JULIAN CARRILLO

Julián Carrillo (* January 18, 1875 in Ahualulco, † September 9, 1965 in Mexico City) was a Mexican composer. 
He studied music intermittently in Mexico from 1885. In 1899 he went to Europe, first to Leipzig, where he studied composition at the conservatory with Salomon Jadassohn, among others, and was first violinist of the conservatory orchestra and the Gewandhaus Orchestra, then to Ghent, where he continued his studies at the conservatory.
In 1904 he returned to Mexico City, where he lived as a violinist, conductor and composer and taught music history, instrumentation, counterpoint and composition at the conservatory. 
After the end of General Huerta's government, Carrillo fled to the USA, where he conducted the American Symphony Orchestra in New York City. He experimented with new tonal systems, which he called Sonido 13 and which were based on alternative equal divisions of the octave (EDO) with microintervals, and published the text Teoría del Sonido 13 in New York. After his return to Mexico, he led the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional and became director of the National Conservatory.
In 1926 he came back to New York. Leopold Stokowski commissioned the composition “Concertino” from him, which he performed with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra in Philadelphia and New York.
In 1930 he founded the Sinfónica del Sonido 13, an orchestra in which all instruments were able to play microintervals.
In 1940 he constructed fifteen pianos which he could produce all divions of octav from whole tones (6 EDO) to sixteenth tones (96 EDO) with, and in 1949 he developed a third-tone (18 EDO) grand piano, which he donated to the Schola Cantorum in Paris in 1954.
https://sonido13.com/

TAMI BELFER - laureat of the call for scores

Tami Belfer (Brésil) began her music studies with the violin at the age of six. But it was with the guitar that she continued, earning a Bachelor's degree in Music (classical guitar) and a Music Teaching License from Santa Marcelina College (São Paulo, Brazil). 
After her academic years, she has dedicated herself to composition and music production for audiovisual media, focusing on film scores. She has appeared in over 40 Brazilian feature films and series.
In 2024, she released her first original project: "Longe daqui, tarde demais". The album features songs and instrumental pieces performed by renowned pianists and singers from the Brazilian music scene.

PASCALE CRITON

French composer born in Paris in 1954. Since 1980, Pascale Criton has been exploring sound variability, instrumental techniques, and the spatialization of listening. Fascinated by the sound continuum, she uses specific tunings (in 1/4, 1/12, and 1/16 tones) for instruments such as the piano, violin, cello, guitar, accordion, etc., combined with orchestra and electronics. Pascale Criton's music is characterized by a flexible approach to pitch, timbre, noise, and acoustic phenomena that stimulate the emergence of unprecedented sounds. She collaborates with ensembles such as Ensemble 2e2m, Itinéraire, Dedalus, the SWR Stuttgart and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestras, as well as music creation studios such as InaGRM (Radio-France), GMEM (Marseille), and GMEA (Albi). She has edited Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Libération du son - Ecrits 1916-1979, ed. Symétrie (2013) and Gilles Deleuze, la pensée-musique, a testimony of her encounter with the French philosopher around music, ed. Symétrie (2015). Her works are published by Éditions Jobert (Lemoine) and available from the author at Art&Fact.
http://www.pascalecriton.com/

MARISOL JIMÉNEZ

Marisol Jiménez is a composer, performer, and multidisciplinary artist from Guadalajara, Mexico, currently residing in Berlin. Her work expresses an intense fascination with the tactile process of creating sound, an interplay of the entropic within the structured musical machinery, colliding the primeval with the technological to seek forceful, sensuous, and visceral energies. She completed a Doctorate in composition at Stanford University (2011) and a Master of Arts degree from Mills College, Oakland, CA (2005). Her output includes numerous chamber, orchestral, and electronic works, as well as mixed media installations. Jimenéz was a winner of the 39th Irino International Composition prize in Tokyo, and has recently been a member of the National System of Art Creators in Mexico. Her music has been performed in numerous concerts and festivals by leading interpreters of new music.
https://marisoljimenezcomposer.com/

VASILIKI KOURTI-PAPAMOUSTOU

The Freiburg-based composer Vasiliki Kourti-Papamoustou (*1988) studied composition, film music and music theory in Thessaloniki and at the Musikhochschule Freiburg i. Brsg.. She also works in the field of music production and sound design. Her particular interest is in expanding and promoting the contemporary music repertoire for children. 
She received scholarships from, for example, the Alfred-Töpfer-Stiftung F.V.S. (CONCERTO 2015/16) and the DAAD. Performances at, among others, Next Generation of the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Komische Oper Berlin, Academy of Arts Berlin, ZKM Karlsruhe, TechFest Festival Aberdeen and at the Theater Freiburg.
https://vaniakourti.com/

