Aled Start (b. 1988)

Runner-up, Ty Cerdd Young Composer of Wales 2014
Finalist 2012 Daryl Runswick Prize. 
Overall Winner, 2010 Young Composer of Dyfed
Winner, 2009 Trinity College of Music String Quartet Composition Competition 
Age group category winner, 2009 Young Composer of Dyfed

Works have been performed by the Alba Brass Quintet, O Duo, Vardanyan String Quartet, Lunar Saxophone Quartet, Trinity College Early Music Ensemble, Meridian String Quartet, John Richards’ Dirty Electronics Ensemble, The Orion Orchestra, Contemporary Music Group (CMG) at Trinity and several other chamber ensembles.
Aled graduated from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in 2012. He studied / took seminars with Donnacha Dennehy, Lynne Plowman, Paul Barker, Graham Fitkin, Mark Lockheart, Edward Jessen, Heiner Goebbels, Tristan Murail, George Fenton, Michael Finnissy, Christian Wolff and Dominic Murcott. His tutors were Stephen Montague, Errollyn Wallen, Deirdre Gribbin and Gwyn Pritchard.

His past interests were dominated with opera and setting texts to compositions, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Work Without Hope which received several performances in London, to Leeds poet Julian Turner’s Mynydd Hyddgen for Leeds Lieder Festival 2009.

Starting in 2009, Aled organised several concerts and was bandleader, organiser and composer for The Raw Stories Collective (www.therawstories.co.uk); a new music group blurring scored and improvised compositional techniques comprising 10 musicians including acclaimed violinist Satoko Fukuda, avante garde pianist Pat Thomas and counter tenor Gordon Waterson. The libretto is supplied by American poet Daniel Moore. 

His current interests are pared-down ensemble sizes and working with singers, percussion and string timbres.

Aled has keen and broad interests including travel, philosophy and cycling. He is fluent in English, Welsh and Arabic.


Dr. Nick Virzi (b. 1991) is a composer from New York City whose work includes acoustic, electronic, and electroacoustic music, as well as intermedia pieces and multichannel installations. His recent pieces explore the relationships between humans and the natural world, numerology and rhythmic structure, and ethnography and identity. His practice includes field recording in nature preserves, orchestration of rhythmic frameworks based on complex numerical systems, and ethnographic research focused on collecting and adapting archival media as an exploration of his identity as an Italian-American. In addition to composing, he is an electric guitarist, conductor, photographer, researcher, and educator. He also hosts the international composer interview series Composer OverTime.

Nick’s music has been performed throughout the USA and internationally by leading artists such as cellist Séverine Ballon (France), soprano Tony Arnold, the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, the JACK Quartet, the Spektral Quartet, Splinter Reeds, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Ensemble Liminar (Mexico), Distractfold (United Kingdom), the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, the TAK Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Wild Up. His work has been featured at such venues as the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center, the Center for New Music in San Francisco, and the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark. His recent projects include “Convergent Boundaries” for Percussion Trio and Electronics, an electroacoustic piece featuring field recordings from Kopački Rit Nature Park in Croatia, Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, and Mt. Etna in Sicily, Italy. This piece was commissioned by the Novalis Music and Art Festival and premiered by Line Upon Line Percussion in October 2022.

Virzi has been a featured composer at international festivals such as Gaudeamus Muziekweek (The Netherlands), the Impuls Academy (Austria), and Festival Ecos Urbanos (Mexico). He has been awarded fellowships by the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival (NYC), the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy), the soundSCAPE Composition and Performance Exchange (Italy), and the New Music for Strings Festival (Denmark). He has won festival competitions including the Black Bayou Composition Award, 2nd Prize at the New Music on the Bayou Festival in Louisiana. He has held residencies at the Academy of Arts and Culture and Kopački Rit Nature Preserve in Osijek, Croatia, the Sagehen Experimental Forest and Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve in the UC Reserve System, and the Poto Festival in Grass Valley, California. He has presented his music and given lectures at universities such as UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Missouri (Mizzou). He has presented his research in music theory and analysis at conferences hosted by the American Beethoven Society, the California Interdisciplinary Consortium of Italian Studies (CICIS), and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). He has presented his research in acoustic ecology at NYU’s Steinhardt School as part of the Precarious Sounds/Sounding Sanctuary Conference (NYC), The Catholic University of America at the Eleventh International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts and Responses (Washington, D.C.), and the Centro Cultural Vila Flor at the Ninth International Conference on the Constructed Environment (Guimarães, Portugal).

Dr. Virzi completed his D.M.A. in Music Composition at Stanford University, where he studied with Mark Applebaum and Brian Ferneyhough. He also completed his B.M. at the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Du Yun, Huang Ruo, Laura Kaminsky, and Suzanne Farrin. He recently completed the H&S Dean’s Fellowship at Stanford University, where he was a Lecturer in the Department of Music and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). His music is published by the American Composers Alliance (ACA) in New York City.

Freelance musician, songwriter, performer, currently based in Lafayette, LA. The music I post here is mostly intended as examples, approaching what could be done with a live band.  I love collaborating with other musicians and producers - if you'd like to work together, please contact me and let's make some music!  

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