Online – February 2021

Age Veeroos graduated from the University of Tartu in German philology in 1998 and obtained a master degree in composition with Helena Tulve and Eino Tamberg at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (EAMT) in the year 2006. She studied at the Karlsruhe Higher Music School with prof. Wolfgang Rihm 2005/2006. Age is estimated to obtain her PhD in- 2020/2021 from the EAMT (“ Sul ponticello as part of sound processes in music with bowed string instruments. Examples of works by Grisey and Saunders”).

Age Veeroos works as a freelance composer and teacher of composition and electroacoustic music. She attended several international courses for composers, including Salvatore Sciarrino’s master class in Rome (2004), IRCAM Summer Course in Paris (2004) and Centre Acanthes Summer Course in Metz, France (2005). Her works have been performed by Ensembles Hashtag, Aleph, Sepia, Arditti String Quartet, NYYD Ensemble, Ansambel U:, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, Curious Chamber Players, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, soloists from Estonia and abroad.

Psalmodia was commissioned by the University of Tübingen for its 525th anniversary celebrated in 2002. In 2005, as a commission of “Kulturjahr der Zehn”, project that introduced new European Union countries, Prelude to Franz Schubert’s song “Die Nebensonnen” was premiered in Berlin Philharmonic Hall by Leipziger Sinfonietta. In the same year, she participated in five composers’ opera project “As time goes by” of  Staatsoper Hannover series “Zeitoper”. Short opera “Tuleloitsija” (“Fire Enchanter”) was staged in Tallinn in 2008 and 2009 by musicians of EAMT.In 2010, Veeroos with 6-member team won the main prize at the competition of music theatre project Operare 2010, organised by Berlin Contemporary Opera, for the project GRID, premiered in 2011 in Berlin Kulturbrauerei.

As for recent activity – “Külmking”/”Chills” for kannel, harp & harpsichord (premiered 2019) was performed by Ensemble Una Corda in Helsinki, Musiikkitalo (2020), as a commission of festival Estonian Music Days & ISCM World Music Days Tallinn 2019, “Schattenseele” for violin and electronics was premiered by There Are No More Four Seasons (Sweden) – George Kentros (violin), Mattias Petersson (electronics) in Tallinn. “Imaginäre Sonate op. 53”, the part of ‘250 piano pieces for Beethoven’ has been performed by Susanne Kessel in Bonn etc. through 2020. “Ma olen suur kuu su
silmapiiril” (“I am the big moon on your horizon”) for percussion instruments, was performed by Heigo Rosin (Solo Percussionist) September, 11 2020 Tubin Hall, Tartu Chamber Music Festival. Currently, a composition for bass flute and electronics is in process.

Davor Branimir Vincze earned a degree in composing in Graz and Stuttgart and afterwards completed a one-year program for electronic composition at IRCAM in Paris. His pieces were performed by many renown ensembles, such as Klangforum Wien, JACK Quartet, Neue Vocalsolisten, Ictus, Talea, Ensemble Modern, ensemble recherché, Ensemble InterContemporain, Slovenian Philharmonic Contrabass Quartet and many others at festivals such as Darmstadt, Impuls, Présences, MATA, Manifeste, MBZ etc.

He won numerous awards and fellowships, including the Alain Louvier Prize (Boulogne-Billancourt Contemporary Music Composition Competition) and the ‘pre-art’ competition for young composers in Switzerland.

Apart from pieces for chamber ensembles, ensembles and electronic orchestras, he also created installations and works he personally performs. At the moment, he is studying composition at Stanford University under Brian Ferneyhough and conducting under Paul Phillips. He is preparing a new piece for No Borders Orchestra that will be performed during their summer tour and recorded under the prestigious Universal Music label.

Katharina Roth, born in 1990, started composition in 2003 when she met Tilo Medek. She studied composition with Dieter Mack and piano with Jacques Ammon at the University of Music in Lübeck, with Daniel D’Adamo in Reims (France) and with Carola Bauckholt in Linz.

Masterclasses with Kaija Saariaho, Rebecca Saunders, Johannes Schöllhorn and Samuel Adler, among others were very important for her musical development. One of her main interests in music is working with voices. So in 2015/16 she went to India and studied the ancient North Indian Vocal music, called Dhrupad, with Gundecha Brothers. Katharina has had ollaborations with L’Instant Donné, IEMA, hand werk, orkest de ereprijs, Schlagquartett Köln, Reflexion k and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart.

