Calum Huggan
From early on in his career Calum showed a real passion for performance, winning his first BBC Solo Broadcast at the young age of 18. A finalist in many prestigious competitions, Calum was mentored and nurtured by International Marimbists, Jasmin Kolberg and Eric Sammut. Calum has performed solo, chamber and concerto debuts within the major concert houses across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United Arab Emirates.
Calum is an active and sought after percussion tutor and workshop leader throughout the UK. Teaching at several conservatoires across the UK, including Trinity Laban and the Royal College of Music, Calum regularly delivers marimba master classes, percussion seminars and repertoire classes.
Lilli Unwin
Lilli Unwin is an enchanting and soulful young singer, songwriter and arranger with an authentic sound, an evocative yet playful stage presence and a penchant for intelligent and insightful lyrics. She has been building her repertoire and performing at various venues in her adopted hometown, London, including Ronnie Scotts, Spice of Life, Brixton East and Hoxton Bar and Kitchen. Other places performed include Manchester and Cheltenham Jazz Festivals and Wolverhampton Arena Theatre, Brainchild Festival amongst others.
Lilli is a member of the London Vocal Project, the UK’s leading contemporary jazz-vocal ensemble led by jazz pianist and vocalist Pete Churchill. As part of LVP, she performed in the world première of Jon Hendricks’ Miles Ahead in New York in Feb 2017, produced by Quincy Jones. Aside from writing, performing, recording and collaborating, Lilli is also a keen educator and workshop facilitator.
Joe Browne
Joe Browne is a musician, composer, and educator. Following postgraduate studies in jazz saxophone at Birmingham Conservatoire, he studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, under Dino Govoni and George Garzone. On returning from the US, he settled in London where he now works as a musician and educator. He enjoys a busy schedule as a sideman in various ensembles, and with his own quintet with whom he performs regularly at venues across London and beyond.
As an educator, he regularly leads workshops for Trinity Laban, the Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Orchestra of The Age of Enlightenment. He is an Associate Educator for the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO) and musical director of their regional academies in Cumbria and Lancashire. He is Musical Director of Arts Without Boundaries – a new charity which delivers music and arts workshops to adults and young people with special educational needs and disabilities – and has led similarly inclusive ensembles for Surrey Arts’ award-winning UP! Orchestra and Kent Music’s Orchestra ONE.
In 2016 Joe was appointed Musical Director of Deal Music and Arts’ jazz programme, in partnership with NYJO.
John Browne
John composes music for opera companies, theatres, choirs and increasingly integrates all these into ‘choral theatre’. Operas for the Royal Opera House include Demon Juice, a hip-hop opera; Babette’s Feast; and Bullman and the Moonsisters, created with children to open the new Linbury Theatre. For English National Opera he composed Midnight's Children and a trilogy of children’s operas, The Early Earth Operas.
Recent theatre includes The Suppliant Women (Young Vic London, Hong Kong Arts Festival); The Events (The Guardian’s Best Theatre Show of 2013); and, The Mother’s Ring with survivors of the genocide in Rwanda. Work for choirs includes Small Selves for Westminster Abbey, In Tenebris for the Choir of King’s College London, community cantata A Nightingale Sang, and choral arrangements for the band Elbow. John has also written the music for Aardman animations, the BAFTA award-winning Itch of the Golden Nit and Royals, Rascals and Us (2015).
John has extensive teaching experience, including training teachers on the Write-An-Opera course at Dartington Summer School; leading music-theatre projects internationally for the British Council and the Royal Opera House; various schools’ projects for Southbank Centre and others.
Bellatrix
Citing influences from Bjork to Sun Ra, Bellatrix has self-released two blisteringly inventive EPs to serious critical acclaim, the second funded by the prestigious PRSF Women Make Music fund. She is currently in the studio with producers Exmoor Emperor creating new music to be released this year. Bellatrix has also collaborated extensively on a wide range of other projects as a bassist, beatboxer, vocalist and writer/composer, including with Jarvis Cocker, Martina Topley-Bird and Pee Wee Ellis. She has toured internationally and performed at many major venues and festivals, including Glastonbury, WOMAD, Royal Festival Hall and Brixton Academy.
Bellatrix also has a passion for education and community work. She curated the Barbican Box, a music project for 13 schools across London, working alongside teachers and pupils to create a gig in the Barbican Hall. She went with Roundhouse International to Dharavi slum in Mumbai where she facilitated beatboxing workshops that culminated in a collaborative cross-arts performance before a 2,000+ audience in Dharavi. She is also an Artist in Residence on the pediatric ward at Royal Brompton Hospital as part of a project called Vocal Beats.
