The Composers

Nine composers have been asked to write new works. As well as published composers, several pop music writers have also been asked to write for cello and piano for the first time.

Emma Anderson, Emma Anderson is from London. She is a guitarist and songwriter and drew attention for her work with the group Lush in the early 1990s. This guitar based indie band on 4-AD Records created a new and much copied sound with a wall of heavily effected guitars, unusual harmonies and distant female vocals. Since the bandŒs split Emma has launched her own new group Sing Sing. They are currently releasing their first album and are about to embark on a tour of the United States.

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Gavin Bryars, Gavin Bryars, born in 1943 in Goole, Yorkshire, started his career from an experimental position rare in British music, and has continued to chart a radical course while attracting an international following. While reading philosophy at Sheffield University he became a professional jazz bassist and a pioneer of free improvisation. The lessons of this influenced early works such as the indeterminately scored The Sinking of the Titanic of 1969 and the classic Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet of 1971. A major turning point in his development was the opera Medea, premièred at the Opéra de Lyon and Opéra de Paris in 1984 in a production directed and designed by Robert Wilson. He has since written two further operas: Doctor Ox's Experiment (ENO 1998) and, G (both with librettist Blake Morrison), commissioned by the Staatstheater Mainz for the Gutenberg 600th anniversary. He has produced a large body of chamber music, including 3 string quartets, both for his own ensemble and for other performers. He has also written extensively for strings as well as producing concertos for violin, viola, cello, double bass (plus one for jazz bass).

An important feature of his output comes from his collaborations with the visual arts (he taught for a number of years in art colleges). He has made installations/performances for the Liverpool Tate Gallery, the Tate St. Ives, the Chateau d'Oiron among others and worked closely with the late Juan Muñoz, notably on A Man in a Room, Gambling.

Bryars has worked for many years with early music performers and has now embarked on a series of seven books of madrigals: to date two are finished - for the Hilliard Ensemble (texts by Blake Morrison) and for the Trio Mediaeval Sextet (texts by Petrarch) and a third is in progress.

He has worked with a wide range of choreographers and dancers including Lucinda Child (for Rambert dance Company), Laurie Booth, William Forsyth (Frankfurt Ballet), Edouard Lock (La La La Human Steps). In 1999 he wrote the music for BIPED, the dance by Merce Cunningham, and collaborated with choreographer Carolyn Carlson on works for the Venice Biennale (2002). His work is widely recorded - on Incus, ECM, Point, Philips, Argo, Clarinet Classics, Daphénéo, and more recently on his own label GB Records.

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Mark Brydon, Mark Brydon is from Sunderland but has spent most of his life in Sheffield. As a musician and producer he has had a long career, since 1985, writing and recording music which uses heavy dance rhythms and is stylistically unrestricted in it1s use of pure pop songs, computers, samples and effects. His group Moloko has produced three successful albums, most notably in 2000 with the album ŒThings To Make And Do1 and the single ŒThe Time Is Now1. Mark is currently finishing the groups fouth album.

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Cathal Coughlan, Cathal Coughlan has been making music since the early 1980's, both under his own name and as a member of the groups Fatima Mansions and Microdisney, principally as a vocalist. In addition to writing songs for the above projects he has provided music for two feature films, and published short prose works and criticism in magazines and newspapers in the UK and Ireland, from where he comes.

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David Lang, David Lang:- embodies the restless spirit of invention. Musically adventurous, yet deeply versed in the classical tradition, Lang is determined to make a music that resists categorization. He is constantly in search of new musical forms. Many of his pieces resemble each other only in the fierce intelligence and clarity of vision that inform their structures. "There is no name yet for this kind of music," writes music critic Mark Swed, but audiences around the globe are hearing more and more of Lang's work: in performances by such organizations as the Santa Fe Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Kronos Quartet; at Tanglewood, the BBC Proms, The Munich Biennale, the Settembre Musica Festival, the Sidney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival and the Almeida, Holland, Berlin, Strasbourg and Huddersfield Festivals; in theater productions in New York, San Francisco and London; in the choreography of Twyla Tharp, La La La Human Steps, The Nederlands Dans Theater and the Royal Ballet; and at Lincoln Center, the South Bank Centre, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican Centre, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Recent projects include monumental musical environments like the dark and meditative amplified orchestra piece The Passing Measures; The Difficulty of Crossing a Field - an opera for the Kronos Quartet with libretto by Mac Wellman and direction by Carey Perloff; the critically acclaimed opera Modern Painters about the curious and tragic life of art critic John Ruskin; the evening-length piano solo Psalms without Words, and the bittersweet comic book opera The Carbon Copy Building, with cartoonist Ben Katchor, Bob McGrath and the Ridge Theater, and composers Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe.

Lang has been honored with the Rome Prize, the BMW Music-Theater Prize (Munich), a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, the Revson Fellowship with the New York Philharmonic, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1999 he received a Bessie Award for his music for choreographer Susan Marshall's The Most Dangerous Room in the House, performed live by the Bang on a Can All-Stars at the Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Carbon Copy Building won the 2000 Village Voice OBIE Award for Best New American Work. Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary music festival, Bang on a Can, and Composer-in-Residence at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Born in Los Angeles in 1957, Lang holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of Iowa, receiving his doctorate from the Yale School of Music in 1989. He has studied with Jacob Druckman, Hans Werner Henze and Martin Bresnick. HIs work is recorded on the Sony Classical, BMG, Point, Chandos, Argo/Decca, CRI and Cantaloupe labels

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Steve Hillier, Steve Hillier is best known as the songwriter in the pop group Dubstar (1995-2000). Now a record producer and composer in his own right, Steve works with with artists from far and wide at his studio 'Stone Beach' and is based in Brighton.

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David Gavurin and Harriet Wheeler, David and Harriet are The Sundays. As guitarist and vocalist, song writing partners and the main focal point of their band they produced the album ŒReading,Writing & Arithmetic1 in 1989 and the hit single ŒCan1t Be Sure1 which brought them immediate attention and a huge following for their unique guitar based songs and Harriet's voice. They have commanded respect and loyalty over the last decade as they have unhurriedly produced two more beautiful albums in the same style.

Piet Goddaer, Piet Goddaer was born in Kortriijk, Belgium, and is a young emerging artist on Sony records.The son of a classical composer, Norbert Goddaer, his father taught him at a very young age how to appreciate the value and beauty of other musical genres, ranging from jazz to experimental , from Miles Davis to John Zorn and Frank Zappa. Over the last two years he has produced two solo albums, contributed arrangements to the recordings of other Belgian artists, collaborated in the recording of albums of jazz works, and scored music for TV. Piet Goddaer is also known as Ozark Henry www.ozarkhenry.com and Sunzoo Manley www.sunzoomanley.com

Damian Le Gassick, Damian le Gassick is a producer/songwriter who's been working in LA for the last few years. Failing to get a suntan and sorely missing the rain, proper tea and a decent pint, he's now moving back to London. Away from Blighty he's been working with kd lang, Madonna, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Roni Size. Most recently working on Mel C's new record.

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