Participants
William Harmer (piano)
William is 10 and lives near Cambridge. He started playing the piano at the age of 6 and the trumpet when he was 8. He learns piano with Thanea Hodges and trumpet with Michel Sedgwick. He plays the trumpet with his school brass band and orchestra. William loves composing and improvisation and now studies composition with Jeremy Thurlow. William regularly performs in piano competitions and music festivals. At the age of seven he won his section at the regional final of the EPTA Piano Competition in Oxford. In 2011 William was one of 100 young pianists chosen to play in a concert for 50 massed pianos led by Lang Lang at the Royal Festival Hall. William has gained a music scholarship to the Perse School in Cambridge from September 2011. William enjoys learning about famous composers and is a fount of random facts: Did you know that Dvorak was a train spotter; or that Bach had 20 children, five of whom were called Johann?!
Tom Hiom (guitar/piano)
Born in 1995 tom lives just outside Cambridge and attends Sawston Village College. At 8 years old Tom took up the classical guitar, later moving onto contemporary guitar, and has not looked back since. He also plays trombone with his school's jazz and wind bands as well as the Cambridge and Peterborough Youth Orchestra. As well as playing in his own band, Tom studies music technology and has aspirations to compose scores for films.
Robert Jewell (Tenor Horn)
Robert chose the tenor horn because it was the first instrument he really ever played! He currently writes a mixture of trance, drum and bass and classical music, and sometimes a mix of all three. Robert has played in the same band as long as he has played the horn. The band plays all kinds of music and practices in a barn!
Hlér Kristjànsson (violin)
Hlér was born in 1996 in Reyjavík, Iceland. He began learning the violin in 2002 using the Suzuki method, and has been learning the piano for around two years, also with the Suzuki method. Hlér is also interested in composition and has composed a few simple pieces for the violin and the piano.
Peter Liddiard (guitar)
Peter started music at an early age in an Italian school of music, although it wasn't until secondary school in England that he chose to take up guitar seriously. Now aged 16 he has played with various rock and jazz bands and has now been with current band "Injera" for over 3 years. He likes exploring other ways of creating music, making sounds out of instruments he doesn't know how to play and using Pro Tools and Cubase to play with these sounds. He also loves singing!
Finlay Marshall McEwen (saxophone)
Finlay took his first saxophone lesson with David Fitzgerald over four years ago, and now plays with a variety of concert, jazz and wind bands. He has performed numerous times in the Norfolk Music Festival, and plays in jazz, pop and classical styles.
AYM Exchanging Worlds Ensemble
The Aldeburgh World Orchestra Project
The AWO project brings emerging professional musicians from all over the world to Suffolk; to inspire, engage and perform; raising ambition and celebrating talent on a local to international level, as part of the London Cultural Olympiad in 2012
AYM Exchanging Worlds Ensemble
As part of Exchanging Worlds we will also establish a creative performance ensemble made up of exceptional young musical talent (under 18's) through Aldeburgh Young Musicians (AYM). This commissioning ensemble will be cross cultural and cross genre in content. Through collaborative working and the exchange of global musical conversations, new works will be created for performance at Snape Maltings and regional touring.
Alongside the ensemble AYM Composers will compose a fanfare for members of Aldeburgh World Orchestra, experiment with remote interactivity and take advantage of AWO mentoring opportunities. Finally, two young musicians will join AWO.
Exchanging worlds has been funded by Legacy Trust UK, an independent charity set up to help build a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games across the UK.