ZOE PUPO - laureat of the call for scores

The Cuban-Mexican musician Zoe Pupo is a dedicated to contemporary and experimental music.
Her artistic practice is between classical repertoire, microtonality, free improvisation and the exploration of new sonic textures. Interested in the interplay between tradition and innovation, she seeks to create a personal musical language that dialogues with contemporary classical, jazz and electronic music.
She has participated in both solo and collaborative projects, composing music for piano that experiment with alternative tunings, polyrhythms and extended sonorities. Her work also engages with interdisciplinary exploration, examining the relationship between sound, space, and auditory perception, as well as incorporating contemporary performance techniques.
In addition to her compositional work, Zoe Pupo is involved in promoting contemporary music, encouraging audiences to engage critically and openly, and fostering the creation of repertoire that challenges conventional boundaries of instrument and genre. Her approach seeks a balance between technical precision, emotional expression, and the free experimentation of forms and timbres.

IRENE ROSSETTI - laureat of the call for scores

The Argentinian composer Irene Rossetti navigates between the clarinet, composition and improvisation. After completing her clarinet studies in Argentina, she moved to Strasbourg and began her career in composition.
She participates in various classical music groups, traditional Latin American music, pop and rock. As a composer, recently she collaborated with the Lovemusic ensemble and Hanatsu Miroir. His creative output also extends into free improvisation, with the grch ensemble and his solo project. 
Its activities are colorful and crossed by theater, plastic arts, cinema, and everything that can nourish human beings with beauty.

JULIA WERNTZ

The music of composer Julia Werntz is rooted in a clear melodic sensibility with a highly nuanced and elastic approach to pitch and time. Her intricate microtonal and rhythmic language often communicates the irregular contours of human physicality—bodily motions, speech, and the cadences of thought—and frequently reacts to sensations from the natural world. Her compositions— chamber and vocal works (including her 2021 opera "The Strange Child")—have been performed at concert series, festivals and venues around Europe and the U.S., such as Stockholm New Music Festival, Tage für Neue Musik at the Darmstadt Akademie für Tonkunst, Week of Contemporary Music in Bucharest, Here/Now Festival in Sofia, UK Microfest 3 and UK MicroFest 2019, Hamburger Klangwerktage, New York’s Vision Festival, and the series of groups such as Ensemble SCALA (2019 and 2020 at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam), Ecce Ensemble, Ensemble New Babylon, DuoKaya, Auros Group for New Music, NotaRiotous, a.o.. In September of this year her CD with pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, "Climbing to Sleep", was released on Driff Records, and features her solo piece for microtonal piano, "Capricious Nocturnal Variations", and other compositions and improvisations.
https://juliawerntz.com/wp/

EDU HAUBENSAK

The composer Edu Haubensak's is mainly interested in instrumental and vocal music in constantly changing tunings (scordatura).
Born in 1954 in Helsinki, Finland, he grew up in Zürich. He studied music theory and composition at the Basel Music Academy from 1974 to 1979 with Thomas Kessler, Robert Suter and Jürg Wyttenbach. Master classes with Dieter Schnebel, Earle Brown, Heinz Holliger and Klaus Huber, a.o..
He received a scholarship at the Istituto Svizzero di Roma (1984/85) and in the same year was awarded first prize by the jury of the Boswil International Composers' Seminar in Switzerland. 
From 1989 to 1999, Haubensak taught contemporary music at the School of Design and Art in Zürich. In 1993 he founded the CD label Documental, his CD "Harmonies and Melodies" was nominated for the German Record Critics' Prize in 2019.
In 1994 he received the Werkjahr from the city of Zürich. He was a guest lecturer and composer at the UDK Berlin in 2000 and took part in a transdisciplinary group for intermedia research at the HKB Bern in 2007. Zollikon Art Prize in 2006. Since 2021 he is president of the IGNM Zürich/Switzerland. 
Edu Haubensak's music was performed in international festivals such as MaerzMusik Berlin, Klangspuren Tirol, ZeitRäume Basel, Wien Modern and Ruhrtriennale and he collaborated a.o. with Simone Keller, Samuel Stoll, Martin Lorenz, Rico Gubler and Heinz Holliger, Collegium Novum Zürich, Mondrian Ensemble, Basel Sinfonietta, Musikkollegium Winterthur and Symphony Orchestra Basel.
https://www.eduhaubensak.ch

