Research Degree Programme

Lyndsay’s credits include: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Mayflower Theatre); Betwixt! (Trafalgar Studios); Venus and Adonis (Turner Sims Concert Hall); Nicholas Nickleby (Chichester Festival Theatre, Gielgud Theatre); Godspell (Hanger Farm Arts Centre); TheThreepenny Opera (BADA); Alice in Wonderland (Queen’s Theatre); You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (Network Theatre); Hello Again (George Cecil Wood Theatre); The Threepenny Opera (Nuffield Theatre); Jesus Christ Superstar (Bournemouth Rep); Liar (Nuffield Youth Theatre), and Much Ado About Nothing (National Theatre).

As well as her work as Head of Harp at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, and her recent appointment at Chethams School of Music in Manchester UK, Gabriella gives masterclasses and harp courses as well as orchestral courses in Italy, Spain, France, Sweden, Singapore, Tasmania and Australia. She has also been a jury member in competitions (BBC Young Musician of the Year [strings final]; F.Godefroid International Harp Competition in Belgium, Arpaplus in Spain and North London Competition, etc).

Furthermore, she is actively involved in community music projects, ranging from babies of a few months old to elderly people, hospitals and special needs schools.  Her wide experience of teaching all ages and all backgrounds reflects her commitment to music-making at the highest international level, not only in the solo scene but also chamber music and orchestral, and community work and cross-collaborations. Gabriella and choreographer Susan Sentler work together with dancers and harpists to promote new explorations between movement, sounds and shapes.

Gabriella has earned considerable recognition and has been supported by the Swiss fund ‘Junge Kunstler’. She is also the winner of numerous prizes, awards and scholarships, including the 1989 Victor Salvi Competition, Italy, and the Junge Kunstler prize, Switzerland.

In 2017 she received her Senior Fellowship in Higher Education, and the following year a Professorship.

‘Hearing Your Genes Evolve’ for string quartet featuring in a Filmtank Production, ‘The Dark Gene’ was nominated for a Berlinale Film Festival Documentary Prize. Other awards include the Chester Schirmer Fulbright Fellowship, UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers Award for my orchestral work ‘Empire States’, a Leverhulme Fellowship, a Sir Winston Churchill Fellowship, a Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, a PRS Women Make Music Award for ‘Reflected Glory’, a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and a PRS Composers’ Award in 2020. Her music has been recorded by Crash Ensemble and for a new film about genetics available on ‘constellations.world’

Her orchestral work was recorded for the lyric fm label ‘Irish Composers Series’ and her chamber music CD, ‘Island People’ was recorded for NMC. Richard Whitehouse in Gramophone wrote “the chamber domain seems ideally suited to her often inward and intimate manner of expression…it traverses a wide emotional range …a release that is cordially recommended to Gribbin admirers and newcomers alike.”

Bruno is a frequent host of the Ronnie Scott’s Late Late show, and has performed in venues and festivals including Southbank Centre, the Shanghai World Music Festival, the London Jazz Festival, Malta International Arts Festival, the Rest Is Noise Festival, Cadogan Hall, and the Royal Albert Hall. He has had his music played on BBC Radio 3, Jazz LineUp, Late Junction, BBC6 Music, BBC Scotland, in Austria, Canada, and the USA, as well as giving live broadcasts and interviews for the BBC and Rai 3 Italy.

He was taught by the late John Taylor and Pete Saberton, and has just been awarded an AHRC-funded practice-based PhD from the Royal Northern College of Music with the title ‘Counterpoint in jazz piano with specific relation to the solo work of Fred Hersch‘. As part of his research, he received funding to travel to New York City to interview and work with Hersch in 2016.

As a composer, Bruno has written for groups ranging from sextet to two pianos and percussion (for a project with Pete Saberton), and from big band to classical string ensemble (for a commission in 2017 from the Camerata Alma Viva). In 2009, Bruno was nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Composers Award.

He recently held the piano chair for two performances of Bernstein’s Wonderful Town at the Barbican Centre with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

Bruno has a longstanding musical partnership with the outstanding Palestinian singer, composer and broadcaster Reem Kelani.

His next album, New Memories (2002), was hailed as “the most expansive, expressive and exciting new jazz orchestral sound to have emerged in this country since the late-lamented Loose Tubes” by John Fordham in The Guardian.

“An exuberant and remarkable talent, Koller’s music is full of surprises.” – Ian Carr – Rough Guide to Jazz, 3rd edition (2004).

Over the next decade Koller worked on refining his sound, writing for Steve Lacy (London Ear ), working in large group contexts with Evan Parker, and with Kenny Wheeler and Bob Brookmeyer, performing and recording with the NDR Bigband (Scenic Routes ), as well as playing piano in various groups led by Mike Gibbs (including a tour of England in 2007 alongside Steve Swallow, Bill Frisell and Adam Nussbaum).

