Broken Superficiality (2024) for Ensemble and Fixed Media

Taking influence/inspiration from the 50-year continuation and negative effects of Neo-Liberalism that was first trialled in Chile in 1973, and then widely adopted by the UK and US under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (and the subsequent leaders), with a lot of other countries following suit. Moving increasingly towards a privatised, individualistic, and ultra-consumerist world with a lack of state-funded/public protected services/amenities, I find that gradually as a society we are losing ourselves, becoming broken and detached from community and instead are pursuing more superficial endeavours and objectives. Taking this into account, I have opted to use effects and timbres that were widely used in the 1970s and 80s as the core of the piece, pairing it with live instruments that sound ‘glitzy’ and techniques to that deviate/distort the instruments' pitch and timbre.

Performed by Ensemble Klang 
Performed at Cloud 9 in Tivoli Vredenburg, Utrecht as part of Gaudeamus Festival 2024
Recorded by Gaudeamus Festival
Mixed by Peter Bell

Image - 'Metropolis' by George Grosz (1917)


Broken Superficiality (2024)

Composer, pianist, & professor.
Omotesenke (表千家) tea ceremony's student

Emily Hazrati is a composer and educator based in London. Her music centres around environment, place and belonging; frequently informed by sounds and landscapes from the natural world, as well as ideas around breath, ritual, and circularity. She has a particular affinity to working with narrative and text, and is interested in collaborative, interdisciplinary ways of making art.

Emily is Oxford Song's Associate Composer for 2024-26, with premieres of her compositions at Oxford International Song Festival planned for 2025 and 2026. Current projects include writing for London Symphony Orchestra as one of their Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers 2024-25, a new work for The Marian Consort on the Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2025 Composers programme, and choral commissions for St Martin’s Voices and Vox Urbane. Emily has worked with ensembles and organisations including the BBC Singers, Royal Ballet and Opera, Ligeti Quartet, National Youth Choir and CHROMA ensemble, amongst many others. She has recently been developing her second chamber opera TIDE, commissioned by Britten Pears Arts, which received its first, sold-out performances at the Aldeburgh Festival 2022.

Emily’s music has received multiple broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, and performances in the UK, Canada, Germany, USA, Australia, and New Zealand. Her compositions have been released on NMC Recordings as part of their Young Composers 5 album, receiving critical acclaim from BBC Music Magazine. In 2024, she was awarded PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund for a new song project with Ella Taylor and Jocelyn Freeman, premiering in SongEasel’s 2024 ‘A Vast Obscurity’ series.

When not composing, Emily is Composition Tutor & Coordinator at Centre for Young Musicians (part of Guildhall Young Artists), and is a composer on Music in the Round’s WeCompose programme: an initiative bringing composition to KS3 and KS4 students across the country.

Thanakarn Schofield is a Thai composer based in New York. His work explores the fusion of sonic ritual and drama, seeking an amalgamation of multicultural influences, with particular emphasis on geographical sonic elements, historical connotations, and political contexts.

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Thanakarn’s compositions have been performed in more than 20 countries across Asia, Europe, and America. His works have been featured in several new music festivals, including Darmstadt New Music (Germany), 80th Composers Conference (USA), Fête de la Musique Berlin, ReMusik – St. Petersburg Contemporary Music Festival (Russia), Festival Dag in de Branding (Netherlands), Dutch Harp Festival (Netherlands), Simpósio Internacional de Música Nova (Brazil), OutHear New Music Week (Greece), Synesthesia Lab (Russia), Summer Sound Festival (Finland), CIEL Festival (France), HAAS Fest (Armenia), Sounding Tomorrow (Hong Kong), China-ASEAN Music Festival (China), IntAct Festival (Thailand), Thailand International Composition Festival (Thailand), 26th Young Composers Meeting (Netherlands), Dias de Música Electroacústica (Portugal), and the British Council’s “UK-Southeast Asia Connections Through Culture” (UK/Thailand).

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He also collaborated and worked with several established ensembles and orchestras, including Hezarfen Ensemble, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, Kluster 5, Ensemble Linea, Mivos Quartet, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Orkest de Ereprijs, Tacet(i) Ensemble, TAK Ensemble, Spaceship Ensemble, PinkNoise, False Relationships, New European Ensemble, Residentie Orkest, Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, Athens State Orchestra, and the Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music Youth Orchestra, among others.

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Thanakarn holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Royal Academy of Music in London and a Master’s degree in Composition from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. He is currently pursuing his doctoral studies in composition at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His major teachers include Jason Eckardt, Peter Adriaansz, Cornelis de Bondt, Mayke Nas, Silvia Borzelli, and Rubens Askenar. In 2022, he was awarded the Graduate Center Teaching Fellowship and currently teaches at the City College of New York.

