MEET THE TEAM
The Faces of Our Organization
CAMILA NEBBIA
Sax player, composer, improviser and multidisciplinary artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Her artistic practice and work reflect the constant creation of new sound and visual landscapes, exploring the relationship between different forms of composition and free improvisation.
Studied classical saxophone at the Conservatory “Astor Piazzolla”, jazz at the “Manuel de Falla” Conservatory and Film Director at the Universidad Del Cine. In 2015 won a scholarship from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (FNA) to assist to a workshop about composition and improvisation in Bariloche, Argentina. In 2017 participated in three music residencies dictated by: Tim Berne, Marilyn Crispell and Ben Goldberg. Participated in the “SIM” workshop directed by Ralph Alessi in New York. Took private lessons with Tony Malaby, Chris Cheek, Luis Natch, Kris Davis, Diego Schissi, among others. In 2018 won together with the band “El devenir del rio” a grant from FNA. In 2019 Won the grant “Raúl Urtazún & Frances Harley” to assist in the workshop of Jazz and Creative music at Banff Centre, Canada. Won the FNA “creation grant” to create new compositions as a result of a deep investigation about gender violence in Argentina. Participates in the online workshop “Ensemble Evolution” dictated by the International Contemporary Ensemble, hosted by the New School of Performing Arts of New York.
In September 2020 started the master’s degree program “CoPeCo Contemporary Performance and Composition” and won the Erasmus grant to support her studies. The two-year program occurs each semester in a different institution: Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Estonia, Royal College of Music in Stockholm in Sweden, National Superior Conservatory of Music Dance of Lyon in France and Hamburg University of Music and Theatre in Germany. Co-created the collective interdisciplinary group and improvised series of women improvisers called “La Jaula se ha vuelto pájaro y se ha volado”. Released as a band leader the albums “A veces la luz de lo que existe resplandece solamente a la distancia” (2017), “De este lado”(2019), Aura (2020).
Plays, records, and collaborates with many artists from the Buenos Aires music scene and international such as La Big Nant, Axel Filip Sextet, Gandini band, El devenir del río, Burka, Maya Keren, Lesley Mok, Burka, Julian Mekler sextet, among others.
CARMEN KLEYKENS VIDAL
Carmen Kleykens is a performer and composer from Valencia born in 1998. She began her artistic training in her hometown at the age of seven, later finishing her professional training in the specialty of cello. In 2016 he begins his bachelor's degree in classical and contemporary performance at the ESMUC (Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya) with Prof. Cristoforo Pestalozzi. It is there that he discovers his passion for contemporary music, more specifically for composition, improvisation, graphic design, and performance. There she received classes from Agustí Fernandez and Feliu Gasull and began to create his project "Pedres" based on the recitation of his own poems with simultaneous instrumental improvisation. During her bachelor, she had several projects as the active participation in the project Fifty for the Future of Kronos Quartet, playing with them in the festival Grec of Barcelona or participating in festivals like the Sampler (Auditori de Barcelona), El Petit Palau (Palau de la Música de Barcelona) or the Festival Mixtur as a soloist or in several ensembles.
Her creativity and professionalism lead her to become a student of the master CoPeCo (Composition and Performance of contemporary music). In this program, she is having composition and performance classes with artists as Helena Tulve, Mattias Petersson, Mattias Sköld, Taavi Kerikmäe, Michele Tadini, Jean Geoffroy, Fredrik Schwenk, Georg Hajdu, Jean-Marc Foltz, and Alexander Schubert between others.
She also carries out several co-composition projects with several young artists such as Arieh Crehm, Adrià Torres, or Heljä Virakivi as well as with his masters' colleagues premiering his own compositions such as "Gregorio se va de party", "Pedra 1" or "65M" premiered at the Interdistsiplinaar Festival of Tartuu. As a visual and graphic designer, she has professionally designed websites, logos, and collaborated as an illustrator of several covers of unpublished works as “Chatana” by Eladio Aguilar.
Soon, he will participate in the Sound Plasma Festival with the premiere in Estonia of "In Vain" by Frederich Haas and will premiere works by Andrea Sordano, Francis St-Germain, Sophie Meyer among others in Tallinn.
CAROLINA SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ
Contemporary and classical music pianist, Carolina Santiago combines her concert soloist career with chamber music at concert halls in all Europe. She has won prizes such as Piano Córdoba, Ourense’s Piano Meeting, Liceu’s grant, BPA Yamaha’s scholarship and AIE scholarship.
