Artists
František Chaloupka composes mainly instrumental music and scores for classical instruments, chamber and symphony orchestras, opera and multimedia works. After finishing his studies of composition at the Janáček conservatory in Ostrava, he went on to study a degree in Composition at Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno where he finished his PhD in composition. He was studying composition at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with Louis Andriessen, Clarence Barlow, Martijn Padding and Richard Ayres. In 2012 he studied composition at Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien and California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. His pieces were commissioned and performed by internationally renowned ensembles e.g. Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern & Péter Eötvös, New Century Players Los Angeles, Aleph Gitarrenquartett, IEMA International Ensemble Modern Academy, Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, ONO Orchestra, Ostravská banda, Trio Accanto, Oxbridge Singers, Prague Modern, BERG Orchestra, Prague Singers Choir, South Bohemian Philharmonic, Hradec Králové Philharmonic, VENI Academy, Ballet of National Theatre Brno, Solaris3 among others. Festivals and venues such as Musica Viva Munich, Musikprotokoll Graz, Czech Centre in New York, Wien Modern, Ostrava Days of New Music, Prague Spring, Gaudeamus Muziekweek Utrecht, Autumn Chamber Music Days Riga, Contempuls Prague, NODO New Opera Days Of Ostrava, Autumn Introspection Prague and many others. He worked with conductors Peter Eotwös, Lucas Vis, Anu Tali, Jakub Hrůša, Petr Kotík, Jiří Rožeň, Jurij Galatěnko, Marko Ivanovič, Pavel Šnajdr and others. He worked also with Michal Pavlíček, Iva Bittová, David Koller, organist Kateřina KATTA Chroboková and other various artists. In May 2011, he was invited to Frankfurt for a workshop with Ensemble Modern (Frank Zappa, Heiner Goebbles, etc.) and conductor-composer Peter Eötvös. Within the project “Myths-Nation-Identities” he composed a piece called Mašín Gun (Seven Rituals for purging the Czech Lands from the Spirit of Communism) premiered by Ensemble Modern and Peter Eötvös at Musica Viva festival in Munich in 2012. The concert was recorded and broadcasted live at Munich Broadcasting. In April 2011, he founded Dunami Ensemble and performed his opera-installation Eve and Lilith at NODO festival New Opera Days of Ostrava 2012. Ensemble consists of recognized Czech jazz, classical and experimental music players, composers and improvisers. In 2016, Dunami Ensemble performed another opera-installation composed by Chaloupka called Chata v Jezerní kotlině at festival MusicOlomouc. In 2022 ,Dunami Ensemble performed his techno-optimistic flash-mob opera “Bachelor Party” for four saxophones and two sopranos. He participated in international courses for composers and percussionists in Trstěnice 2004 and 2005 and was given scholarship for both international festival Ostrava Days of New Music 2005 and 2007. In 2007 and 2009, the festival premiered his orchestral pieces An Ancient Calligraphy and Smooth The Heavens both performed by Janáček Philharmonic and conducted by Petr Kotík. His composition Allegory of the Cave II nominated by Czech Radio has succeeded at the 70th edition of the International show Rostrum of Composers 2024 and was ranked among the nine most outstanding in its category works recommended for world broadcasts and concert performances. […] Read more…
As a second generation Taiwanese-Chinese American (born 1976) living in Berlin, Audrey Chen’s work has long dealt with and continues to explore the displacement of story and history due to the migration and integration processes, loss and adoption of language, untold stories, and how the past can be accessed and traced through inherited and lived experience. Her practice is deeply intertwined with this act of invocation, calling upon the physical body to remember beyond the limitations of its own memory, beyond its lifetime into generations past, simultaneously echoing into the present and forwards. Through extreme and unprocessed hyperextensions of her voice, she invokes a highly amplified joint resonant body/space transforming itself in a feedback loop of