Jennifer Walshe

“The most original compositional voice to emerge from Ireland in the past 20 years” (The Irish Times) and “Wild girl of Darmstadt” (Frankfurter Rundschau), composer and performer Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her music has been commissioned, broadcast and performed all over the world. She has been the recipient of fellowships and prizes from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm, the Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstadt and Akademie Schloss Solitude among others. Recent projects include TIME TIME TIME, an opera written in collaboration with the philosopher Timothy Morton, and THE SITE OF AN INVESTIGATION, a 30-minute epic for Walshe’s voice and orchestra, commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. THE SITE has been performed by Walshe and the NSO, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and also the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra. A Late Anthology of Early Music Vol. 1: Ancient to Renaissance, her third solo album, was released on Tetbind in 2020. The album uses AI to rework canonical works from early Western music history. A Late Anthology was chosen as an album of the year in The Irish Times, The Wire and The Quietus. Walshe is currently a professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Stuttgart. Her work was recently profiled by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. 

Tony Conrad

Anthony Schmalz “Tony” Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer. Conrad indelibly altered the course of contemporary art and thought.  Born in New Hampshire, he earned a mathematics degree from Harvard and soon became a central figure in the 1960’s New York scene.  From a young age he stretched the limits of music and performance, drafting post-Cagean music compositions and text pieces—and collaborating with artists such as Henry Flynt, Jack Smith, and, with the legendary drone ensemble Theatre of Eternal Music, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and John Cale. By the mid-’60s, Conrad had begun to focus his attention on film; in 1966, he created The Flicker, a stroboscopic masterpiece which stands as one of the first examples of structural film.

From then on, Conrad’s socially-engaged multimedia works—such as Straight and Narrow and Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain —continued to investigate and push the boundaries of art, performance, authorship, viewership, discipline, and power. In the 1970’s, after releasing his first studio album, Outside the Dream Syndicate (with Faust), he turned his attention to new media—working alongside artists such as Paul Sharits and Hollis Frampton while a professor State University of New York at Buffalo. In the ‘80s, he made films with, and proved a major influence on a younger generation of artists, namely Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler.  Ever-restless, Conrad injected each strain of his polymathic practice with unique conceptual and political force as well as a sense of humor.  Fueling a resurgence of interest in his music in the mid-1990s, Conrad focused once again on music, releasing Slapping Pythagoras,  Four Violins , and Early Minimalism Volume One.  Accompanied by incisive texts by Conrad, these albums helped to cement his place as a crucial and singular figure in the history of minimal music.  He performed and screened his films at forward-thinking festivals and institutions throughout the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, and Anthology Film Archives. His films and artworks are in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Albright-Knox Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), and the ZKM Center for Art and Media, among others.

Before his passing in 2016, Tony performed with Faust at Berlin Atonal Festival; he also created solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Wien and 80WSE, New York University, as well as at Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne.  The life of this radical and thoughtful visionary has been documented in TONY CONRAD: COMPLETELY IN THE PRESENT which World Premiered at the Chicago Underground Film Festival July 1, 2016 where he was also honored posthumously with a Lifetime Achievement Award.  The documentary has been screening at such festivals as Viennale, Leeds International Film Festival, DOC NYC, International Film Festival Rotterdam and esteemed museums including the TATE Modern in London, the National Gallery of Art in D.C., Los Angeles’s Broad Museum and San Francisco’s Cinematheque.

Kathryn Williams

Kathryn Williams is a flautist and educator based in the UK. A core member of The House of Bedlam, she has also performed with Distractfold Ensemble, Ensemble Voix Nouvelle, Ensemble 360, BBC Philharmoinc, The Hallé, Sinfonia Cymru, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and concertos with Manchester Camerata, Dayton Philharmonic, and Royal Northern College of Music Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble.

As a music educator Kathryn specialises in experimental performance practice and early-years education. Recently this has included guest lecturing at the Royal Northern College of Music and Ohio State University, contributing to courses for Aldeburgh Young Musicians and National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, and long-term residencies at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Manchester Museum, and a central Manchester nursery. Working for organisations including Live Music Now, Peoplescape Theatre, Theatre in Prisons and Probation, and Music in Hospitals, Kathryn regularly devises and delivers performances and workshops in a wide variety of settings including care homes, museums, special-needs schools, prisons, and hospitals.

Kathryn earned a BMus, MMus, and International Artist Diploma from the Royal Northern College of Music and is currently studying for a PhD in Performance at Huddersfield University. Her current research, commissioning and performance project, Coming Up for Air, explores the creative possibilities that emerge when pieces are limited to one breath. Kathryn is also currently collaborating with composer Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh in the development PIXERCISE, a new solo piece for piccolo and exercise which brings together musical performance, physical theatre, performance art, and sport.

Upcoming releases and performances include Oliver Coates Shelley’s on Zenn-La on RVNG International, Coming Up for Air on Huddersfield Contemporary Records/NMC, PIXERCISE at HCMF, and Coming Up for Air for the Kammer Klang series at Café Oto.

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE (FILIPA BOTELHO, HANNA KÖLBEL, KAJA FARSZKY)

Down The Rabbit Hole is a trio consisting of clarinetist Filipa Botelho (Portugal), percussionist Kaja Farszky (Croatia), and cellist Hanna Kölbel (Germany).
Hailing from throughout Europe, we are committed to the emerging scene within contemporary music that includes theater and performative movement. Our trio is oriented towards the latest developments in musical creation, especially those involving new modes of presentation.
Our repertoire leads us down new paths of extended techniques that transform traditional acoustic instruments. Our mission also involves the use of voice, body, touch, objects, and the many possibilities of stage and lighting design.

Elena Rykova

Born in 1991, in Ufa, Russia, Elena Rykova studied piano, composition and conducting at music college. After graduation in 2010, she decided to continue as a composer in Moscow State Conservatory with prof. Yuri Kasparov for the next five years. In 2015 she started her master program in composition at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln with prof. Johannes Schöllhorn. And since Fall 2016 she is a PhD candidate at Harvard University, studying instrumental composition with prof. Chaya Czernowin and electroacoustic composition with prof. Hans Tutschku.