CHLOE KNIBBS
Chloe Knibbs is a composer and sound artist motivated by lyricism, vulnerability and often works with text. Informed by feminism and interdisciplinary approaches, her work encompasses opera, theatre, choral and chamber works, installations and song-writing. Her music has been described as “quietly effective with every note made to count” and as having “an anguished tender quality” (The Telegraph). Performed in and out of the concert hall, Chloe’s work has been in venues including Birmingham New Street Station, October Gallery, MeWe360 and the International Anthony Burgess Centre. She is currently undertaking a Midlands4Cities PhD at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, using music theatre composition to explore the legacy of historical women composers.
KÁMEA NÉMETH
Kámea Németh was born in Budapest and moved to the UK at the age of one. Currently a student of composition at Royal Northern College of Music, they aim to break the social constructs of 'traditional' classical music while still maintaining connections to certain conventions.
Recently Kámea has been experimenting with aleatoricism and graphic notation. With elements of whimsy and playfulness in their writing, they make bold political statements or produce wacky retellings of stories from their everyday life.
A singer as well as a composer, Kámea particularly loves to write for voice. Recent projects include a performance by Foden’s Band of their piece “Pest is Where the Noise is At”. Future plans include the premier performance of their new piece for mezzo soprano and orchestra in May 2024.
RYAN LATIMER
Ryan Latimer is a British composer whose music has been described as “anarchic and cartoonishly fun” (BBC R3), “deliciously playful” (Classical Music Magazine) and “irresistible in its tongue-in-cheek irreverence” (ISCM). His work has been performed internationally by leading ensembles including London Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, China National Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Brno Philharmonic and London Sinfonietta.
Ryan’s recent orchestral work Antiarkie, composed for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and subsequently featured during the ISCM World Music Days festival, in Beijing. In 2020, the work received its third performance by St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra at the prestigious Shostakovich Grand Hall.
In 2021, his debut album was released worldwide on NMC Recordings. “Allusive, sparkling and emphatically rhythmic” (The Guardian), it reached #2 in the UK Official Charts and received 5 stars from BBC Music Magazine. Other recent works, including Bellwether, Mills Mess and Gorilla and Orange Sun, have also been released by NMC, Ablaze and Birmingham Record Company.
He is a regular collaborator with the contemporary dance group, Cohan Collective, and has worked closely with choreographers Jacqueline Bulnes, Dane Hurstand Jade Brider. In 2014, Ryan composed and co-directed his first chamber opera, Three Tall Tales of Dr Monsieur Façade. This interdisciplinary work, composed for ensemble, singers, actors and mimes, was developed in collaboration with dramaturges and performers from Warszawskie Centrum Pantomimy in Poland.
LIZ DILNOT JOHNSON
Composer Liz Dilnot Johnson’s music has been performed all over the world, ranging from exquisite solo miniatures to multifacted pieces for multiple performers. Recent large-scale works include the Ivors Composer Award-winning When A Child Is A Witness - Requiem for Refugees, and the orchestral cantata I Stand At the Door setting words by Greta Thunberg and Kurt Masur. Liz has composed a wealth of chamber music and songs and is currently working on new songs for Suzie and the Pace Collective including Rhinoceros and I Should Have Been Sea. Recent album releases include In the Mirror for cello and piano, The Space Between Heaven and Earth for basset horn and piano and Inflorescence for saxophone and piano. Gentle Flame, Liz’s new CD of choral and vocal works, comes out in June 2024 performed by Suzie and the sublime voices of Ex Cathedra on the Métier label.
MICHAEL WOLTERS
Michael Wolters has maintained an outsider position in the world of contemporary music with works which deconstruct and question the traditional concert situation or which are designed for performance outside the concert hall. He has written music for traditional ensembles (including six commissions for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group) and prefers to challenge conventional set-ups and concert rituals. This has resulted in pieces with unusual instrumentations (like his twelve-minute-long opera The Voyage, produced with theatre company Stan's Cafe for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad written for mezzo-soprano, eleven recorders and double bass), performances in unusual places (wahnsinnig wichtig on ice took place on and around an ice rink) or projects of unusual duration (his Spring Symphony: The Joy of Life is the shortest symphony in the world and lasts around 17 seconds while the performance of Wir sehen uns morgen wieder lasted for a month). He strongly believes that the idea of a work is the single most important element in the creation of an art work. It informs the concept and drives all artistic decisions. One of the major influences on his music was the work of American performance artist Laurie Anderson in the 1980s. He especially admires Anderson's ability to use multiple artistic genres to create highly effective and moving performance situations, where – in her postmodern way – she tells stories while highlighting the fact that she is telling stories.
Michael Wolters was born in 1971 in Mönchengladbach, Germany and grew up in Niederkrüchten, a small German village on the Dutch border. After working as a care worker in a children's home and a runner at several theatres in Germany and with Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough he studied Applied Theatre Studies at Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany and Composition at the University of Huddersfield (BA, MA) and the University of Birmingham (PhD). His teachers include Christopher Fox, Heiner Goebbels, Patric Standford and Vic Hoyland.
His works have been performed at the Birmingham Symphony Hall, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the ISCM World Music Days, Spitalfields Festival, the Barbican Centre, Royal Festival Hall, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Tate Liverpool and various other concert halls, festivals, supermarkets, art galleries, shoe shops, theatres, banks, opera houses, in cafes, on beaches, on ice rinks, in cinemas, on the radio, on TV; in the UK and all over the world.
He has released five albums with NMC/Birmingham Record Company:
Danserye
Kathryn and Peter play the recorder
Requiem (to let)
Catalogue d’Emojis
‘Aria Cuntata and the Low Miracles
Since 2009 he has been Deputy Head of Composition at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire where he runs the Masters in Experimental Performance.