Hen Ogledd

Hen Ogledd is Dawn Bothwell, Rhodri Davies and Richard Dawson.

Originally formed as DAWSON-DAVIES: HEN OGLEDD by avant folk savant Richard Dawson and improvised harp pioneer Rhodri Davies, they’ve dropped the surnames and become a trio with the addition of Dawn Bothwell, who also performs altered electronic torch songs as Pentecostal Party.

It’s been a transformative move, Dawson playing guitar, iPad and a panoply of tabletop knickknacks, Davies cleaving new spaces open with his blazing harp splutterations, with Bothwell’s sweet and sour voice and electronics taking the three of them down unexplored avenues littered with hypnotic diversions and long moments of delirium.

Loré Lixenberg

Lore Lixenberg is the leader of The Voice Party (an opera & political party you cannot join, it joins you) standing in the 2019 UK elections. In 2021 she won the Phonurgia Nova soundart prize for ’theVoicePartyOperaBotFarm[myFuryIsMyMuse] and was nominated for the Centre Pompidou Prix Heidsieck for her participatory voice pieces, ‘Pret a Chanter’ ‘PANIC ROOM - the singterviews’ film ‘The Fool', and BIRD!

Working with code, her explorations into participatory & digital practices continue with her extended voice dating app(ERA) SINGLR, taking place in 2022 and her voice currency VOXXCOIN, exploring the dramatic potential of encoded voice and dramatic exchange.

Her career began performing in physical theatre with Complicite, working with Simon Mcburney on Out of a House Walked a Man for the National Theatre that used texts by the Soviet writer Daniil Harms. Following this, her work has spanned performances on concert platforms and opera scenes to installations and vocal performances with composers, experimental visual and sound artists (STELARC, Bruce Mclean, ORLAN, David Toop, Imogen Sidworthy, Georgina Starr, Sam Belinfante)

She has played with Stewart Lee, Richard Thomas & Simon Munnery appearing in BBC2 Attention Scum and The Kombat Operas that won the Rose D'Or prize for comedy. Performing regularly the music of Frederic Acquaviva (with whom she founded & ran the Berlin-based Artspace www.laplaquetournante.org) she is in his piece 'SEMINAL' alongside Joan La Barbara, Vinko Globokar, Wills Morgan and Jacques Lizene for DeutschlandFunkKultur 2022. her first artist book, Memory Maps was published by Editions AcquAvivA, and her first monographic CD, The afternoon of a phone is on £@ß. Her vinyl NancarrowKaraoke (vocal transcriptions +performances of the piano rolls of Nancarrow) is out now on the NL label De Player. and her new Isou recording will be out next year.

Since January 17, 2018, Lixenberg has declared that everything she does is an extension of her voice and singing practice and is therefore to be considered an extended vocal.

Conlon Nancarrow

Conlon Nancarrow (October 27, 1912 – August 10, 1997) was an American-born composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. He became a Mexican citizen in 1956.

Nancarrow is best remembered for his studies for player piano, being one of the first composers to use auto-playing musical instruments, realising their potential to play far beyond human performance ability. He lived most of his life in relative isolation, and did not become widely known until the 1980s.

“This music is the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives… something great and important for all music history! His music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed but at the same time emotional…for me it’s the best of any composer living today.” – György Ligeti (in a letter to Charles Amirkhanian)

“Conlon’s music has such an outrageous, original character that it is literally shocking. It confronts you. Like Emerson said of Thoreau, ‘We have a new proposition.” – John Cage (from On Conlon Nancarrow, Eva Soltes)

“The stuff is fantastic… You’ve got to hear it. It’ll kill you.” – Frank Zappa (from Musician, with Dan Forte).

(colonnancarrow.org)

Naomi Sato

Naomi Sato (Tokyo Japan 1975) graduated from the saxophone class of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1998. She finished 2nd phase saxophone studying at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam in 2002.
She studied improvisation and composition at Conservatorium van Amsterdam.
Naomi is the Semi Finalist of the 2nd International Adolphe Sax Concours in Dinant(1998), and the 3rd prize winner of Saxophonewettbewerb Gustav Bunke in Hannover(1999). She studied the saxophone with Nobuya Sugawa(Tokyo), Arno Bornkamp(Amsterdam) and Claude Delangle(Paris).
She had played with Philharmonic Orchestra of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music(Tokyo, Japan), Orcketre de lfAcademie europeenne de musique with Pierre Boulez (Aix-en Provence, Fronce), Ensemble Lucilin (Luxembourg), het Residentie Orkest(The Hague, Netherlands), het Ives Ensemble(Zaandam,Netherlands).
She studied the Sho with Ko Ishikawa at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. She is collaborated with many composers and played with Teo Loevendie (composer, saxophone), Harry Starreveld(Flute), Merlijn Twaalfhoven(composer, viola), Olivier Sliepen (saxophone), Laura Carmichael (Clarinet), Netherlands Vocaal Laboratorium, and Nieuw Ensemble(Amsterdam, Netherlands). She has given chamber music concerts in Japan, Netherlands, France, Germany, Denmark and Luxembourg with member of her chamber music grope Duo X Project, improvisation trio Karooshi(Sax, Harp, Contra Bass), and Vlinder Vangers( sho + electronics). And she gave lecture concerts about eMusic scene in Amsterdam through Japanese traditional musicf in Conservatorium van Amsterdam(2000), North Eastern University(2005) and UM Dartmouth(2005).

Alice Jeffreys

Alice Jeffreys is a composer of acoustic music. Alice is currently studying for a PhD in Composition at City, University of London, with Newton Armstrong, exploring emergent temporal paradoxes in listening.