imagination, touch, vibration, sound and aural sensation. Aside from her solo concerts, Chen performs currently, since 2005, in duo with Phil Minton; BEAM SPLITTER with Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø; MOPCUT with Lukas Koenig and Julien Desprez; in duo with electronic music artist Kaffe Matthews; and as a duo for voice/live digital process with Mexican sound artist Hugo Esquinca. Some album releases include, “By the Stream” with Phil Minton – Subrosa (BE), “Hiss & Viscera” with Richard Scott – Sound Anatomy (Berlin), “Rough Tongue”, BEAM SPLITTER’S debut LP – Corvo Records (Berlin) and latest “Split Jaw” on Tripticks Tapes (US), her solo album “Runt Vigor” – Karl Records (Berlin) and two records with MOPCUT, “Accelerated Frames of Reference” – Trost (AT) and “Jitter”, a split release on Opal Tapes (UK) and Ventil Records (AT). Chen has performed across Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Canada and the USA. Past festivals include: Festival Beyond Innocence (Osaka, JP), Maerzmusik (Berlin, DE), Klangspuren (Schwaz, AT), NUMA Circuit (Tenerife, ES), Sound of Stockholm (Stockholm, SE), Jazz Saalfelden (Saalfelden, AT), Plateaux Festival (Torun, PL), Color Out of Space (Brighton, UK), Music Unlimited (Wels, AT), 2PI (Hangzhou, CN), Jazz à Luz (Luz-Saint-Saveur, FR), Festival Muzzix (Lille, FR), La Voix est Libre (Toulouse/Paris, FR), Total Meeting (Tours, FR), Now Now (Sydney, AU), Uncool (Poschiavo, CH), the Next Festival (Bratislava, SK), Colour Out of Space (Brighton, UK), Donau Festival (Krems, AT), Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville/FIMAV (CA), Festival Ecuatoriano de Música Contemporánea (Quito,Ecuador), Elevate (Graz, AT), Ear We Are (Biel, CH), Meteo (Mulhouse, FR), Angelica (Bologna, IT), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna, AT) and Wien Modern (Vienna, AT). And venues such as: Covent Garden (London, UK), Radialsystem (Berlin, DE), Zacheta National Gallery (Warsaw, PL), Musée du quai Branly (Paris, FR), Radio France (Paris, FR), Théâtre Bouffes du Nord (Paris, FR), Auditorio de Tenerife (Tenerife, ES), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires, AR), Bimhuis (Amsterdam, NL), Rote Fabrik (Zurich, CH), Teatro Fondamenta Nuove (Venice, IT), DOM (Moscow, RU), Wiener Konzerthaus (Vienna, AT), Opéra de Lille (Lille, FR) and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center (Water Mill, NY, US). “Singing with Audrey is like working with all the possible noises of the universe and beyond, earthquakes, colliding galaxies and slugs sliding down a wet window, very quiet.”  – Phil Minton, Minton at 80, The Wire Magazine December 2020 […] Read more…
Born in 1978 Beirut Lebanon, Tony Elieh is a self taught musician, composer and photographer. He is one of the pioneers of rock and experimental music in Lebanon, founding member of the first post-rock group of post-war Lebanon, Scrambled Eggs, one of Beirut’s most prolific and talented rock bands of the early 2000’s, and remained with the group from its beginnings until its demise in 2015. He has recorded many acclaimed albums, and composed music for several movies including an award winning movie soundtrack. At the same time, he has started developing his own sound, expanding his approach to electric bass performance, allowing him to shift from punk rock and pop rock to improvisation, jazz and experimental music. Nowadays a member of the improvising groups Karkhana, Calamita, and Wormholes Electric, Elieh is part of the Lebanese experimental music scene where he has collaborated with Lebanese musicians such as Sharif Sehnaoui, Mazen Kerbaj, Raed Yassin, Charbel Haber, Tarek Atoui, Jad Atoui, Fadi Tabbal, Youmna Saba, Cynthia Zaven, Rabih Mroue, Jerusalem in My Heart a.o. International collaborations include Tony Buck, Saadet Türköz, Roger Turner, JD Zazie, Chris Corsano, The EX, Elliott Sharp, Magda Mayas, Jean Francois Pauvros, Hassan Khan, Mike Cooper, Michael Zerang, Jean Marc Montera, Sam Shalabi, Kayyam El Lami, Julian Santorios a.o. Elieh has performed solo and with his own projects at renowned international festivals and venues such as the Berlinale, Ruhrtriennale, Berlin Biennale, Frankfurter Buchmesse, DAAD Mikromusik Festival Berlin, Konfrontationen, Austria, Klangspuren Festival, Austria, Le Guess Who?, Cannes Film Festival, Printemps de la Danse Arabe, Paris, Guggenheim Museum, New York, Roskilde Festival a.o. His interdisciplinary projects are numerous. He has composed and performed music for cine-concerts, as a homage to classic renowned silent movies with live improvised music. He has also composed and performed live music for different plays and dance performances which have toured internationally. On January 2021, Elieh received the Weltoffenes Berlin, a one year residency supported by Akademie Der Künste. […] Read more…