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He is the recipient of national and international accolades, including the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Prize – Grand Prize of the Young Thai Artist Award (2017), the “St. Frank van der Wal Fonds” Prize from Orkest de Ereprijs (2020), a Fromm Foundation Composer Fellowship (2024), and awards from the Yokohama International Composition Call for Score (2016), the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble Call for Score (2021), and the Princess Galyani Vadhana Youth Orchestra Composition Competition (2021). He also received an Honorable Mention from the 10th Matan Givol International Composers Competition.

saxophonist | musician
demos, improvisations, sketches, some finished stuff

Cem Güven (b. 22.11.1997) is a composer of acoustic and electronic music, from Türkiye/Istanbul (The Juilliard School/Bachelor’s Degree, Royal Academy of Music/ Master’s Degree), who is currently pursuing his doctoral degree (DMA) with a fellowship at Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in New York. Cem is nominated for the Gaudeamus Award 2024 and he is also one of the finalists in MA/IN Award 2024. He is the recipient of awards in various composition competitions and organizations worldwide, such as the Petrichor International Music Competition Grand Prize, Royal Academy of Music Composition Postgraduate Prize, Leverhulme Trust Arts Scholarship, Alblaze Records Award, Academia Musica Vienna (2nd Prize) Franz Schubert Conservatorium in Wien (2nd Prize) and KLK New Music competitions such as “Musica Per Archi” (2nd prize) and “Orient-Occident” (3rd Prize). Güven’s music is performed by well-known ensembles such as Ensemble Musikfabrik, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Attacca Quartet, Riot Ensemble, Wet Ink, Coma Ensemble, Tbilisi State Opera Chamber Orchestra, KLK New Music Orchestra, Sydney Contemporary Orchestra, Loadbang Ensemble and New European Ensemble.

Patrick Ellis (b. 1994, UK) is a composer, performer and curator based in London. His music has been described as being "focused, intense and unrelenting" (Gaudeamus Jury, 2024), with much of his work utilising limited musical materials, small developments and juxtapositions.

He has worked with many acclaimed ensembles including Terra Invisus (UK), Ensemble Klang (NL), collective lovemusic (FR), XTRO Percussion (NL), the Residentie Orkest (NL), Kluster 5 (NL), Orkest de Ereprijs (NL), The Tantrum Saxophone Quartet (NL), The Spaceship Ensemble (NL), Kirkos (IE) and 315 Ensemble (US/UK), and has collaborated with soloists such as Kathryn Williams (flute), Huw Morgan (organ), Alfian Emir Adytia (cello), Dauphine Van der Velphen (saxophone), Chris Cresswell (electric guitar) and Carson Cooman (organ). 

Upcoming projects include a new multimedia work exploring burnout within the classical music industry for the ensemble Standard Issue, a new piece for electric guitar and fixed media for Chris Cresswell, as well as a long-form collaboration with the French-Canadian cellists Laurence Gaudreau and Audréanne Filion.

Patrick's music has been presented at numerous festivals and concert series across the European, North American, Asia and Australasia, including, Gaudeamus Festival (NL), Festival Dag in de Branding (NL), November Music (NL), Rainy Days Festival (LU), Mittelfest and Mittelyoung Festival (IT), De Link Tilburg (NL), Lilium SoundArt (IT), Sundays at The Hugh Lane Gallery (IE), AżTak Festival (PL), New Music Now NL's Dag van de Componist (NL), Click Fest (US), Sounding Here (NL), Kirkos Ensemble's Biosphere Festival (IE), Union Musicale (IT), Mainly Slow Organ Music (UK), Kammer Klang (UK), the Frequency Series Chicago (US), Ideas of Noise Festival (UK) and the Harmos Plural Festival (PT).

In 2024, Patrick was nominated for the Gaudeamus Award and in 2022, he was the Artist in Residence for the AMPA Fontys/De Link Residency programme in Tilburg, The Netherlands. He has also been a part of the Psappha Composing For Piano Scheme in 2019-20, the 25th Edition of Orkest de Erepijs’ Young Composers Meeting and Kathryn Williams' innovative Coming Up for Air Project.

His music has been broadcast on Dutch radio stations, including NPO Radio 4, NPO Klassiek, Concertzender,and Stranded FM, as well as on the US station WCNY, and has been featured on releases from Birmingham Record Company and Huddersfield Contemporary Records.

Patrick is also the artistic director of Open Union, an electric guitar and modular synth duo with composer-performer colleague Peter Bell. Described by the treasured composer Howard Skempton as being 'sometimes subtle and unstable; sometimes rich and dense', the duo aims to build up strong collaborative relationships to create new works. Their current collaborators are Christine Cornwell, Wilson Leywantono, May Chi, Paolo Griffin and Seán Clancy. The duo have performed across the UK at events such as Ealing Extranormal, AMOK, Don't Mind Control, Birmingham Modular Organisation and CODA Festival. In 2025, they co-hosted a portrait concert with saxophonist David Zucchi featuring music by Paolo Griffin at the Hundred Years Gallery; earlier in the year, they supported Passepartout Duo at Centrala Space, Birmingham as part of their UK Tour, and in 2023, undertook a mini tour of The Netherlands as part of the Sounding Here concert series, where they performed at Splendor in Amsterdam and Batavierhuis in Rotterdam.

Alongside composing and performing, Patrick is the creative director of PRXLUDES, an online contemporary music magazine, platform, and resource dedicated to the promotion of the work of emerging and early-career composers. Together, with the artistic director Zygmund de Somogyi and a team of contributors, they have written about over 125 composers, ensembles and music organisations from the UK and abroad. In 2025, they began hosting events, presenting Alex Groves' DANCE SUITE (performed by Zubin Kanga) as part of PRS Foundation New Music Biennial 2025.

He holds a Masters degree in composition from the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag (Royal Conservatoire of The Hague) and a Bachelor's degree from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. His principal tutors have included Martijn Padding, Guus Janssen, Andrew Hamilton, Seán Clancy, Ed Bennett, Howard Skempton and Michael Wolters.

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