S. Gerup (Denmark)
S. Gerup and violist Þórhildur Magnúsdóttir (Iceland) will collaborate on an alternative concert length and site specific piece to be premiered at Dark Music Days and Klang Festival in 2026. The new piece bears the working title How to Ruin Someone’s Career as a Violist. About her piece, Gerup tells: “As a composer, I have set out to work with affect, grief, anger and illness, and the lack of ability for musical performance that these conditions bring. Through How to Ruin Someone’s Career as a Violist the idea is to musically express different forms of pain — inspired by the philosopher Hannah Arendt: “To exist, some realities must be kept hidden, while others, on the contrary, must be made public.”
Composers
Asta Hyvärinen (Finland)
Finnish composer Asta Hyvärinen has described her approach to composition as “surrealist-cubism.” This means that the structures are based on the surrealistic (subconscious) process, and the sonic details often appear cubistic. She also uses the term “whole tonality,” which means equality of any kind of sounding material (chromatic, microtonal, noises, and any kind of unpitched sounds). Most of her works composed during the past over 20 years are some kind of cross-sections of a shattering world.
Asta has been a freelance composer since the mid-80s and a full-time composer since 2000. Her list of works contains more than 130 compositions that have been performed widely in Europe, Canada, the Americas, and Asia, around 30 countries. Read Asta Hyvärinen's spotlight article at Music Finland's site.
Timothy Cooper (Scotland)
Timothy Cooper is a composer and performer of electroacoustic music. His compositions reflect a passion for performance rooted in his studies as a euphonium player and his childhood experiences with his parents' radio. This love of performance informs the types of sounds he seeks out and the way he utilizes them both instrumentally and in the electroacoustic studio. In 2015, Cooper began lecturing at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he teaches music technology. Prior to that, he taught composition and creative approaches to music technology at Edinburgh College from 2012 to 2019. In 2010, he co-founded Edit-Point, a group dedicated to the presentation and performance of electroacoustic music.
Elias Nurmi Schomers (Norway)
Elias Nurmi Schomers (he/him) is a composer, musician and performer who moves within instrumental composition, musical theatre, performance and improvised contemporary music. He performs together with ensembles such as Krækk!, Blomsterbed, Drift and Lime. Elias has a master's degree in composition from the Norwegian Royal Academy of Music and a bachelor's degree in cello from HfMDK Frankfurt. In his compositional work, he is concerned with combining different media and instruments, conceptual approaches and experiments with form. Elias Nurmi Schomers will compose a piece for musicians from the Finnish ensemble, Earth Ears Ensemble.
Lauri Supponen (Finland)
Lauri Supponen (b. 1988) is a composer based in Finland. He grew up in Brussels and studied composition at the RCM in London and UdK in Berlin, graduating from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in autumn 2016. Lauri’s works have been premiered by leading contemporary music ensembles such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern and BBC Singers at major festivals around Europe and North America. Close collaboration with instrumentalists and other artists forms the nucleus of his method. Lauri also performs as an oboist and contrabassist, recently at the indie music festival Flow with Korvat Auki Ensemble and ainoregina.
laurisupponen.fi
Tine Surel Lange (Norway)
Arctic landscapes, surrounding sounds, mythologies, and sound choreography are some of the inspirations that shape the works by the Norwegian composer and interdisciplinary artist Tine Surel Lange (b. 1989, Vesterålen, Norway). Based in Lofoten, Northern Norway, her work is rooted in organic material – with a focus on listening, space, and how connotations color how we listen to and experience art. Lately, she has been focused on sound choreography, 3D sound, sounding objects, sound for scenic productions, and creating conceptual works for sound and image – fascinated by magical realism and the coming doom of the human race.
tinesurellange.com
Lisa Robertson (Scotland)
Lisa Robertson is a composer from the West Highlands of Scotland, particularly interested in combining sounds from nature and traditional music; examining relationships between people and the land and highlighting environmental concerns. Recently, she was featured in BBC Music Magazine's 'Rising Stars' column. Her music has been recorded by The Sixteen and performed by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, EXAUDI, Red Note Ensemble, Psappha Ensemble, Hebrides Ensemble, Lucy Schaufer, and Heather Roche, among others. Her music has appeared at festivals including Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, where she also performed her own solo violin piece in 2019, Cheltenham Music Festival, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Sound Festival and on BBC Radio 3.