Nowadays, Carolina Santiago is studying the European Master Degree in Contemporary Music CoPeCo (in Tallinn, Stockholm, Lyon and Hamburg each semester between 2020 and 2022) and the PhD in Artistic Research in Music at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) with Luca Chiantore. Also she attends the Advanced Chamber Music Course at the Orpheus Instituut (Ghent) with Syntagma Piano Duo.
She studied Bachelor and Master Degrees at the Conservatori del Liceu (Barcelona) and she is the pianist of the Barcelona Modern Ensemble and coordinator of the International Composition Course Barcelona Modern, where she works with prestigious composers.
Carolina Santiago has received lessons from outstanding pianists like Albert Attenelle, Josep Colom, Pilar Valero, Nicolas Hodges, Vesko Stambolov, Catherine Ordronneau and others. In 2019 she published her first CD edited by the AAMY. Since 2017, Carolina Santiago has been devoting all her artistic activity to performing concerts in venues all over the world and she has participated in festivals in France, Germany, Sweden, Belgium and Spain.
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ELENA PERALES ANDREU
Elena is a versatile clarinetist who works with a specialization in contemporary, experimental and improvised music.
Perales’s interpretative interest is focused in avant-garde music, the composer-performer role, electroacoustic chamber music and feminist musicology. Active as ensemble musician, soloist and improviser musician she has performed in different music festivals in Europe such as
Darmstädter Ferienkurse – Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (Germany), Ultima Festival (Norway,) Bergen Ung Nordiskk Musikk, (Norway), International Festival Aurora Chamber Music (Sweden), Internationale Junge Orchestarakademie (Germany) and Only Connect (Norway).
Elena’s experimentation consists of a combination of interpretation and composition of her own pieces for clarinet and tape, solo clarinet, and chamber music with video.
Elena Perales completed her Bachelor’s degree in Interpretation of Classical and Contemporary Music in the Norwegian Academy of Music.
FIONA XUE JU
Born in Tsingtao, China, Xue Ju (Fiona) spent her early years in Shanghai at the Attached Middle School to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where she studied both piano performance and composition. She later moved to the United States where she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in composition from Oberlin Conservatory. She has studied with Grammy Award-winning composer Stephen Hartke, Lewis Nielson, Elizabeth Ogonek, Lyn Goeringer (electronic music), Tom Lopez (electronic music), and Chinese composer Wenpei Ju.
As a composer, she has written a variety of music for chamber ensembles, electronics, films, installation arts, and multimedia collaborations. Her music has been praised for its “fresh-sounding ideas” and described as “aurally fascinating” (Cleveland Classical). In 2018, Her sinfonietta piece Invocation: Blessing the Boat for CME (Oberlin Contemporary Musical Ensemble) was well received after it was performed at the Cleveland Museum of Art. As a former musical theatre scholar at Oberlin, she developed skills in theatre music, staging, lighting, and costume design. In recent years, Fiona has been exploring the connections between music and the other arts, working with visual artists, performance artists, and film directors on collaborative art projects. She is interested in how sound as a medium combines with installation art, interactive design and performance art, to transfer electronic music from the virtual digital area to the physical performance space.
HANNAH WIRNSPERGER
Flutist, improviser and transdisciplinary performer based in Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
Hannah studied Classical Flute and Improvisation in Lucerne (CH) from 2017 until 2020. Thus, in her three Bachelor years at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts she was lucky to benefit from two faculties simultaneously – collaborating with and learning from the exceptional improvisation faculty (Magda Mayas, Gerry Hemingway, Lauren Newton, Christoph Baumann, among others) and numerable guest professors (such as Joëlle Léandre, Fred Frith, Mike Svoboda or Liudas Mockunas) while also deepening her instrumental understanding in her studies with Anne-Laure Pantillon, Charles Aeschlimann, Helen Bledsoe and Sébastian Jacot. Outside of her studies, Hannah is a scholarship holder of the Internationale Musikakademie Liechtenstein where she studies with Philippe Bernold.
Yet, an excitement about experimental sounds and techniques has led her towards contemporary festivals, academies and masterclasses, for instance the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, FLOW (Boswil), METRIC (2018, in Glasgow) or Lucerne’s Wege der Wahrnehmung, Szenenwechsel, New Music Days and Contemporary Academy.
Since she most cherishes her time spent working with composers and improvisers directly (inspired by her work with Alfred Jimenez, Simon Steen-Andersen and Stefan Prins), Hannah is part of various ensembles performing contemporary as well as improvised music within and outside of Switzerland. Namely, Ensemble Boswil, Latenz Ensemble (specializing on premieres) or the improvisatory, international quartet Cojaqua.
In 2020 Hannah has enrolled at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (Tallinn) and is currently completing the CoPeCo Masters programme.
