British-Czech Composer | Britten Pears Young Artist 2022-23 | London Philharmonic Orchestra Young Composer 2022-23 | Royal Philharmonic Society Composer 2023

Michael Small is an English-born composer.

Michael’s new commission For Years Now for the London Sinfonietta was recently premiered and conducted by Geoff Paterson. You can watch the performance via his website. He received this commission as the result of winning the 2020 Royal Over Seas League Composition Award, of which he is the inaugural winner.

Michael is hugely enjoying his new post as Associate Conductor of the Wirral Symphony Orchestra, where he recently co-conducted their summer concert, Song and Dance. The repertoire included the Barber Adagio for Strings, Copland’s Hoe Down, Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, and the very successful and warmly received premiere of Dulce et Decorum Est by Isabelle Ryder. 

Recent composing projects include a short new solo oboe work called ritual for Olivier Stanckiewicz, a solo Fortepiano work for Michael Pecak, and is currently writing a set of three solo viola pieces collectively entitled Writers for Georgina Rossi to be premiered in 2023.

Michael has also been the recipient of commissions from the Royal Philharmonic Society, Ensemble 10/10, and his works are regularly performed by international caliber musicians such as Emmy and Grammy winner Gloria Cheng, and BBC Music Magazine laureate Fenella Humphreys. He was tutored at RNCM by David Horne, and at Cornell by Steven Stucky.

James Albany Hoyle is a composer based in London.  His music has been performed and commissioned by groups such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Park Lane Group, Britten Sinfonia, and Psappha. James is currently a participant on the 2024 Royal Philharmonic Society Composers Programme, and was a participant in the London Symphony Orchestra 2017 Panufnik Composers Scheme, gaining a commission for the LSO's 2019/20 season.  

James has recently completed his doctoral research at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, investigating time and temporality through musical composition.  He previously studied at the Royal Academy of Music, Purcell School of Music, King’s College London, and Dartington International Summer School, where his teachers and mentors have included Julian Anderson, Edmund Finnis, Matthew Kaner, and Colin Matthews.  He currently teaches composition and musicianship at the Royal College of Music Junior Department and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Finnish-American composer, PhD student at King’s College London. RCM and BU CFA graduate.  
2021 Ivors Composer Award nominee, Rostrum 2021 participant, 2020 Sinfonia Lahti Nursery Garden Initiative, LSO Panufnik Scheme participant 2018-2019, 2019 Tanglewood Music Center Composition Fellow.  Managed by Blom Music Management.  Published by Fennica Gehrman.

new album "Delicious" released on 16 May. New Amsterdam records.

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).

Chris McCormack (b. 1992) is an Irish composer and producer, currently based in London. His work has been performed by, among others - Crash Ensemble, Plus Minus Ensemble, Liam Byrne, EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, Dr. John Feeley, Ensemble Adesso and the Dublin Laptop Orchestra. He holds a Masters degree in Composition (Distinction) from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he studied with Dr. Richard Baker, on scholarships from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust and the Guildhall School Trust. In 2014, he graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, specialising in Composition under Dr. Donnacha Dennehy and Dr. Evangelia Rigaki. Chris also studied Classical Guitar and Composition at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, with Marion Hyland and Dr. Kevin O'Connell, and Jazz Improvisation at the Dublin Institute of Technology with guitarist and composer Mike Nielsen.

An active producer since 2010, he has produced records for bands, classical ensembles, recorded music for television broadcast and for film, and created electronic music for diffusion across a variety of media. His current compositional work frequently explores the interaction of electronics and live sound, and the influence of electronic sound on acoustic music.

Edward Nesbit and Thomas Hodgson, a composer and an ethnomusicologist respectively, are colleagues in the Music Department at King’s College London. Along with countertenor Michael Wood, they initiated a musical collaboration soon after the lockdown began. Called 'Aenigmata', the project draws upon Latin riddles by St Aldhelm to create a commentary on the new, uncertain world that we all live in.

For more information contact: nesbithodgson@gmail.com

Michael Small (b.1988) is following