Music made of many influences, exploring the meeting points between cultures and disciplines.

musician, improviser, composer, radio presenter - instruments: soundtable, sax, bass clarinet, piano, clarinet

Heiner Metzger

Heiner Metzger lives and works in Hamburg.
He is involved since the early eighties in improvisation and experimental music, where he plays soundtable, saxophon, clarinet, synthesizer and piano with ensembles and once only groupings. At that time he co-founded the groups: vis, tyrrn, Timeta and worked with dancers and visual artists. Later he joined the TonArt-Ensemble, a group of hamburg improvisers where he explored the graphical notation as chance of an open composition for about ten musicians. At 2005 he created the soundtable, an instrument with whom he zooms in on the sounds of objects and the table, sometimes amplified by piezo pick-ups. He performs the soundtable in duo with Birgit Ulher (tp) and the Stark Bewölkt Quartett with Gregory Büttner, Michael Maierhof, Birgit Ulher and collaborated with musicians invited to the h7-club: Ofer Bymel, John Butcher, Simon Camatta, Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga, Gene Coleman, Julia Eckhardt, John Hughes, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Tim Hodgkinson, Bonny Jones, Christian Kesten, Goh Lee Kwang, Sebastian Lexer,Lugiano Maggiore, Ulrich Phillipps, Ernesto Rodrigues, Keith Rowe, Lars Scherzberg, Wolfgang Schliemann, Christoph Schiller, Damon Smith, Olivier Toulemonde, Jonas Kocher, Nate Wooley, Seymour Wright... a.o.

CD:
blurred cages, Goh Lee Kwang: stereo dj-mixer, Heiner Metzger: soundtable, objects | records 2010-05-10 bandcamp
blinzeln, Birgit Ulher, Heiner Metzger | © 2008 Creative Sources Rec. CD 155
Murmúrios, TonArt Ensemble & Ernesto Rodrigues | © 2010 Creative Sources Rec. CS 170
Beside his musical work he organises concertseries: Stark Bewölkt, h7-club, is activ in the Verband for contemporary Music - Hamburg
and moderates the monthly radio transmission klingding at the local radio station FSK.
With Judith Haman he creates installations, performances, radioshows and organised/curated the artist run spaces Blinzelbar and Frappant(ended 2009).

My primary aim as a composer is to bring improvisation into the foreground of contemporary art music.

Stage and Screen Composer, Musical Director and Songwriter, Maria Alfonsine’s focus is always: "It's all about the story”. She provides an intriguing place for her audience to escape across genres such as jazz, orchestral, folk-pop, musical theatre and experimental contemporary styles. When not working with traditional instruments, she uses her voice and body to create organic soundscapes full of observations. By turns playful and reflective, she finds inspiration in everyday life, the inequalities of the world and the force of nature, and through her art she wishes to communicate awareness, insight and courage. Maria is co-composer (with Caitlin Yeo) and musical director for acclaimed ABC drama series Wakefield (2021) created by Kristen Dunphy, directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse and Kim Mordaunt. She is Unit Coordinator, course creator and teacher for 3rd year Bachelor of Music students (Composition for Creative Industries) at Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Other recent work includes composer and songwriter for upcoming Australian feature film Akoni (2021), co-composer for award-winning short film Goodbye Home (2020), composer and sound designer for Hilary Bell’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (2019, Riverside Theatre) and Molière’s The Hypochondriac (2018, Darlinghurst Theatre Company) with Phillip Johnston, and orchestrator for the George Ellis Orchestra and Metropolis Touring. Trained in Sweden at Ingesund's Music School and Wendelsberg's Theatre School, Maria then obtained a Bachelor of Music in Composition and Music Production from the Australian Institute of Music followed by a First Class Honours in Composition from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She is a three-times recipient of the Best Composer Award from the Sydney Film School. Since the age of 16, Maria has written songs and performed them singing with a jazz quartet under the name Alfonsine. Together with her partner and fellow composer Damian de Boos-Smith, Maria runs the newly founded MADBS Composing Palace in Sydney where they compose, record and produce scores and songs for stage, screen and commercial release.

The ability to think and feel is what makes us humans differ from other species on earth. This is also what Cecilia Damström (b.1988) tries to achieve with her compositions; to make people think and feel.

Born into a multicultural family in Helsinki, languages and the possibility of combining languages, have always appealed to her while composing. With a background as a classical pianist and with theatre as an interest, also harmony, direction, a sense of drama, and expressivity are always present in her music.

Since graduating in 2014 she has constantly been working on commissions for various ensembles and festivals. Her compositions have received several national and international composition prizes 2009-2018. Her fairytale opera “Dumma Kungen” won the award for  “Children opera of the year” in 2018. Her works for orchestra have been performed by Jyväskylä Sinfonia (2016 & 2018), Gävle Symphony Orchestra (2018), Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra (2018) and Avanti! (2011) as well as at festivals such as Young Nordic Music Days in Aarhus (2016) and Tampering (2014, 2015 and 2017). Since 2019 she is signed with one of the biggest music publishers in the Nordic countries, Gehrmans Musikförlag.

Damström’s broad catalogue of compositions includes chamber music, choral works, orchestral works as well as two chamber operas. Her music has been performed in Canada, Germany, England, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and the Czech Republic. Her music is regularly performed in Finland at different concerts as well as at festivals such as Tampere Biennale (2010, 2012 and 2014), RUSK Chamber Music Festival (composer in residence 2017), Helsinki Winds (2017), Summer Sounds in Sysmä (2015), Summer Sounds in Porvoo (2011), Tampering Festival (2014, 2015 and 2017), VocalEspoo (2014 and 2016) and also at the Kokonainen Festival, where she is composer in residence (2016-2019). Her music has been radio broadcast in Sweden and Germany and is regularly broadcast in Finland.

This season’s 2023-2024 highlights include the world premiere of Extinctions commissioned by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the world premiere of the accordion concerto Permafrost with soloist Sonja Vertainen and the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra , as well as ten performances in Germany of her string quartet Letters by the Elaia Quartet.

Damström studied composition with Doctor Hannu Pohjannoro at Tampere University of Applied Sciences and graduated in 2014. Currently she is finishing her master studies in composition at Malmö Academy of Music for Professor Luca Francesconi. She has also gathered much inspiration by travelling to master classes around Europe.

Damström is working full time with commissions for musicians, ensembles and orchestras. The Finnish Cultural Foundation, The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland and Alfred Kordelin Foundation have supported her artistic work.

Hi I'm Alice, I compose music, conduct, arrange, and make videos about creativity, French, and life in France.

Simone Maurer is an Australian flutist, music researcher, movement analyst (in training), and educator.
http://www.simonemaurermusic.com

All we see and all we seem is but a dream within a dream.

Charles MacInnes is following