Subsequently, Koller produced a number of significant outputs of his own music including performances with Phil Woods and the BBC Big Band, a project with Dave Liebman, writing for the WDR Big Band with Gerard Presencer, a project with the HR Big Band, and, in 2009, an album with Bill Frisell and Evan Parker (Cry, Want ).  Koller had by then begun to focus on valve trombone, inspired by a 2006 study/stay at Bob Brookmeyer’s house, and started a fruitful small band partnership with drummer Jeff Williams, and bassist/trumpet player Percy Pursglove.  He recorded quartet albums for Babel (Chasing the Unicorn), with Paris-based Canadian saxophonist François Théberge, for Evan Parker’s PSI label with the legendary German saxophonist Gerd Dudek (Day and Night), and in 2011 started forming a formidable creative partnership with NYC altoist John O’Gallagher.  On their first meeting, Koller and O’Gallagher were memorably described by John Fordham in The Guardian as “two heavyweight theoreticians fizzing with jazz heat”, and the pair went on to work regularly, producing two BBC Radio 3 broadcasts, performances and recordings in both large ensemble and quartet contexts, and collaborating in a 2015 commission from Jazzlines to write for the renowned BCMG (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group).

Koller’s most ambitious work, his 2016 triple vinyl release Retrospection (on Stoney Lane Records), brought together over 30 of the world’s leading jazz musicians, including Steve Swallow, Jakob Bro, and the NDR Bigband.

Growing up in rural Bavaria, Koller first came into contact with jazz musicians in his teens while attending jazz summer schools run by Brian Abraham’s District Six in Ingolstadt.  In 1991 he came to England, first to Middlesex University where he majored in composition, then at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) where he obtained a masters degree in Ethnomusicology.

Creative Practice: 

Over the last 20 years Koller has created a substantial body of over 80 original compositions, recorded in fourteen critically acclaimed albums.  His works have been performed, interpreted and/or documented in collaboration with many of the leading lights of contemporary jazz such Bill Frisell, and Steve Swallow, with the pioneers of the early Avant-garde such as Steve Lacy, Alexander von Schlippenbach and Evan Parker, and with the genre-defining, ground-breaking composers/improvisers Bob Brookmeyer, and Kenny Wheeler.  

Chris Parker described Koller as “simply one of the UK’s most individual voices, both as a composer and pianist”. His début big band album New Memories from 2002 was hailed by John Fordham in the Guardian as “the most expansive, expressive and exciting new jazz orchestral sound to have emerged in this country since the late-lamented Loose Tubes” and his 2011 record with Bill Frisell was named an “instant classic” by John Eyles, giving it five stars. His recent triple vinyl release received five stars in Jazz Journal, as well as from Mike Gates (UK Vibe) who described the recordings as “an incredible achievement [which] have to be rated as one of the most important and musically rewarding releases of 2016.” Matt Miller, writing in New York City Jazz Record, described him as “an artist steeped in tradition but with a distinct voice of his own”, while Dave Gelly, writing in the Observer, went as far as saying that “like his piano playing, Koller’s writing for large ensemble is difficult to describe because it doesn’t sound remotely like anyone else’s.” Michael Tucker noted that his “approach to the interplay of the historical and the contemporary is as open-minded as it is creative”. Ian Carr, in his entry on Koller in the Rough Guide to Jazz (4th edition), remarked: “Koller is an exuberant talent, his music full of surprises”. And John Fordham, who has written on his work regularly since the early 2000s commented in 2016: “Koller solves the perpetual jazz conundrum of making music for the mind and the body […] with an intelligence and vivacity that brings him ever closer to the stature of George Russell, Gil Evans, Mike Gibbs, and that long procession of his famous elders”. 

Conceptually, the body of work that Koller has created is important through the way in which it challenges prevailing, orthodox ideas about innovation and tradition in jazz. He has always looked at the history of jazz as a history of continuous renewal and re-invention. His rapport and collaborations with Steve Lacy (saxophonist with Thelonious Monk in 1960), with Dave Liebman (saxophonist with Miles Davis 1970-74), and with Bob Brookmeyer (trombonist with Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan 1954-1957) has helped positioning his works in the context of jazz history, yet he has always viewed tradition and innovation as two sides of the same coin, in much the same way as he approach composition and improvisation as essentially complementary. The development of jazz language is, in his mind, an on-going process, occurring cumulatively, i.e. innovations build on one another without the need to eschew previously valid ideas. Koller considers jazz as an attitude to music making, rather than a circumscribed style. In addition, intrinsic to jazz language is the idea of cross-genre. From its local beginnings to its global present jazz is essentially a musical fusion.  He continues to be inspired from within but at the same time he regards crucial work with musicians from outside jazz, and also to adopt and adapt methodologies, concepts, ideas and traditions from outside jazz – to illuminate the inside…    

Amir is the Director of MA  and composition lecturer,  at the University of Sheffield.

