Dark Inventions is a contemporary music group based in the North of England that commissions, performs and records music from the 20th and 21st centuries.

John was born in Hampshire but spent his early childhood in Kenya and Uganda. In 1999, he moved to Scotland and in 2005, was awarded a place at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh. Whilst there, he won the Isobel Dunlop Prize for Composition, judged by James MacMillan, whilst studying under Tom David Wilson. He furthered his composition studies at the University of York (BA) with Roger Marsh, Bill Brooks and Thomas Simaku, and at the Royal Academy of Music (MA) with Philip Cashian, passing with distinction. He is also a graduate of Darwin College, Cambridge (PGCE and MEd), where he was Choral Director. He is a winner of the Alan Bush Prize and recipient of the NCEM 2015 Young Composers Award (19-25). John’s piece, Morph, for recorder quartet, has recently been selected for the finals of the innaugral Society of Recorder Players Composition Competition 2019, and will be performed by BLOCK4 in Ushaw College, Durham.

He has taught Academic Music and Composition at the Purcell School for Young Musicians and is currently Head of Music Technology at an independent school in South London. He also teaches 1:1 composition and songwriting at JASSPA. His music has been performed by ensembles including CHROMA, the Dunedin Consort, Blossom Street Singers, the Meridian Piano Quartet, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and in concerts internationally.

Jonathan Sage is a freelance clarinettist based in York, England.  He studied with Alan Hacker and Lesley Schatzberger at the University of York, gaining a Masters Degree in Performance with distinction.

As a concerto soloist, Jonathan has played with Orchestras including the London Mozart Players, York Sinfonia, Cambridge Youth Orchestra and the Hessle Sinfonia. A highlight of his concerto career came at the Dartington International Festival when, at less than 24 hours notice, he stepped in for distinguished clarinettist Alan Hacker to play the Mozart Clarinet Concerto (on Hacker’s basset clarinet) with the Dartington Festival Orchestra under conductor Diego Masson.  More recently, Jonathan has given the world premiere of a new basset clarinet concerto by Irish composer Garrett Sholdice.  Appearing as soloist/director of the Ergodos Musicians, Jonathan performed Shodice’s concerto, Am Obersee, alongside the Mozart in a unique two-concerto programme.  

In November 2009, Jonathan performed to a capacity audience at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival the UK’s largest contemporary music festival.  He has also given performances at the Ergodos MMX and Off-Grid Festivals in Ireland’s National Concert Hall, LEAP (Berlin), the York Spring Festival, Sampler Festival (London), Kaleidoscope (Dublin) the Late Music Festival, the Dartington International Festival, the International Conference on Music Since Nineteen-hundred 2007, the GEMdays Festival, ICMC and the University of York Concert Series. 

In 2013 Jonathan released his first solo album on Ergodos Records.  Entitled Counterpoint, it features Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint as well as a new work from Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and a transcription of a Bach Sarabande.  To date it has been broadcast on RTE Lyric FM as well as on New York Public Radio station WNYC and BBC Radio 3.  Lyric FM reviewer Paddy Kehoe gave the album 5 stars and described the Reich as a “masterful interpretation”.  Jonathan also features on a number of other Ergodos Records releases as well as on Monty Adkins’ Four Shibusa, released on Audiobulb.

In 2008, Jonathan toured Ireland as an Ergodos Artist, playing a programme of contemporary clarinet music and also giving lecture recitals at Trinity College Dublin and Dundalk Institute of Technology.  Commissions for the tour included works by Jonathan Nangle, Garrett Sholdice and Alexander Harker, supported by the Irish Arts Council.  

Jonathan regularly works with groups including the Ergodos Orchestra, Bewegung Ensemble, Dark Inventions and Harmonium, and has performed alongside musicians including Alan Hacker, John Cameron, Jane Manning and Stephen De Pledge.  Jonathan has also played in orchestras including the New Mozart Orchestra, I Maestri, and the York Guildhall Orchestra.  He has toured an performed in venues throughout Europe and in the USA.



I play clarinets, saxophones and various noise-producing objects.
will.r.ozard@gmail.com

The Chimera Ensemble is made up of students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, from a variety of disciplines at the University of York. Students organise, conduct, and perform works of contemporary classical music from professional composers from around the world as well as up-and-coming composers at the University.

David Lancaster is a composer based in York (UK).  Originally from Wigan, David studied music at the University of York, and was for three years RVW Composer in Residence at Charterhouse.  During that time he won several awards for composition and enjoyed a number of high profile performances.  Following a long period of silence he returned to composition in 2007 and his music has been subject to a dramatic simplification of style in a search for greater clarity of form and expression.  

In November 2013 his Strata was given its first performance by the Orchestra of Opera North; it was recorded for CD by the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra (under Mikel Toms) in June 2015.
In 2014 David’s Vertigo string quartet was performed in Hong Kong and at the Aspen Festival, Colorado and his large-scale choral work Apocalypse - which tells the story of the end of the world as depicted in York’s medieval stained glass - was given its premiere by The 24 conducted by Robert Hollingworth during York’s Festival of Ideas.  (Earlier this year Apocalypse was revived by the Danish Radio Vocal Ensemble at three concerts in Copenhagen and was broadcast by Danish Radio).

In 2015 the quintet Strike was performed in Hong Kong and York and the saxophone quartet Swan was revived in London by the Lunar Sax Quartet.  Premieres included Batubulan for solo piano, Art of War for soprano, oboe and bass trombone, and Public Order for concert band and tape.

His violin solo Rough Cut has been published by UYMP and received its first London performance in February 2016 given by Peter Sheppard-Skaerved; in July Late Music will present the premiere of Breathless, composed for the Orichalcum Brass Quintet. 

In 2016 he completed PhD in Composition at the University of York with Roger Marsh.

Dr David Lancaster is Associate Professor of Composition at York St John University, and is Artistic Director of York's Late Music concert series.

www.davidcomposer.com

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