Gawain Hewitt
Gawain Hewitt is an artist and composer, particularly known for combining technology with more traditional musical and artistic practices. He is prolific in his output, much of which is composed or made in the community. Gawain’s work has been shown at Spitalfields Festival, the V&A, and the Tate Modern and he is an active member of the London-based Hackoustic group. Gawain has made music in diverse settings, from compositions for Soprano, Recorder, and Oboe, to UK hip-hop, to making music with code and hydrophones on and in a frozen fjord with Terje Isungset and Arve Hendriksen in the headline concert at Ice Music Festival 2016. In September 2018 he was part of a team that won the European Space Agency prize at Music Tech Fest, for a piece that sonified satellite data. Arriving in London aged 19, Gawain has been intimately involved in the capital’s music scene for nearly 20 years, and when not working across the country in classrooms, studios and auditoriums loves helping his three children begin their own sonic explorations.
Laura Rossi
Laura is a composer for film, TV and concert works. Credits include London to Brighton, Song for Marion, Silent Shakespeare, and The Cottage and Hurricane. In 2016/17 Laura was artistic director for Somme100 FILM, a project coordinating 100 live orchestra performances of her score for the 1916 film, The Battle of the Somme. The project reached an audience of over 37,000, involved over 4,200 musicians, and was televised live on BBC1 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Concert works include Voices of Remembrance, a choral/orchestral work featuring poems read by Ralph Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave, performed multiple times to critical acclaim. Her music has been performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, London Contemporary Orchestra and BBC Concert Orchestra.
Laura is a lecturer for film music at the London Film Academy and regularly gives masterclasses and workshops about film composition in many colleges, festivals and venues, including Edinburgh International Film Festival, Central Film School, Liverpool Hope University, the Birds Eye View Film Festival, and for the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Peter Edwards
Peter Edwards is a pianist, composer and musical director. He was the 2015 Parliamentary Jazz Awards ‘Newcomer of the Year’, and was among the nominees for the 2015 Jazz FM 'Breakthrough Artist' award. Peter works with acclaimed artists Mica Paris and Zara McFarlane as musical director, directs the Nu Civilisation Orchestra and was a 2017 New Music Biennial commissioned composer for ‘A Journey with the Giants of Jazz’. Selection for Edition IX of Serious' Take Five talent development programme provided him with the skills to make the most of the early success of his debut album, and in July 2015 his group was selected to play at the Montreal Jazz Festival for a ‘BBC Introducing’ showcase in association with the PRS Foundation.
Although steeped in the jazz tradition and the music of its key figures, Peter relishes the challenge of collaborating with artists from a range of genres inside and outside music, including South African house producer QB Smith, documentary film-maker Corine D’hondee, beat-boxer Shlomo, visual artist Emma Godebska and poet Lemn Sissay MBE. He has also worked on projects synchronising live soundtracks with film, such as the music of Miles Davis with John Akomfrah’s landmark video portrait of the late Stuart Hall, an original commissioned score by the BFI for Oscar Micheaux’s film, ‘Body And Soul’ and his latest audiovisual installation piece with percussionist Tello Morgado, 'Devotion to Movement'.
Peter is a lead tutor for Tomorrow’s Warriors’ Young Artists’ Development Programme, and a graduate of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance.
Kit Massey
Kit Massey is a fourth generation musician, working professionally as a violinist, pianist and arranger in London. Kit studied at Trinity Laban with Michael Bochmann where he received a first class degree and several prizes for solo and ensemble playing. After graduation, Kit played with the Philharmonia de Santiago Chile, performing much of the core ballet and opera repertoire. In London, he continues a busy recording and performing career with the Heritage Orchestra, Alex Mendham Orchestra and several West End shows.
He teaches musicianship at Trinity Laban in both the senior and junior departments and is a resident conductor at South London Youth Orchestra. He has a passionate interest in improvisation and finds every opportunity to encourage creativity and spontaneity through his teaching. In 2012 Kit studied Carnatic violin in Mysore India leading to a published article in Strad magazine.
Cate Ferris
Cate Ferris is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumental performer, recording artist and producer from Brighton. She fuses loops and electronics with acoustics and vocals to create full live productions on stage. An extensive collaborator, she is a member of femme noize choir The Larsens, was a core member of Dizraeli & The Small Gods and her works and voice have featured on BBC1 Xtra and prime-time television.
Cate has been working with young people for the past four years alongside organisations like Audio Active and Miss Represented, a cross-arts Brighton Dome affiliated young womens project, as well as teaching production, singing, songwriting and looping.