MARC KILCHENMANN

In an age of specialization, Marc Kilchenmann has retained his aspiration to pursue a career as a Generalist musician. This breadth is reflected in the seven courses of study he has completed: before earning his PhD, he studied bassoon, composition, and elementary music education. Common to all his fields of activity is a focus on contemporary music, often at the intersections with other arts.
After 25 years as a chamber musician, soloist, and orchestral bassoonist, Marc Kilchenmann now devotes himself mainly to composition and improvisation, combined with musicological research in the field of new music. In addition to his studies on Hermann Meier, Kilchenmann has also researched the formal constitution of Jean Barraqué's complete works and earned his PhD with a thesis on just intonation using the example of the American composer Ben Johnston. He is currently working on a research project on the electronic music pioneers Else Marie Pade and Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson. Marc Kilchenmann is the father of two children and works at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB).

MATTHIAS SEBASTIAN KRÜGER

The compositions of Matthias Sebastian Krüger (*1980) focus on the exploration of novel tonalities and harmonic potentials, with spectra, overtones, harmonic and inharmonic sounds serving as an essential basis, established and contextualised in a variety of ways including the consistent use of microtonality. He studied composition with York Höller, Frédéric Durieux, Georg Friedrich Haas and Erik Oña, piano and conducting at Cologne, Paris, Frankfurt/M. and Basel. In 2010/11 he was guest lecturer at the Universitiy of Arts Graz (Austria). Scholarships from the Studienstiftung des dt. Volkes, DAAD a.o. and numerous awards like the Stipendienpreis of the Darmstadt Summer Courses 2002, composition prizes of the Festival Ensemblia Mönchengladbach 2003, Krefelder Tage Neuer Musik 2013 and Karlsruher Kompositionswettbewerb 2014 and invitations to the 7. Nachwuchsforum of the Ensemble Modern and to the Tremplin of the Ensemble Intercontemporain/ IRCAM 2006/07.
Performances for example at the Abbaye Royaumont, Konzerthaus Berlin, IRCAM/Centre Pompidou – "Festival Agora" Paris, ZKM Karlsruhe, Darmstadt Summer Courses, Davos Festival, Ensemblia Mönchengladbach, Schwetzinger Festspiele, sound plasma Tallinn and Sydney Microfest. 
Collaborations a.o. with Ensemble for New Music Tallinn (ENMT), Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Ensemble Musikfabrik and RSO Stuttgart.
CD productions with Johannes Schwarz ("kurzes leben 1.0"), Martin Wistinghausen ("De profundis") and Arash Yazdani ("Propagation of Uncertainty").
https://www.matthias-s-krueger.de/

MICHAEL PELZEL

Michael Pelzel (*1978) studied composition with Dieter Ammann, Detlev Müller-Siemens, Georg Friedrich Haas, Hanspeter Kyburz and Wolfgang Rihm, piano, organ and music theory in Lucerne, Basel, Stuttgart, Berlin and Karlsruhe. 
Since March 2022 he has been teaching composition and music theory at the Gustav Mahler Private University of Music in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee.
Numerous scholarships, awards and prizes like composition prize of Musica Viva Munich (2005), Busoni Kompositionspreis (2011) and Stuttgarter Kompositionspreis.
His compositions have been interpreted by, a.o., Collegium Novum Zurich, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, ensemble recherche, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Intercontemporain, BR Symphony Orchestra and the Basel Symphony Orchestra at festivals such as Musica Viva Munich, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wien Modern, Klangspuren Schwaz Tirol and Lucerne Festival.
https://www.michaelpelzel.ch/

IRADJ SAHBAÏ

Iradj Sahbai (*1945), student of Olivier Messiaen, is a French composer and conductor of Iranian origin. In addition to composition, he studied orchestral conducting. He lives in the Strasbourg region and founded the Schiltigheim Chamber Orchestra in 1986.
His music has been performed at many important venues and festivals, most recently at the Nice International Music Festival and Academy (NIMFA).
Iradj Sahbai's music combines rhythmic liveliness and vocal expression. He is inspired by the tonalities of traditional Persian music, tries to translate the vibrations of light into the art of sounds and experiments with new forms. He also works with quarter tones, which he transcribes using a staff with more than twenty lines.