After a record number of applications, we’re delighted to announce our 2021-22 Associate Composers – Atefeh Einali, Elischa Kaminer, Emily Abdy and Simon Knighton.
Selected for their variety, their potential contribution to the wider new music scene and their distinctive compositional output, our Associate Composers will be given a range of opportunities over the next two years, including curating their own Nonclassical event, paid commissions for Southbank Sinfonia and CoMA Ensemble, appearing on our upcoming Outside the Lines release and receiving workshops and mentoring throughout the scheme.
Read more about the Associate Composes Scheme >>>
Atefeh Einali
Atefeh Einali is a composer and performer based in Manchester UK. Much of her work and research explores the musical possibilities of combining traditional Persian musical practices with Western contemporary music. A graduate of the University of Manchester and the Art University of Tehran, Atefeh’s work has been performed internationally by leading ensembles and at major venues, including Psappha Ensemble, Bach Festival, Akternance Ensemble, Trio Atem and more. Alongside composing Atefeh is also an active Santoor player, having performed in the UK, Netherlands and Iran. Her ensemble Avazad Fusion Ensemble with Eliorah Goodman is a unique collaboration, integrating different folk traditions in to the classical contemporary scene through performance, composition and educational work.
Photo by Chen Jerusalem
Elischa Kaminer
Elischa Kaminer is a London based composer, performer and theatre maker. His work is located on the intersections of music theatre, sound art, electronic, concert, queer-pop and yiddish musics. Recent works often take on the form of continuously evolving electro-acoustic landscapes as well as musical and choreographic scores, moulded into and out of the specific performers’ very own artistry, humour, physicality and musicality. Elischa’s work has been showcased at theatres, concert halls and festivals across Europe, regularly collaborating with choreographers, video, fine artists and performance collectives.
Elischa is artistic director of London based experimental music group Ensemble x.y. From 2016 - 18, he was Associate Composer with the ensemble and co-curator of x.y FM, a monthly radio show on Resonance Extra committed to comissionning and broadcasting new music, sound and radio art. From 2010-2014 Elischa studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London followed by postgraduate studies at the Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaften, Gießen supported by the Gerhard C. Starck Stiftung scholarship.
Emily Abdy
Emily’s creative practice draws influence from a techniques and styles associated with contemporary-classical composition, popular songwriting, poetry, filmmaking and experimental performance. Her pieces are nearly always involuntarily auto-ethnographic and often touch on wider socially relevant topics such as mental health, body image, gender and the conventions of the music industry. Emily often performs her own work, utilising her past experience as a classically trained violinist and a grass-roots gigging singer-songwriter. Her piece for viola and spoken word, ‘Ruminant’, was recently released by Birmingham Record Company through NMC recordings and she self-released a short collection of pieces for an alternative orchestral line-up earlier this year, which focused on themes of domestic abuse, body image and trauma. Emily is currently completing her masters degree in composition at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
Simon Knighton
Simon Knighton is a composer and sound artist whose work investigates the interplay between acoustic instruments and electronically produced sound. Using acoustic and psychoacoustic phenomena to blur the boundaries between different types of sound, his methods push non-conventional aspects of music composition to the fore, leading to work that sits on the boundary of concert, installation, ritual and theatre. Simon enjoys working closely with musicians in order to explore and sample their playing in fine detail. These pre-recorded samples then form a key part of the composition process, before being manipulated and fed back into performance to create dense yet homogeneous sound worlds.
After completing a degree in music technology in 2006, Simon spent eight years in Liverpool working as a musician and sound engineer. In 2016 he moved abroad to study for a master’s degree in composition at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam under the supervision of Willem Jeths and Joël Bons. Simon is currently studying for a Ph.D. at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester under the supervision of Larry Goves and Emily Howard.
He is currently working on a series of Sound Sculptures (one for each instrument family and a final one for symphony orchestra) through which he aims to develop a musical vocabulary that presents the instruments of the orchestra in new and interesting ways.
Meet our 2023-25 Artists in Residence.