With a wealth of experience in the Belgian experimental music scene, the French alto saxophonist, who lives in Brussels, has been devoting her energies to experimental music and improvisation for years, constantly questioning the language of the instrument, the phrase and the sound event. Following her motto “From phrase to sound event through all kinds of atoms and particles”, Audrey Lauro demonstrates a carefully considered use of sound vocabulary. For more than fifteen years, she has been performing in various venues and festivals in Belgium and internationally, and collaborates with the Antwerp-based innovative production platform/ensemble for multidisciplinary music projects ChampdAction. Her discography includes more than fifteen releases since 2008, in 2022 she recorded a solo album “Sous un ciel d’écailles” on the Gent label El Negocito Records, retracing a work for saxophone solo she started in 2011. A second solo album “prose métallique” will be released in autumn 2024 on the Relative Pitch Records label. She has recorded three albums in the last decade with the long-standing trio Lauroshilau, which also includes Pak Yan Lau and Yuko Oshima. She is also a member of the saxophone ensemble La Nuée and forms the duo Dark Ballads with guitarist Giotis Damianidis. She recently joined the Canopée Improvisation Music Ensemble (C-IME), an all-female, 8-piece improvisation ensemble formed out of a desire to experiment with the confluence of timbres, emptiness and fullness that silence brings. As an alto saxophonist, Audrey Lauro focuses on free improvised music and is also involved in multidisciplinary music projects. On 23 May 2024, she was invited by the Canadian ensemble GGRIL to create her piece “Ritournelle Reverse”. Since 2007, she has been conducting music workshops with teenagers and children and regularly works in secondary schools. […] Read more…
Clara Saleiro is a flutist specialized in the interpretation of contemporary music who loves the constant new experiences and challenges that music brings to her life. She’s interested in the creative process of pieces and performances, the possible interactions between interpreter and composer and between music and other artistic areas, the symbiosis with electronic music and digital technology, and the interpretation of notated music as well as improvisation. As the founding member of Noviga Projekto (AT) as well as flutist of the ensembles Vertixe Sonora (ES), Barcelona Modern (ES) and SUPERNOVA (PT), she debutes every year dozens of pieces from composers with whom she works directly and participates at several international music festivals. Clara Saleiro is regularly invited to collaborate with different ensembles, orchestras and in different chamber formations, ranging from classical to contemporary repertoire, as well as with exploratory and improvised music groups. She is the flutist of the Pedro Melo Alves’ Omniae Large Ensemble (PT). Clara began to play the flute when she was eight years old at Academia de Música S. Pio X de Vila do Conde, in her hometown in Portugal. Throughout her musical career she studied at renowned institutions of Portugal such as Artave, ANSO-Metropolitana and Universidade de Aveiro. Additionally, she completed a master’s degree at Royal Academy of Music in London, specialized in contemporary music at the flute studio of Stephanie Wagner (Remix Ensemble), completed postgraduate studies in contemporary music at Kunstuniversität Graz (Austria), with the Klangforum Wien, and was part at the Lucerne Festival Academy (Switzerland), being a member of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra. Furthermore, she studied improvisation at the Interferência’ courses. […] Read more…