Andrea Balency-Béarn is a part French, part Mexican contemporary music composer based in London, UK, where she is currently working and pursuing a PhD in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music.

Born in Paris and raised in Mexico City, she has received commissions from outstanding ensembles and entities including the Nash ensemble, Riot ensemble, the Royal Academy of Music and New Movement Collective, and her work - which spans from solo and chamber music with live electronics to orchestral music - has been recorded and performed internationally.

Her studies in composition began in Buenos Aires at the Conservatorio Manuel de Falla in 2007, after which she started touring as an alternative and electronic music performer for several years. During that time, she collaborated with a variety of artists across genres and disciplines—including film and contemporary dance—and took part in collaborative
residencies in France, Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom. She started working as a film composer in 2020, and has since scored feature films and TV series for the BBC, Netflix and Amazon Studios. In 2021, her work was nominated for best original score by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences.

In 2023, she completed a Master’s degree in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music where she received a DipRAM award due to an outstanding mark in her Composition portfolio. Over the course of her studies, she has taken part in lessons and masterclasses with Hans Abrahamsen, Helen Grime, Fabián Panisello, Helena Tulve, Eleanor Alberga,
Brett Dean, Edmund Finnis, Phil Cashian and her PhD supervisor Rubens Askenar. In 2024, she was the first recipient of the The Jane Manning - Anthony Payne Award at the Royal Academy.

Besides her career as a composer, she performs as a member of UK alternative-electronic music band Mount Kimbie.

British/Canadian violinist, Freya Creech, combines a busy and varied performance schedule as a soloist, chamber musician and collaborative artist. She regularly performs in venues across the UK, which have included appearances at Royal Festival Hall, Cadogan Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, as well as throughout Europe, in such concert halls as the Festspielhaus (Salzburg), Herculessaal (Munich), Sendesaal (Bremen) and Brucknerhaus (Linz). She has appeared as a concerto soloist on a number of occasions and has given many performances at the Edinburgh Fringe, Aldeburgh, Brighton Fringe and Salzburg Kammermusik Festivals.  Freya has also held several orchestral positions, including with the  Salzburg Philharmonie and European Union Youth Orchestras, and has played in a wide range of chamber ensembles, most notably as second violinist of the Rose Quartet; an international collaboration.  Having just completed her Masters' studies at the Mozarteum with Professor Klara Flieder, Freya is currently excited to be releasing her first album featuring the little known, yet very beautiful, 10 Caprices for Solo Violin by Sonia Eckhardt-Gramatté.  The album is now available on Spotify and most online music-sharing platforms.

Alex (1990),"A riotous overabundance of love and rage..an extraordinary experience” The Wire Magazine, is an award-winning composer & improvising-trombonist based in the UK. His Music is published by Ricordi (Berlin). "highly innovative...of exceptional creative imagination and musical energy, packed with life force unlike anything else” BBC Magazine Ivor Novello British Composer Awards.

Alex has been awarded the Paul Hindemith Prize, and Ivor Novello Composer He was nominated for the Gaudeamus Award for 2022 and was elected to the 9th International Composition Seminar and awarded a commission ILOLLI-POP for Improviser and Ensemble which he played with Ensemble Modern. He has been awarded by the London Sinfonietta’s Writing the Future commission CANDYFOLK- SPACE-DRUM  and has won the RPS Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize, DANKWORTH JAZZ prize for composition BYE and was made a London Symphony Orchestra Panufnik Composer. Alex played and recorded his concerto OD ODY PINk’d for Jazz Musician and Royal National Scottish Orchestra (RSNO). He was a Leverhume Art Scholar with the London Philharmonic Orchestra 2016-2017: NOW WE ARE DUH-DUR and has been awarded the Harriet Cohen Memorial Music Award for his compositions. His piece SPAKE represented the UK in the Orchestral section of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM). He is a commissioned contributor to John Zorn’s Arcana X 2021. "Paxton is a system-crasher of genre, who merges jamming video game soundtracks, musical overtures, virtuoso chamber music and jazz improv into an unmistakable style...highly complex, sophisticated and extremely entertaining, virtuoso ad absurdum" Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik

