Hollie Harding

Hollie Harding (b 1986) is a composer, producer and curator of contemporary music events in the UK and overseas. She is interested in looking at different ways of constructing musical performance scenarios and exploring the impact this has on compositional processes and the listening experience.

She has worked with Alwynne Pritchard, Sjøforsvarets Musikkorps (Norwegian Navy Band), Philharmonia Orchestra (RPS Composition Prize), London Symphony Orchestra (Jerwood Composer+), London Philharmonic Orchestra (Leverhulme Young Composer), CHROMA, Castallian String Quartet, Ensemble Via Nova (Weimar), DeciBells (Basel) and players from Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (Cohan Collective). Her work has featured on BBC Radio 3, Resonance FM and BBC Four and has been released by NMC Recordings. Teaching plays an important role in Hollie’s artistic life and she has been Associate Head of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama since 2020.

Emma-Kate Matthews

Emma-Kate Matthews is an architect, composer, musician, and digital artist. Her work explores the creative intersections between sonic and spatial practices through the production of site-specific and spatialised audiovisual projects. In addition to composing on the LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme, her work has been performed internationally at acoustically distinctive sites such as the Sagrada Familia, Southbank Centre, Barbican Centre, and Brighton Festival.

She has released solo electronic-classical works on labels including Algebra Records, NMC records and Musicity Global.  In addition to making music, she also designs and makes her own instruments which she calls ‘resonant bodies’. In 2022 she was nominated for the Lumen prize and the Aesthetica art prize and her work has been ‘highly commended’ in categories for the ‘Sound of the Year Awards’ for the past two years. She is currently working on a large-scale publication for Routledge, which is due for release in 2024, and she hosts an eclectic radio show on RTM.FM called Hunter Gatherer.

John Aulich

John Aulich is a composer and creative technologist from Manchester, England. His music has been performed internationally, by world renowned artists such as ELISION Ensemble and International Contemporary Ensemble. John’s music spans a number of broad themes, including atmosphere and the body, viscerality, ambiguity of meaning, sensuality and touch, and innovations in music notation. His work is characterised by evocative, highly-charged and volatile soundworlds stemming from the physicality of performance.

John earned his PhD at the University at Buffalo in New York in 2022. Since his return to the UK, he has taken part in LSO Soundhub, Impuls Festival in Graz and a variety of small collaborations. His solo percussion piece, six doors of the invisible, was shortlisted by Sound and Music for the British section of ISCM World Music Days 2023. Alongside his freelance work, John teaches part-time at the University of Edinburgh.

Euchar Gravina

Euchar Gravina is a composer and artistic director from Malta who is based in London. His works have been performed and recorded by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, Psappha and Christ Church Cathedral Choir, commissioned by Teatru Malta, Vache Baroque and the Old Hispanic Office, and programmed at international festivals such as Aldeburgh and the Valletta International Baroque Festival. Euchar was a Britten Pears Young Artists (2019 to 2021), Composer-in-Residence with the Glasshouse International Centre for Music’s Quay Voices and Young Sinfonia (2017 to 2018), and the recipient of the special jury prize at the APS National Composition Competition (2012). He read composition at the Royal Academy of Music.

Euchar is Artistic Director at St John’s Waterloo and Waterloo Festival. Alongside being the Director of The Daphne Festival, he has collaborated with creative human rights organisations such as Index on Censorship, and curated exhibitions and projects that bring the arts and social justice together.

Neil Percy

LSO Principal Percussion

Neil Percy is the longest serving Principal Percussion of the LSO and has been Head of Timpani and Percussion at the Royal Academy of Music since 2000. He has worked closely with many major artists and conductors and as a soloist with Sir Colin Davis, Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, François-Xavier Roth, Karl Jenkins, Ravi Shankar, Kent Nagano and Elgar Howarth. He has also worked closely with many composers for over 150 film scores – notably John Williams, James Horner, Patrick Doyle, Trevor Jones and Alexandre Desplat with their music for films such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, Braveheart, Notting Hill, Twilight: New Moon and Unbroken – and with major pop and jazz artists. He is the Zildjian cymbals artist in residence, a Yamaha drums and keyboards artist and an artist for Evans Drumheads and Freer Mallets.

Sam Walton

LSO Co-Principal Percussion

Sam joined the LSO as Co-Principal Percussion in 2012. He has performed with many UK orchestras including the London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, the London Sinfonietta and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. As a chamber musician, Sam is a member of the Colin Currie Group, the Colin Currie Quartet and the LSO Percussion Ensemble. He is also Principal Percussion for the John Wilson Orchestra. He has performed on various movie soundtracks including Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and plays in a variety of West End shows. He is percussion tutor for the European Union Youth Orchestra.

Laura Bradford

percussion

Laura Bradford is a freelance percussionist and timpanist based in London. Originally from East Yorkshire, Laura’s musical education started at the East Riding School’s Music Service. She later became a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music.

Since graduating in 2018, Laura has been incredibly fortunate to have had a varied and exciting career performing with orchestras across the country. These include the London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Academy of Ancient Music, English National Ballet and the Knussen Chamber Orchestra.

As well as being an active performer, Laura is also a passionate educator. Laura has tutored at the London Symphony Orchestra’s East London Academy, the Junior Royal Academy of Music, and London Philharmonic Orchestra’s FUNharmonics.

Rachel Leach

presenter

Rachel Leach was born in Sheffield. She studied composition, and her music has been recorded by NMC and published by Faber. She has won several awards including, with English Touring Opera (ETO), the RPS award for best education project 2009 for One Day, Two Dawns.

Rachel has worked within the education departments of most of the UK’s orchestras and opera companies. The majority of her work is for the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Rachel has written well over 20 pieces for LSO Discovery and 15 community operas, including seven for the English Touring Opera.

Increasingly in demand as a concert presenter, as well as presenting the LSO Discovery Free Friday Lunchtime Concert series, she regularly presents children’s concerts and pre-concert events for the LSO, LPO, Philharmonia Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal College of Music and Royal Northern Sinfonia.