Mandhira de Saram

Mandhira is a versatile violinist performing as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral violinist in the UK and abroad.  She is a founding member and the leader of the Ligeti Quartet, a young string quartet which has established a reputation as a leading dynamic and imaginative force in contemporary and modern music. She graduated with 1st class honours from the University of Oxford achieving  a high 1st in performance and winning the Worcester College Arts Prize for the highest result in an arts subject.

International solo and chamber music tours have taken her around Europe as well as the USA, India, China and her country of origin, Sri Lanka.  She has performed at prestigious festivals and venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre, Southbank Centre and St Johns Smith Square in London and the Carnegie Hall in New York.

Her repertoire is varied consisting of standard classical works as well as free improvisation and original projects often involving collaborations with contemporary composers, sound artists and musicians from a variety of genres outside classical music.  With  her quartet she has worked with Wadada Leo Smith, Meilyr Jones, Shabaka Hutchings, Laura Jurd, Kerry Andrew, Sean Noonan, and, following a tour to China and Hong Kong,  has collaborated with leading Hong Kong DJ Choi Sai Ho and Japanese sound artist mamoru.

Mandhira was born in London.  After completing her primary education in Sri Lanka, she was awarded a music scholarship to North London Collegiate School where she completed her secondary education.  She was also a Leverhulme Scholar at the Junior Royal Academy of Music where she performed both as a violinist and pianist, also taking classes in composition and conducting.  Her violin teachers have included Igor Petrushevsky, Howard Davis and Levon Chilingirian.

https://mandhiradesaram.com/

Mark Sanders

Mark has worked with a host of renowned musicians including Derek Bailey, Henry Grimes, Mathew Shipp, Evan Parker, Roswell Rudd, in duo and quartets with Wadada Leo Smith and trios with Charles Gayle with Sirone and William Parker.

In situations using composition Mark works in a number of projects including Christian Marclay’s Everyday for film and live music and John Butcher’s Tarab Cuts - both projects have performed major festivals throughout Europe and Brazil. He has performed works by guitarist John Coxon in Glasgow and Sydney playing with the Scottish and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. With New York’s ICE Ensemble he has performed John Zorn’s The Tempest in London and at Huddersfield New Music Festival.

Mark also works in the groups of Paul Dunmall including Deep Whole Trio with Paul Rogers, and the ensembles of Sarah Gail Brand, including a long-standing duo. He has a lengthy discography including a solo album, has performed internationally and played at major festivals including, Nickelsdorf, Ulrichsburg, Womad and notably at Glastonbury with legendary saxophonist John Tchicai.

"ubiquitous, diverse and constantly creative, drummer Mark Sanders always outdoes himself, whether playing with restraint or erupting like a dynamo." Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery. NY

Steve Beresford

Steve Beresford has been a central figure in the British and international spontaneous music scenes for over forty years, freely improvising on the piano, electronics, and other things with people like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, John Zorn, and Alterations (with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack).

He has written songs, written for large and small ensembles, and scored short films, feature films, TV shows, and commercials. He was part of the editorial teams of Musics and Collusion magazines, writes about music in various contexts, and was a senior lecturer in music at the University of Westminster. With Blanca Regina, he is part of Unpredictable Series, which produces events and sound and video recordings of experimental music and art.

Steve has worked with Christian Marclay on numerous Marclay mixed media pieces. He has also worked with The Slits, Najma Akhtar, Stewart Lee, Ivor Cutler, Prince Far-I, Alan Hacker, Tania Chen, Ray Davies, Mandhira De Saram, The Flying Lizards, Zeena Parkins, The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Ilan Volkov, Rachel Musson, Vic Reeves, Lore Lixenberg and many others.

Beresford has an extensive discography as performer, arranger, free-improviser, composer and producer, and was awarded a Paul Hamlyn award for composers in 2012. In 2021, Bloomsbury published a book by Andy Hamilton: ‘Pianos, Toys, Music and Noise: Conversations with Steve Beresford’.

http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mberes.html

Loré Lixenberg

Lore Lixenberg is the leader of The Voice Party (an opera & political party you cannot join, it joins you) standing in the 2019 UK elections. In 2021 she won the Phonurgia Nova soundart prize for ’theVoicePartyOperaBotFarm[myFuryIsMyMuse] and was nominated for the Centre Pompidou Prix Heidsieck for her participatory voice pieces, ‘Pret a Chanter’ ‘PANIC ROOM - the singterviews’ film ‘The Fool', and BIRD!

Working with code, her explorations into participatory & digital practices continue with her extended voice dating app(ERA) SINGLR, taking place in 2022 and her voice currency VOXXCOIN, exploring the dramatic potential of encoded voice and dramatic exchange.

Her career began performing in physical theatre with Complicite, working with Simon Mcburney on Out of a House Walked a Man for the National Theatre that used texts by the Soviet writer Daniil Harms. Following this, her work has spanned performances on concert platforms and opera scenes to installations and vocal performances with composers, experimental visual and sound artists (STELARC, Bruce Mclean, ORLAN, David Toop, Imogen Sidworthy, Georgina Starr, Sam Belinfante)

She has played with Stewart Lee, Richard Thomas & Simon Munnery appearing in BBC2 Attention Scum and The Kombat Operas that won the Rose D'Or prize for comedy. Performing regularly the music of Frederic Acquaviva (with whom she founded & ran the Berlin-based Artspace www.laplaquetournante.org) she is in his piece 'SEMINAL' alongside Joan La Barbara, Vinko Globokar, Wills Morgan and Jacques Lizene for DeutschlandFunkKultur 2022. her first artist book, Memory Maps was published by Editions AcquAvivA, and her first monographic CD, The afternoon of a phone is on £@ß. Her vinyl NancarrowKaraoke (vocal transcriptions +performances of the piano rolls of Nancarrow) is out now on the NL label De Player. and her new Isou recording will be out next year.

Since January 17, 2018, Lixenberg has declared that everything she does is an extension of her voice and singing practice and is therefore to be considered an extended vocal.