Composers

Elena Firsova was born in Leningrad in 1950. She was trained at the Moscow Conservatory under Alexander Pirumov (composition), Yuri Kholopov (analysis) and Nikolai Raskatov (orchestration), and received private instruction from Edison Denisov and Philip Hershkovitz. In 1990 she was co-founder of the Russian Society for New Music (ASM) with Denisov and her husband Dmitri Smirnov. Elena moved to England in 1991 where she lives with her family and is active as a lecturer and free-lance composer.

Elena continues to develop the ideas of the Second Viennese School but treats the strictness of twelve-tone music freely, intentionally allowing for consonant sounds in the row formation and placing especial emphasis on melodic motifs. Her music has been performed by the London Sinfonietta conducted by Peter Eötvös, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Brodsky Quartet, Manchester Wind Orchestra, Schubert Ensemble, Freden Festival, BBC Proms and Expo 2000 (Hanover). Her music has been heard at the Bath Festival, the Almeida Festival, the South Bank Centre's Russian Spring Festival, and the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today series. Recent commissions include BBC Proms for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Her music is published by Boosey & Hawkes, Sikorski and Schirmer.

[compiled from Boosey & Hawkes, Sikorski and Wikipedia]

Laura Bowler is a young composer and mezzo-soprano living and working in London. Her work is influenced by many composers and artists ranging from Stephen Sondheim to Harrison Birtwistle, the paintings of Kandinsky to the theatre of Antonin Artaud. Her passion for working in the theatre is apparent in her compositional output with numerous theatre pieces alongside many concert works with a theatrical influence or performance quality. Laura is currently working on commissions for the BBC Symphony Orchestra as part of their new Embedded scheme with Sound and Music, a string quintet for the Kreutzer Quartet with double bassist Rachel Meerloo, a collaboration with the award-winning playwright Lavinia Murray; a long term project aiming towards a full-length chamber opera based on E. T. A. Hoffman's 'The Sandman' and a cello concerto for Oliver Coates and the Azalea Ensemble.

She has been commissioned by The Opera Group, ROH2, Tete a Tete Opera, Grimeborn Opera, London Sinfonietta, Esbjerg Ensemble, Neue Vocalisten Soloists, The Kreutzer Quartet among others and has received performances throughout Europe and in the USA. In the past Laura has been accepted as a scholarship student to several composition summer schools including the Voix Nouvelles Composition Course at the Fondation Royaumont with Brian Ferneyhough, the IMD Darmstadt summer school and the Dartington International Festival Advanced Composition course with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

Having completed her BMus (Hons) at the Royal Northern College of Music and as an Erasmus scholar at the Sibelius Academy of Music followed by her Masters in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music studying with Gary Carpenter generously supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Scholarship, she is now undertaking her PhD in Composition funded by the AHRC at the Royal Academy of Music.