Awards include the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Competition, Karlsruhe Composition Prize, Aribert Reimann Scholarship, working scholarship of the Künstlerhaus Otte 1 Eckernförde, art sponsorship of the city of Linz and recently a working scholarship from the Federal Chancellery of Vienna.

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard (b. 1979) considers his work to be a basic research in realities. Working within the domains of imaginary & physical sound as well as other non-sonic media, NLL seeks to stimulate new ways of approaching reality. This can be heard in his work with sonic potentiality and music for the inner ear – an imaginary kind of music only hearable for the inner ear of the listener, or in the SOUND X SOUND series where he works with multiplication of sound as a method of investigating music instruments.

Since 2012 Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard has experimented with creating music that lets the instruments transcend their inherent sonic norms and reappear in another form. In the SOUND X SOUND series (2013-2017) he explores this by way of multiplication which resulted in a series of works multiplying one instrument a number of times: One piece is written for 9 pianos, another for 18 clarinets, 10 hi-hats and so on.

In recent years Løkkegaard explores multiplication of sound even further in pieces such as Triangular Mass for multiple triangles (2017), Birdsongs – for multiple parabolic microphones (2019), SONAR (2017) – for multiple vibraslaps, Harmonia -for multiple harmonicas (2017), Quartet pour Sigurd Raschér – for 4 alto saxophones (2019).

The work of NLL has been presented at a variety of different venues and museums such as MoMA (NY – as a part of the René Magritte exhibition The Mystery of the Ordinary, 2013), Imaginary West Indies (Overgaden Copenhagen, 2017),  G((o))ng Tomorrow Festival (Copenhagen 2016, 2018), Nordic Music Days (Norway, 2019), Akusmata (SF, 2020).

NLL is associate professor at RMC in Copenhagen, and has given lectures at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), The Royal Danish Academy of Music, Artistic Research Forum (N), Goldsmiths University of London a.o.p. NLL has been awarded with several prizes a.o. from the Danish Art Foundation and the Sonning Foundation.

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard was educated from the RMC in Copenhagen and the School of Architecture at The Royal Danish Academy of Art.

‘On behalf of my beliefs, I am a passenger in a current time and space, open to appearing thoughts, creating ideas, collecting pieces for artistic work, which is quivering minds.’ Since her beginning, Petra has been following her path of searching for new sounds and she has never been barred by the traditional way of how we think about sound and music. While attending her study of Composition and Music Theory with U. Rojko at the Academy of Music in University Ljubljana, Petra attended festivals and seminars across Europe, where she gained new knowledge and opened her views and philosophies. She finished Master Composition with M. Padding and P. Adriaansz at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.

Petra’s piece Prana, for symphony orchestra, won the 66. Rostrum music competition prize, which was held in Argentina in 2019. In residency with the ensemble Modelo62, Petra is creating the project DisOrders – several artworks combining music and performance art to raise the question of how we deal with mental health.

His main recent achievements: “Solid Traces” (2015) installation – a sculpture that materializes the space “between the dancers” of Cie Trisha Brown, «SIMPLEXITY», creation for 5 dancers and 5 musicians of the Intercontemporain Ensemble, created in May 2016 on the occasion of the Kunsten-Festival-des-Arts (Belgium) and opened the Manifeste festival in Beaubourg (Paris). “Dream Catcher” sound installation – participatory, opened the Charleroi Danses biennial 2017 and ended his involvement as co-artist director of this institution (2005 -2017), “TIMELESSNESS” for the 8 performers of “Percussions de Strasbourg” – creation in September 2019 during the MUSICA festival – around this piece, a show-concert dedicated to the work of Th.De Mey was developed including original creations and pieces from his repertoire. “EXILS” for “TROBAR”, early music ensemble created in Chaillol and Grenoble festivals in September 2019; around these creations, an evening was organized in an encounter with medieval works – Ars Subtilior dealing with the subject of exile from the point of view of women. Since September 2017, Thierry De Mey has been acting as an associate composer for the composition course at IRCAM (Paris).