Performers and ensembles
defunensemble (Finland)
Formed in 2009, defunensemble has established ifself as one of the most important contemporary music groups in Finland. The ensemble's vigorous mission is to systematically delve into the world of electroacoustic music. Defunensemble gives Finnish premieres of the most essential electroacoustic repertoire both classic and current, while simultaneuosly actively commissioning new works incorporating the latest technologies. With artistic director Sami Klemola the ensemble's concert concepts have proven to be highly innovative, blending different sub-genres of the electroacoustic persuasion with an unprecedented street credibility. A serious professional undertaking, the musicians and sound desingers of defunensemble are some of the most active personalities in the Finnish contemporary music scene.
Ensemble Temporum (Norway)
Ensemble Temporum is a contemporary music ensemble based in Oslo. The ensemble had its debut at the Ultima festival in 2016, performing Gerard Grisey’s Vortex Temporum and a commission from Tim Mariën, and it was broadcasted on Norwegian radio (NRK P2). Since then, they have given concerts in Norway and Finland, performing works by Spahlinger, Ørjan Matre , Kúrtag, Crumb, Grisey, Streich, Dusapin, Messiaen, Ravel, and a commission by Jon Øivind Ness. The ensemble consists of a sextet and the conductor Kai Grinde Myrann.
Red Note Ensemble (Scotland)
Since its formation Red Note Ensemble has taken up a leadership position as Scotland’s contemporary music ensemble, performing and developing an extensive, highly-varied and critically-acclaimed programme of new music to the highest standards, and taking new music out to audiences across Scotland and internationally. Red Note performs the established classics of contemporary music, commissions new music, develops the work of new and emerging composers and performers from Scotland and around the world. Outwith the UK it has a growing international reputation, performing to great acclaim at festivals in Europe and Australia in recent years. The ensemble also undertakes an extensive programme of Access, Engagement and Participation (AEP) work.
Photo: Julie Howden
Earth Ears Ensemble (Finland)
The Earth Ears ensemble was founded in 2021 with the goal of enlivening contemporary music performance with focus on experimentation and presenting lesser-heard ideas and voices in new concert settings. The ensemble engages with the audiences through workshops, concerts in unconventional spaces, and by curating programs that reflect the different musical specialities of its members. As an international group consisting of performers with different professional practices, project ideas are generated from each member’s individual passions and brought to life with circulating leadership from within the ensemble.
Þórhildur Magnúsdóttir (Iceland)
Þórhildur Magnúsdóttir is an Icelandic violist and performer currently based in Copenhagen. She takes great interest in new experimental music and free improvisation and actively seeks interdisciplinary collaboration with artists from various fields. Recently, she was selected to premiere a solo viola piece by S. Gerup at Dark Music Days 2026 through Northern Connection. Þórhildur is a member of Tríó Sól ensemble and Elja chamber orchestra. She has performed as a soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and regularly plays as an assistant with the same orchestra. Þórhildur studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music with Asbjørn Nørgaard, Tim Frederiksen and Lars Anders Tomter and at KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent, Belgium with Diederik Suys.
Stephanie Lamprea (Colombia / USA / Scotland)
Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea is an architect of new sounds and expressions as a performer, recitalist, curator, composer, and improviser, specializing in contemporary-classical repertoire. Trained as an operatic coloratura, Stephanie uses her voice as a mechanism of avant-garde performance art, creating “maniacal shifts of vocal production and character… like an icepick through the skull” (composer Jason Eckardt). She has been praised by Opera News Magazine for "her iconoclasm and fearless commitment to new sounds" and for her "impressive display of extended vocal techniques, in the honorable tradition of such forward-looking artists as Bethany Beardslee, Cathy Berberian and Joan La Barbara." Her work has been described as “stunning, harrowing, agonising, sonorous..." by The Observer, "divinely deranged" by the Herald Scotland, and that she “sings so expressively and slowly with ever louder and higher-pitched voice, that the inclined listener [has] shivers down their back and tension flows into the last row." (Halberstadt.de)
Hilde Marie Holsen (Norway)
Hilde Marie Holsen is a Norwegian composer and musician who works at the intersection of acoustic and electronic sound. Processing the trumpet through live electronics, she creates immersive compositions that merge the instrument’s timbre with textural and ambient layers of sound. Her practice bridges contemporary, jazz, and experimental music, expanding the trumpet’s expressive range through improvisation and signal manipulation. Holsen’s work traces the thresholds between form and atmosphere, establishing a distinctive voice within a new generation of electroacoustic artists.