Theme: None

Collaborations, inventions, the arts, innovation

Aldeburgh Music
Hoffmann Building
Snape Maltings Concert Hall
Snape, IP17 1SP
United Kingdom

Peter Gregson

Born in Edinburgh in 1987, Peter Gregson is a cellist, composer and pioneer of contemporary music. He has performed widely in the UK and the US, at venues ranging from The Royal Albert Hall, London to The Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh; from the Twitter Offices in San Francisco to Le Poisson Rouge, New York. Peter’s innovative approach to integrating cutting edge technology and contemporary music has led to collaborations with Tod Machover, Microsoft Labs and many other developers, artists and composers, and invitations to speak and perform at technology and media conferences around the world. His work has been recognised with the 2008 Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award for music and with membership to the Courvoisier Future 500. Peter is a Made-By ambassador and also the 2010/11 Creative in Residence at The Hospital Club, London, where he curates his year-long series, alt_classical. He is currently working on his second original album with a release planned for early 2011.

Vincent Walsh

Professor Vincent Walsh is a cognitive neuroscientist who has worked extensively with artists and public engagement projects and has taken a special interest in music since 2001 when he organised a McDonnell Pew Music and Brain Symposium in Oxford. Since then he has been scientific advisor to the Southbank on the presentation of Messiaen's synaesthesia, Scientist in Residence at the Royal Academy of Music, where he organised the first joint meeting of The Royal Society and The Royal Academy of Music on Creativity and the Brain, and chair of the Medicine and Music symposium at the Royal College of Medicine. He also engages with public projects in the media and his work has featured on Radio 4 (Science Now), BBC1 (The One Show) and print media (eg. featured in New Scientist). As a scientist he has worked broadly on perception and awareness and has published 225 scientific papers on vision, awareness, time perception, music, synaesthesia and technical aspects of brain stimulation. He has supervised 25 PhD students and held grants from the Wellcome Trust, The MRC, The BBSRC, The Royal Society (University Research Fellow 1998-2008), The Leverhulme Trust and the EU. He serves widely on scientific society committees, especially where public interest is at stake: BBSRC Biosciences Panel member; Royal Society Animals in Research Committee member; MRC Neuroscience and Mental Health Board member.

Akala

New album DoubleThink. It's a shock to the system - a sonic kick to the groin delivered with force and precision by someone trained in music's equivalent of deadly martial arts. It's not often that an album comes along that shares debts to Radiohead, Aphex Twin and Depeche Mode as strongly as to Public Enemy, the Wu-Tang Clan and Rakim, but the 26-year-old rapper, label-owner, and educator Kingslee Daley has made it his life's work to challenge preconceptions and buck prevailing trends; and he isn't the sort to allow himself to be fitted into any kind of mould. Breaking down the culture of cliché and stereotype that smothers the genre he loves is a major part of the mission he's taken on, and gives impetus to this third album of pointed, perceptive hip hop music from the convention-defying emcee.

Jennifer Stumm

Violist Jennifer Stumm has forged a unique musical path as a dynamic advocate for her instrument. Hailed by the Washington Post for the "opal-like beauty" of her playing, she brings the viola into the spotlight with innovative programming and irrepressible enthusiasm. Jennifer recently made solo debuts at the Kennedy Center, Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the Ravinia Festival, Chicago, as well as appearing at the Wigmore Hall, the Concergebouw, Amsterdam and at the BBC Proms. Upcoming she releases her first disc for Naxos of rarely heard 18th century virtuoso works by Alessandro Rolla. Jennifer is the winner of three major international competitions: Concert Artists Guild, where she was the first violist in the 60 year history of the competition to unanimously take first prize, the William Primrose competition, and the International Competition of Geneva.

Nitin Sawhney

Sawhney’s output as a musician is astonishing. He has scored for and performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras, and collaborated with and written for the likes of Paul McCartney, Sting, The London Symphony Orchestra, A.R. Rahman, Brian Eno, Sinead O’Connor, Anoushka Shankar, Jeff Beck, Shakira, Will Young, Taio Cruz, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Ellie Goulding, Cirque Du Soleil, Akram Khan, Mira Nair, Nelson Mandela and John Hurt. Performing extensively around the world, he has achieved an international reputation across every possible creative medium. Often appearing as Artist in Residence, curator or Musical Director at international festivals, Sawhney works tirelessly for musical education, acting as patron of the British Government’s Access-to-music programme and the East London Film festival and acting as a judge for The Ivor Novello Awards, BAFTA, BIFA and the PRS foundation. He is a recipient of 4 honorary doctorates from British universities, is a fellow of LIPA and the Southbank University, an Associate of Sadler’s Wells, sits on the board for London’s Somerset House and Whitechapel Gallery and in 2007 turned down an OBE for ethical reasons.

Kathy Hinde

Kathy Hinde’s interdisciplinary approach combines different art forms frequently through collaborations with other practitioners, partnerships with scientists, and input from the audience. She has created video and sound for theatre and live art performances alongside creating installations and site specific work. She has shown work across Europe, Scandinavia, China, Pakistan, Colombia and Brazil. Kathy has created interactive visual environments that are responsive to live situations and her video work frequently moves away from the screen. Her musical interests embrace various strategies of improvisation, generative systems, and unconventional notation alongside exploring the use of technology and automata in live performance. Previous collaborators are many and include: musicians Joanna MacGregor, Joby Burgess, Maja Ratkje, Hild Sofie Tafjord, Sabine Vogel, and Andrea Neumann; audio-visual artist i am the mighty jungulator; sound artists Daniel Skoglund and Tom Bugs; dancer/choreographers Lotta Melin, Subathra Subramaniam and Jin Xing; composers Stephen Montague, Gabriel Prokofiev, Graham Fitkin, Max De Wardener and most recently collaborated with composer Will Gregory of the duo Goldfrapp by creating visuals for Gregory’s new Opera “Piccard in Space”. She is part of the N.I.P. collective, Polar Produce and affiliated to the Merlin Theatre, Frome, UK.

Modified Toy Orchestra

In 2010 Modified Toy Orchestra release there 2nd album “Plastic Planet” 5 years in the making Plastic Planet continues the philosophy began with there debut album “Toygopop” of performing everything live with a collection of repurposed children’s toys.., converting abandoned playthings into exotic new musical instruments, and then exploring the latent potential and surplus value inherent in these liberated circuits. Guided by this hidden world they seek to make a form of music devoid of personal narrative or autobiography, instead they ask bigger questions about our relationship with “the next new gadget” the desire for the constant upgrade, and the possibilities for problem solutions hidden from our gaze by perceptual habit. The result of this on going investigation has been called cinematic, dark, joyful and life affirming. It is rare to hear an electronic live performance that has no midi, no sampling, no synthesizers, no laptops, in fact no conventional instruments of any kind.