Composer/Clarinettist. 
B. Liverpool 1988.

Welcome to The Forge, London’s Best Small Music Venue, offering the finest in classical, jazz, folk and world music.

With an on site Restaurant, Osteria and Bar at Caponata, live music is regularly accompanied by delicious food, excellent wine and great company.

Please visit the website for a detailed listing of events at The Forge.

"Irish new-music collective with international cachet and considerable chops." - Washington Post, May 2011.

British-German composer Charlotte Bray is an esteemed and in-demand composer, exhibiting uninhibited ambition and desire to communicate. Her music is exhilarating, inherently vivid, and richly expressive with lyrical intensity. An Ivor Novello Award winner (2019), she uses her voice to spotlight global issues, including the refugee crisis, unification, terrorism, and humanity’s impact on nature. She is currently the Composer-in-Residence with L​’Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, which is a 3‑year position for the 2023/24 – 2025/26 seasons. 

Bray’s music has been performed and commissioned by institutions such as BBC Symphony and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestras, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Aurora Orchestra, and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Her work has featured at festivals in Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Tanglewood, Aix-en-Provence, Verbier and Kuhmo, as well as with renowned conductors including Marin Alsop, Sir Mark Elder, Sakari Oramo, Oliver Knussen, Jessica Cottis, Daniel Harding, Duncan Ward, and Karina Canellakis.

Carter Callison has enjoyed a varied career that has spanned several different music mediums.  A native of Asheville, North Carolina, he began studying music at a young age and developed a passion for composing and playing the double bass. 

As a composer, he is constantly producing practice-based research in the form of original compositions.  Ensembles that have performed his works include the BBC Singers, Ensemble Erasme, the Manson Ensemble, Spitalfields Winter & Summer Festivals, the Bristol School of Animation as well as collaborations with Vanderbilt and Roehampton University.  Recent projects include recording his bass concerto Laniakea and Clarinet Concerto Lucid Dreaming at La Verrerie and the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris (CRR de Paris) in France.  

In addition to his composing endeavors, he has enjoyed performing double bass throughout Europe and America and is proficient playing in styles from the baroque to the avant-garde.  Recent performances include chamber music engagements with the London Symphony Orchestra Sound Hub and the Pythagoras Ensemble in England and Germany.

His teaching background has been shaped by a number of different elements over the past decade. As the Manson Composition Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music (2012-14), Carter coached, conducted and recorded ensembles for undergrad and graduate students, as well as organized concerts, performances and exams.  He also worked as a double bass teacher deputy at the Royal College of Music JD (2007-8) where he taught individual and group lessons.  While studying composition at the Royal Academy of Music (MMus 2012), he successfully completed his Licentiate of the RAM teaching certification (LRAM), which instilled a solid foundational knowledge of the principles of teaching. He has also studied theory pedagogy and taught music theory to undergraduate students.

In addition to composing, performing and teaching, Carter is an active audio producer/editor and has recorded numerous ensembles.  His use of MIDI and audio sampling libraries, such as the Vienna Symphonic Cube, has become a creative medium that he frequently uses in his composition process.  He is familiar with the latest DAW applications and is a proponent of the synthesis of modern music and technology.  

As a researcher, Carter has dedicated much of his time to studying scordatura and its affects on composition and performance practice.  His research has not only resulted in the creation of new composition techniques inspired from using scordatura, but led to the invention of scordatura pedals, which change the tuning of a string instrument while performing.  A prototype scordatura pedal was made after raising $8,030 through a Kickstarter campaign. The invention was subsequently featured in the Febuary 2014 issue of The Strad magazine.

Carter holds degrees from the Royal Academy of Music (MMus 2012), Manhattan School of Music (B.M. Composition and Double Bass, 2009) and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (High School Diploma, Double Bass 2005).

In October 2016, Carter submitted his PhD to the Royal Academy of Music and is awaiting examination in early February 2017.

I play the viola in a string quartet that focuses on experimental/new/imaginative classical-adjacent music.

Ryan Latimer is a British composer whose music has been described as “anarchic and cartoonishly fun” (BBC R3), “deliciously playful” (Classical Music Magazine) and “irresistible in its tongue-in-cheek irreverence” (ISCM). His work has been performed internationally by leading ensembles including the London Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, China National Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Psappha and Britten Sinfonia.

Ryan’s recent orchestral work Antiarkie, composed for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and subsequently featured during the ISCM World Music Days festival, in Beijing. In 2020, the work received its third performance by St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra at the prestigious Shostakovich Grand Hall, in Russia.

In 2021, his debut album will be released worldwide on the award-winning contemporary music label NMC Recordings. Other recent works, including Mills Mess, Moby Dick, and Chloe have also been released by RMN Records, Ablaze and on NMC’s ‘Next Wave’ album.

He is a regular collaborator with the contemporary dance group, Cohan Collective, and has worked closely with New York-based choreographer Jacqueline Bulnes and Phoenix Dance Theatre’s Artistic Director, Dane Hurst. In 2014, Ryan composed and co-directed his first chamber opera, Three Tall Tales of Dr Monsieur Façade. This interdisciplinary work, composed for ensemble, singers, actors and mimes, was developed in collaboration with dramaturges and performers from Warszawskie Centrum Pantomimy in Poland.

Many of his solo and chamber works have also featured at international festivals, including Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Germany), Gaudeamus Musiekweek (Netherlands), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), ISCM World Music Days (China), Druskomanija (Lithuania), Aldebrugh Festival (UK) and Haapvavesi Folk Festival (Lativa).

Ryan is a Lecturer in Music at the University of Birmingham. He is published by Composers Edition and supported by PRS for Music Foundation.

Carter Callison is following