He has worked with eminent musicians; such as David Alberman (Principal-London Symphony Orchestra), Grammy-nominated pianist Vicki Ray (LA Phil), Clark Rundell (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic ), Gregory Rose, Peter Manning (Royal Opera House), Christopher Rountree (LA Phil), harpist Sioned Williams (BBC Symphony Orchestra), violinist Darragh Morgan, Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick (CalArts), Anne LeBaron (CalArts), The Finzi Quartet, and the poet Ahmad Shamlou.

The composer of Oscar winner movie “The Silent Child’, was fortunate to be part of this diverse international team who presented and performed the work for the parliament members in 2018. Theresa May congratulated the impact the film has had in Parliament as well as the education minister considering a GCSE in British Sign Language for the first time ever. Not only has the film achieved huge critical acclaim but it has also changed the life of one very special young girl. In recognition of the outstanding artistic contributions of the team, the team had the honour to meet her majesty the Queen. The film has played in over 100 film festivals world wide as well as airing on prime time television on BBC One.

Amir secured commissions from London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC World Service, BBC News, British Museum, Royal Air Force Museum, CalArts, Ether Festival and others; his works have been performed at prestigious venues worldwide such as  London’s South Bank, at the Ether Festival, Sound unbound, Ashleywood Festival, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of music, California institute of the arts,  Royal Northern College of music, and on television broadcasts and commercial CDs.

In 2019  his imaginative work for Soveida Harp, Kraken piano, and Kraken Cello received high critical acclaim along with LSO musicians at LSO St Luke’s hall- London.

He has been awarded a full scholarship and gained his Ph.D. at the Royal Northern College of Music. His research relates to Performance Art, theatre, and Performativity. He was also nominated for two Gold medals in composition and he was a composition lecturer at CalArts (US).

He has designed two new instruments for a British movie “Matriarchy” and an epic series in 2021. His Soveida harp’s sound was first unveiled to the public in 2019, at a concert alongside the capital’s renowned orchestra, to critical acclaim. and he will reveal new pieces with this instrument at the 14th World Harp congress 2022 .

In the last 20 years Charles Linehan Company has been regularly featured in Dance Umbrella Festival, London.

He is the Founder and Director of London International Screen Dance Festival, a Panel Member for Screendance International, Detroit; and will be a curator for the inaugural Brighton International Screen Dance Festival in Autumn 2022.

Charles’ recent dance film The Shadow Drone Project has been shown at Festivals around the world including San Francisco International Dance Festival, Dance on the Camera, New York; Mexico City Video Dance Festival and Dance Umbrella Festival, London.

He received a Winning Film award for The Shadow Drone Project from POOL: INTERNATIONALES TanzFilmFestival BERLIN in 2019.

Charles Linehan’s new film The Sound Mirrors will be released in Autumn 2022.

Ji Liu has worked with orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Beijing’s NCPA Orchestra, Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, etc. He gave the world premieres of Ludovico Einaudi’s Piano Concerto Domino with RLPO and Boris Bergmann’s The Richter Scale and China premieres of Philip Glass’s Complete Piano Etudes and Frederic Rzewski’s People United Will Never Be Defeated! Variations.  

As a published composer, Ji Liu has written for orchestras, chamber ensembles and solo instruments. His 18-hour Sonata Fantasy was certified as “The Longest Ever Released Instrumental Work” by the Guinness World Record. His discography encompasses repertoires from the Baroque period to the 21st century.  

His research has been presented at institutions such as the University of Oxford, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the Orpheus Institute and the University of California.  

Ji Liu studied Piano Performance with Professor Christopher Elton and Composition with Professor Ruth Byrchmore at the Royal Academy of Music. He holds a PhD in Music (supervised by Professor Daniel Leech-Wilkinson) from King’s College London and received the Forrest Creative and Performance Leadership Fellowship. Shanghai FM94.7 appointed him the Inaugural Music Ambassador. Since 2018, Ji Liu has served as the Head of Performance at the Kent International Piano Course and is a visiting professor at Shenzhen University. 

Michelle’s research focuses on music and memory in Britain from the nineteenth century to today, with special attention to trauma, gender and print culture. Currently she is completing a monograph titled Music, Healing, and Memory in the English Country House, 1914-1919 (Oxford University Press), and her edited collection A Great Divide? Music, Britain and the First World War is forthcoming with Routledge. She is also working on a project on the soundscapes of maternity, including an article titled ‘Contractions, Calls, and Cries during COVID: The Traumatic Soundscapes of Lockdown UK Hospital Maternity Wards’ for a special issue of Women and Music, which she is co-editing. Her previous work has been published in The Journal of the Royal Musical Association, The Journal of Musicological Research, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and various edited collections, on topics from shell shock, trauma theory and mourning to motherhood; women’s magazines, travel writing, diaries and music collections; and opera.