His albums to date as a composer: MUSIC for BOSCH PEOPLE and iLOLLI-POP released to critical acclaim on Birmingham Record Company/ NMC label and nonclassical. Listen Pony Label (TELLSONG), Indigne de nous on Everest Records and leading Spotify playlists. HAPPY MUSIC for ORCHESTRA released on Delphian Label in  April 2023. “This is the most joyous sound I’ve heard in ages!”New York Times

His music has been played/recorded/ commissioned by leading orchestras and ensembles including Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), Philharmonia Orchestra, AskSchöenberg, Riot Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain, Wigmore hall, Explore Ensemble, Klammer Klang, Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), National Youth Orchestra (BBC proms 2021), Making Music (UK), Ensemble x.y, x.y Song, Hyper Duo, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO), National Youth Jazz Orchestra (UK) NYJO, Listen-Pony, Aldeburgh Festival, Psappha Ensemble, Orion Symphony Orchestra OSO, Helios Collective, Chaos Collective Orchestra, Mirrors of Hall Big Band, Dr. K Sextet, 5KBrass Quintet, RAM Philharmonic and RCM Philharmonic and soloists Zubin Kanger, Tabea Debus, Beibei Wang, Patrick Terry, David Zucchi. “This is what an orchestra can be like in the 21st century: an ensemble that speaks with one voice yet also gives voice to each of its members” The Times

He has written six operas including NOGGIN and the WHALE (Massed forces including 500 young instrumentalists and singes) FOR the LOVE of THORNSTIEN SHIVER hosted by English National Opera and Helios Collective, BEL and the DRAGON as part of the Tête à Tête opera festival, the EQUIVOCAL HARRIET BOWDLER at Second Movement Opera and WOOLF MUSIC at the Forge in Camden and RAVEN’s CHILD for Jacob Colier and Orchestra.
“Operatic Game Boy music played by a virtuosic motley crew that’s inexplicably been hired to provide live jingles for a primetime TV show sometime in the recent past that never quite was” Point of departure

As an improvising and jazz trombonist Alex has played as a soloist with Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta,  Riot Ensemble, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), & ensemble x.y. He is founder of Dreammusics ensemble and performs regularly with pioneering improvisers (eg: Charlotte Keeffe, Steve Noble). “meticulously scored…seems to change with every bar, enfolding bite-size pieces of classic minimalism, brass brand tradition, electronic noise, & video game plasticity..intensely virtuosic and giddily joyful. electronically slathered trombone…Paxton is a monster improviser …connects his garrulous attack to the most extroverted playing of George Lewis & Roswell Rudd..." Bandcamp Daily Best Contemporary Classical.

Extensively, Alex writes art-music for musicians in community settings including, innovative ways of writing for young instrumentalists & singers in a post-Roald Dahl world of new-music.  eg: NOGGIN and the WHALE (Massed forces including 500 young instrumentalists and singes), Fly Like a Kitchen, Muffin, Pudding Tummy and The Sound of Magic. He is professorial composition staff at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and has worked as lead-composition tutor (and workshop leader) on the National Youth Orchestra GB, he has taught/ lectured at composition and improvisation at conservatories including, RAM, GSMD & RCM (and multiple universities in the UK). “one of the most exceptional voices from a new generation of UK talent” The Philharmonia Orchestra

Alex studied as a scholar at Royal Academy of Music (BMushons1stclass)and LRAM (Distinction) and the Royal College of Music (MComp Distinction).“a Brit who defies every conceivable genre boundary…an extremely modern and future-oriented style.” Paul Hindemith Prize winner 2023

Alex is an endorsee solo artist with Micheal Rath Trombones since 2023 (R12 nickel bell & tuning slide).

Composer, improviser, pianist, teacher, writer

composer + performer

https://christiandrew.com

Brazilian pianist Ariel Magno da Costa currently serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor at Bowling Green State University, where he completed his doctoral studies in Contemporary Music in 2021 with Laura Melton and Thomas Rosenkranz. His dissertation is focused on the music for solo piano by Basque-Spanish composer Gabriel Erkoreka (b. 1969). Recent activities include participation in the 14th and 15th editions of soundSCAPE Festival (Cesena, Italy), Bowling Green New Music Festival 38, 39, 40, and 41, Society of Composers 2018 National Conference (Tacoma, WA), and the 2017 IDRS Annual Conference (Appleton, WI).
Contact:
arieldacosta [DOT] piano [AT] gmail [DOT] com

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