Butcher, John Oswald, Zeena Parkins and John Zorn to mention a few. Volkov is a member of the improvisation trio Mines, an ensemble consisting of two violins and drums. 

Leo Chadburn

Leo Chadburn is a composer and performer of experimental and electronic music, “avant-pop” and music for the gallery. Recent works include The Indistinguishables (2014) for Quatour Bozzini, Freezywater (2016) for Apartment House and RED & BLUE (2015), a solo performance based on the Cold War correspondence between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. His collaborative work includes projects with visual artists including Jennet Thomas (The Unspeakable Freedom Device, 2015) and Cerith Wyn Evans (Imagination Dead Imagine, 2013), and his discography includes four solo albums and remixes for Owen Pallett, Grizzly Bear and Seb Rochford. His music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 1, 3 and 6 Music and his writing has appeared in publications including the Wire, the Quietus and Frieze.

Yoni Silver

Bass-clarinetist and multi-instrumentalist Yoni Silver’s activities include hyper-spectral adventures with Iancu Dumitrescu's Hyperion Ensemble; a bass clarinet and percussion duo with Steve Noble; a bass clarinet/violin and possessed vocals duo with Sharon Gal; Denis D’or with Grundik Kasyansky and Tom Wheatley; bass clarinet and drums duo with Crystabel Riley, and solo performances on amplified bass clarinet.
He has appeared on labels such as Creative Sources, Confront Recordings, Wasted Capital, Chocolate Monk and Edition Modern.

Hannah Marshall

Hannah Marshall is a cellist who is continuing to extract, invent, and exorcize as many sounds and emotional qualities from her instrument as she can. She has been a regular member of Alexander Hawkins’ Ensembles and has toured in Europe and South America with Luc Ex and Veryan Weston’s ensembles – SOL 6 & 12. She plays with ‘String Terrorists’ - Barrel (a trio with Violinist Alison Blunt & Violist/poet Ivor kallin). And has been invited by Fred Frith and Suichi Chino in their residencies at café Oto. She also plays with Terry Day, Tim Hodgkinson, Roger Turner, Paul May, Kay Grant, and the London Improvisers Orchestra.

Muyassar Kurdi

‘Completely concentrated upon her bizarre ritual, the singer – dressed in black – emits tortured vocalisations and cries worthy of Yoko Ono in full flight... It’s incredibly in-your-face and perturbing but makes you smile too: the sheer pleasure of making a racket.’ L’Alsace (France)

“A staging of a dream, that of Muyassar, where the dream is considered the vehicle of a primitive divine message and soothsayer - prophetic. The woman - witch is also imbued with an ancestry with the Theatre of the Absurd of Beckett..” IOstudio (Italy)

Muyassar Kurdi is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist. Her work encompasses sound, extended vocal technique, performance art, movement, photography, and film. She has toured extensively in the U.S. and throughout Europe, including the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and the UK in both England and Scotland. A versatile improviser, Muyassar has composed and performed music for voice, harmonium, piano, lyre, autoharp, and theremin in both solo and collaborative environments. She currently focuses her attention to interweaving homemade electronic instruments and sculpture into her vocal and dance performances, stirring a plethora of emotions from her audience members through vicious noise, ritualistic chants, and meditative movements. Kurdi studied voice and dance with legendary vocalist, dancer and recording artist Meredith Monk via The House Foundation, as well as learning the Japanese dance tradition of Butoh with Tadashi Endo, director of the Butoh Center MAMU and with Mexican master of the form, Diego Piñon, among others throughout Chicago, NYC, Berlin, and Vienna. She currently studies with Juilliard faculty member Janis Brenner, also a member of the Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble. Kurdi received an artist-residency in Berlin at Liebig12 for the month of February 2017 performing new works as well as curating her series MACHINE//BODY which has premiered in Chicago and NYC with a focus on connecting sound, movement, and performance.

muyassarkurdi.com

Diana Policarpo

Diana Policarpo is an audiovisual artist, composer and percussionist based in London and Lisbon. Her work proposes to dilute the boundaries between performance, installation, acoustic phenomena, drawing, sound manipulation and improvisation.

She investigates relations of power, popular culture and gender politics, juxtaposing the rhythmic structuring of sound as a tactile material within the social construction of esoteric ideology. Policarpo creates performances, scores and installations, presented in exhibition or concert contexts, to examine experiences of vulnerability and empowerment associated with acts of exposure to the capitalist word.

http://dianapolicarpo.blogspot.co.uk/

People Like Us – Gone, Gone Beyond

Under the name “People Like Us,” artist Vicki Bennett has been making work available via CD, DVD and vinyl releases, radio broadcasts, concert appearances, gallery exhibits and online streaming and distribution for 25 years. Since her first publication in 1992, Bennett has developed an immediately recognisable aesthetic repurposing pre-existing footage to craft audio and video collages with an equally dark and witty take on popular culture. She sees sampling and appropriation as folk art sourced from the palette of contemporary media and technology, with all of the sharing and cross-referencing incumbent to a populist form. Embedded in her work is the premise that all is interconnected and that claiming ownership of an “original” or isolated concept is both preposterous and redundant.

People Like Us will present a world premiere movie trailer for Vicki Bennett's new 10 screen/8 speaker immersive cinema work "Gone, Gone Beyond" which premieres in San Francisco in October.

http://peoplelikeus.org/