The Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden is home to The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet.

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.

Composer from London.

A lot of my newer pieces are not on soundcloud, so please check my website for most recent recordings.

Photo by Michael Carlo 2023

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.

Alex Nikiporenko is a London-based composer and curator of 840.

Alex received his formal education at Chetham's School of Music, King's College London and the Royal College of Music, where his studies were supported by a Leverhulme Postgraduate Studentship and the Derek Hill Foundation. Since 2014, Alex has studied privately with Laurence Crane. He has participated in Cheltenham Composer Academy 2014, Britten–Pears Young Artist Programme 2018, and Wandelweiser Composers Meet Composers 2019. Alex has been invited to present his work to postgraduate students at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music.

Named BBC/Guardian Young Composer of the Year in 2008, Alex became a Creative in Residence at The Hospital Club in 2009. Alex's music has been performed throughout Europe by soloists and ensembles including Juliet Fraser, Zubin Kanga, Anton Lukoszevieze, BLOCK4 recorder quartet, Fidelio Trio, RCM Philharmonic Orchestra and Aurora Orchestra, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Resonance FM. Modus Triplex, for the Tre Voci cello trio, was nominated for the 2016 BASCA British Composer Award and features on Nonclassical's 'Outside the Lines' EP.

In 2015, Alex co-founded 840, an experimental music concert series. Over 22 concerts the series has programmed music by 78 composers, premiering works by Laurence Crane, John Lely, Georgia Rodgers, Leo Chadburn, Lawrence Dunn and Sergei Zagny amongs many others. 840 has been generously supported by the Arts Council England, the Richard Thomas Foundation, the Hinrichsen Foundation and the RVW Trust.

Alex has collaborated with theatre group Arbonauts, creating site-specific performances at Nunhead Cemetery, Latitude Festival and Hengistbury Head, Dorset. He has composed music for fashion brand Aries’ collaboration with Vans and performed with artist Matthew Stone.

Aside from composing, Alex enjoys teaching piano and has published a book of piano pieces for older beginners. He also works as a software developer in the financial sector.

I am an 20 year old composer, who studied composition with Jeffery Wilson at the Junior Guildhall School of Music and Drama and is now studying music at the University of Oxford. Film music is my main focus, but I have also had some amazing opportunities to hear my pieces in venues such as the Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore (Rome), London Olympic Park, St. Peter's Eaton Square, St. Mark’s Church in Reading, the Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Westminster Abbey. Performers of my work has included Dockland Sinfonia, the Dunedin Consort, members of the BBC Concert orchestra, the Bergersen Quartet, the Junior Guildhall Symphony orchestra, an international brass quintet and virtuoso pianist Mateusz Borowiak. I was awarded 2nd place in the NCEM Young Composer Award 2015. Most recently Dockland Sinfonia orchestra performed my piece 'Jutland, Lest we Forget' at St.Anne's Limehouse to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of Jutland.

Evan (b. 1988) is an opera maker, composer, conductor, based in Philadelphia. His most recent opera – libretto by Aleksandar Hut Kono – Ganymede 5 premiered in the 2019 Philly Fringe Festival. Elevator, a short chamber opera, premiered in March as the first episode of the 2019 Serial Opera Project. His operas Colony and Greenland were performed in London at the Royal Opera House, and Greenland was revived in 2018 in the Philadelphia Fringe in an ENAensemble production. He is the Music Director of ENAensemble and Temple Composers Orchestra and served as President of the Temple graduate employee labor union TUGSA. 

With a background in physics, Evan’s compositions often use science as source material, collaborating with physicists on Heat Death and Turbulence. Since becoming involved in labor organizing, some of his music has taken a more political turn. Cosmos 3 – Or – A Succession of Fascist Clowns and the mock-tone poem Collective Bargaining each are based on his experiences in labor organizing. His recent orchestral works include FS and the flute concerto Blue, written in collaboration with flutist Chelsea Meynig. As co-founder and Music Director of the contemporary music theater group ENAensemble, his recent projects have included the 2019 Serial Opera Project (where ENA premiered six new chamber opera ‘episodes’), a fully-staged production of Pierrot Lunaire, and a serialized musical. As Music Director of the Temple Composers’ Orchestra, a sinfonietta which only premieres new works, he has developed and conducted the premiere of over a dozen new works.

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