BEYOND 88
The Arc Project is back, with our first project of 2021!
Featuring 4 new piano works written for 3 players on one grand piano.
With this project, we are aiming to celebrate the vast compositional capabilities of the piano. The pieces written for this project should not confine players to just the keyboard, rather allowing for the exploration and combination of all of the different techniques available on the piano (some of which are demonstrated in the piano works of Cowell, Cage, Lachemann and Schnebel).
WATCH THE CONCERT
The concert premiered on YouTube. Watch it back here!
ANGELA SLATER
Composer
Angela Elizabeth Slater is a UK-based composer, Illuminate Women’s Music Director, and Associate Composition Lecturer at Cardiff University. She has an interest in musically mapping different aspects of the natural world into the fabric of her music.
Recent significant achievements include being selected to become a 2020-21 Tanglewood Composition Fellow, a Britten-Pears Young Artist through which Angela worked with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Michael Gandolfi, developing Soaring in Stasis which received its premiere at 2018 Aldeburgh Festival. In 2019 she received the Mendelssohn scholarship award allowing her to further her studies at New England Conservatory with Chair of Composition Michael Gandolfi. Angela was the New England Philharmonic’s 2018 call for scores winner resulting in the world-premiere of Roil in Stillness in April 2019. In 2021 she is writing two new works for Royal Scottish Orchestra and writing a series of six new solo works through the Connected skies project funded by Arts Council England.
ANTON LINDSTRÖM
Composer
Anton Lindström (b.1999) is a composer from Göteborg, Sweden (where he also studied composition), currently living in Copenhagen. Apart from being a composer, Anton also performs music in a variety of contexts, with a primary focus on electronic instruments and synthesizers. Musical interests include contrasts, gestures, the human voice and the vernacular. In his musical spare time you'll ideally find him on a porch playing bluegrass.
AARON HUNT
Composer
Originally from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, composer and music theorist Aaron Hunt now resides in Boston, Massachusetts. His works have been performed throughout the United States and Eastern Europe. Aaron has written works for VolOpera, The University of Tennessee Graduate String Quartet, The Dolce String Quartet, Samvel Perikhanian, The Tennessee Tech Percussion Ensemble, and various university ensembles at Tennessee Tech University and The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Recently, he served as the composition fellow for the 2021 Sewanee Summer Music Festival, as well as being a featured artist for Appalachia: A Southeastern Wind Symphony. Aaron holds a BM in Performance with an emphasis in Music Composition from Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee, and an MM in Music Composition and a certificate in Music Theory Pedagogy from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His new piece “Liminal” will be Aaron’s first work performed in England.
RALPH LEWIS
Composer
Ralph Lewis is a composer whose works seek meeting points between sonorous music and arresting noise, alternative tunings and timbre, and the roles of performer and audience. His music and research has been presented at festivals and conferences including SEAMUS, College Music Society, Boston Microtonal Society, the International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR), Thirsty Ears Festival, SCI National Conference, Electronic Music Midwest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and the Music for People and Thingamajigs Festival. He recently graduated with a DMA in composition from the University of Illinois, having written his dissertation about Aaron Cassidy’s Second String Quartet, with the on-site research funded by one of ten nationally-awarded Phi Kappa Phi Graduate Research Grants. Since 2016, Lewis has led All Score Urbana, a community engagement music composition workshop program that offers free events open to residents and facilitates opportunities for them to collaborate with local performers. Previous to his time studying in Illinois, he received an M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media and an M.A. in Music Composition from Mills College, a B.M. in Music Composition from Oberlin Conservatory, and a B.A. in Classical Civilization from Oberlin College.
KATE LEDGER
Performer
Kate is a pianist, collaborator and educator specialising in experimental music. She is currently carrying out a WRoCAH funded PhD at the University of York, exploring the line between compositional aesthetics and effective piano technique. Notable performances include: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; Frome Festival; The Society for Electroacoustic Music in Sweden; the PERFORMA conference in Portugal; and Loius Andriessen’s acceptance of the Johan Wagenaar Prize. She gave the world premiere of Steven Takesugi’s Sideshow with Distractfold ensemble, for which they won the Kranichstein Music Prize for Interpretation at the 47th International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt.
CAMERON MCARTHUR
Performer
Cameron is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from the North-East of England. His work focuses upon perception, implication, and expectation, with a particular focus on new ways of influencing the sense of momentum in a piece of music.
Most recently, his work has involved the integration of approaches from contemporary jazz into the contemporary classical idiom, as well as the intermixing of conventional notation and computer-coded music. He is currently studying for a PhD in Composition at the University of York with Thomas Simaku.
Beyond composition, Cameron is an active performer of contemporary and jazz music, as well as an educator, bandleader, and occasional conductor.
MARIANNA CORTESI
Performer
Marianna Cortesi is an Italian pianist and she is currently undertaking a PhD in Music Education at the University of York. Marianna studied piano performance in Italy at the Conservatorio G.B. Martini in Bologna, gaining a First-Class Honours degree, and took part in performance masterclasses with well-known musicians such as Daniel Rivera, a world-renowned pianist. In the last five years, Marianna has performed in solo recitals, chamber music groups and as piano accompanist at the University of York for several undergraduate recitals. In 2020 she soloed Mozart’s Piano Concerto K503 with the University of York Chamber Orchestra.
Beyond performance, Marianna teaches piano in Yorkshire on a regular basis both in one-
to-one lessons and group settings and prepares students to undertake piano exams across several exam boards.
YEDA SHUM
Performer
Yeda Shum is a pianist and music educator from Hong Kong. After receiving a Bachelor in Music Education (double-majoring in Contemporary Music and Performance pedagogy) at The Education University of Hong Kong, she got a MA in Music at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is now studying another MA in Piano Studies at the University of York. Yeda had experience in performance in different festivals, such as, Hong Kong Schools Music Festival, Hong Kong – Asia Piano Open Competition. She was the champion at the Da Vinci Shenzhen-HK Piano Open Competition in 2011.
She had given concerts in Hong Kong on piano duet and six hands and accompanied different vocalists, instrumentalists and choirs. As a music educator, Yeda has been working in music academies and schools teaching the piano, flute and music classes.
KIERAN CROWLEY
Performer
Kieran Crowley (b. 2000) is a pianist, organist, percussionist and composer born in South East London, studying BA Music at the University of York. As a pianist and organist, he specialises in works of the 20th century idiom, focusing on composers such as Messiaen, Ligeti and Xenakis. He is also heavily involved with new music, having sat on the committee for and performed and conducted with the Chimera Ensemble.
He is also an experienced Jazz musician, having studied drums on the jazz course for 1 year at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in the City of London under the instruction of Ralph Salmims and James Maddren.
As a composer, he is most interested in the intricacies and sonorities of contemporary microtonal harmonic practices, and is particularly fascinated by the works of living composers, most notably Catherine Lamb.