In addition to Fulbright, her research has been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Association of University Women, Music and Letters Trust, English Speaking Union, and Presser Foundation. In 2014, she was a fellow at the National Endowment for the Humanities research institute, “World War I and the Arts: Sound, Vision, Psyche.”

She has been involved in organising international conferences, including ‘Music, Sound and Trauma: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ (virtual, Indiana University, 2021); North American British Music Studies Association (Utah State University, 2018); ‘A “Great Divide” or a Longer Nineteenth Century? Music, Britain, and the First World War’ and ‘Conflict, Healing, and the Arts in the Long Nineteenth Century’ (both at Durham University in 2017). She has presented her work at and organised panels for conferences throughout Europe and North America, including annual meetings of the Royal Musical Association and the American Musicological Society.

Michelle is also the editor for NABMSA Reviews and serves on Fulbright reading and interview panels. She holds a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

Qualifications/ Educational Background

• Doctor of Music (Composition) Ohio State University 1972
• MMus (Music Theory & Harmony) Florida State University, 1967
• BM (piano) Florida State University, with Honors, 1965

Post-graduate work:

• Stanford University, California 1983
• Computer Music, IRCAM, Paris 1981
• Fulbright Fellowship to work at the Experimental Music Studio, Polish Radio 1972-1974
• Electronic Music, Dartmouth College (USA), 1972
• Certificate in Conducting, Mozarteum, Austria, 1966

Teaching Experience

• Instructor – Butler University, Indianapolis, 1967-69
• Teaching Assistant – Ohio State University 1969-71
• Guest Professor, Royal College of Music, 1988 – 89
• Guest Professor, University of Texas-Austin, 1992, 1995, 2000
• Guest Professor, University of New Zealand, 1997
• Composer in Residence at Trinity College of Music in 2003 -04
• Joined the Trinity composition staff in the autumn of 2004
• Professor, Royal Academy of Music, 2007-09
• Numerous workshops, seminars, new music projects, residencies world wide since 1974.

Creative Outputs

Important commissions have included the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Festival Hall, International Computer Association, National Portrait Gallery, The Royal Ballet, BBC Proms (Royal Albert Hall), TransAtlantic Arts Consortium, The Bath Festival, ISCM Festival, Cheltenham Festival, Belgian Radio, Warsaw Autumn and Stavanger Speculum Festival (Norway).

CDs of Montague’s works are available on NMC (UK), ASV, Continuum, Op 111, Signum and numerous other labels.

He has published over 50 articles in magazines and journal, and contributed 18 articles to The New Groves Dictionaries of Music.

His music is published by United Music Publishers, UK.

External Appointments

New Music Associate- Kettle’s Yard Art Gallery and Museum, University of Cambridge, 2010-2012 where he runs a monthly concert series.

Awards

International Piano Magazine Award: “Best New Music Piano Recording” (2006) for his CD Southern Lament (NMC)

British Composer Award Finalist, 2004

Fellowship of Leeds College of Music (FLeedsCM), 2004

Honorary Fellow- Trinity College of Music (Hon FTCL), 2001

Year of the Artist Award, 2000, UK

Distinguished Alumnus Award Ohio State University, 2000

Distinction in Computer Music, 1996 Ars ElectronicaPrix, Linz, Austria

Ernst von Dohnanyi Award for Musical Excellence, 1995

First Prize, 1994 Bourges International Competition for Electroacoustic Music, France

Winner, The London Dance and Performance Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Music, 1988

Fulbright Fellow, Warsaw, 1972-1974

Dario studied classical guitar at the Royal Conservatoire in the Netherlands, where he obtained his Master of Music degree. He then continued his performance studies at the Royal Northern College of Music, where he also conducted MPhil research into composer-performer collaboration. In 2008 he received his doctorate from the University of Manchester, where he researched competing editorial principles, mainly drawing on literary studies, and assessed their applicability to the editing of music for guitar by non-guitarist composers.

Currently, Dario is active in two fields of research. First, he researches music and cultural identity in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, with a focus on the social impact of Aryanization of the arts. Second, he is engaged in research into the creative use of technology to widen access and participation in Higher Education performing arts programmes. He has published in both fields of research and is a regular speaker at conferences in the United Kingdom and abroad.

In addition to his roles at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Dario is a Lecturer in Academic Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music, where he teaches performance studies, practical pedagogy, research electives and artist development, and an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, where he teaches a range of arts and humanities modules. He has held prior teaching posts at the University of Manchester, Department of Music, and the University of Warwick, Centre for Lifelong Learning.