Spire Artists | 2004-2008+

Marcus Davidson [Organ & Piano]

Marcus Davidson is a composer, pianist/organist and musical director who studied composition with Vic Hoyland and Rhian Samuel. He has written and arranged for TV, radio and theatre, and specialises in accompanying for Ballet and Contemporary Dance. Recently performed works include 'Opposites Attract' for Organ performed by Charles Matthews at La Batie Festival, Geneva Cathedral, 2004. 'Cyclo-fantasia' for solo Piano, performed by Jose Senitio at The Warehouse, London, 2005, and 'Om Mani' for tenor and Organ performed by Robert Millner and ‘Standing Wave for Organ and Delay’ at the Gas Festival Stockholm 2005. In 1999 he was commissioned to write the finale for the Festival of Classical Greek Dance at the Royal Albert Hall in November of that year.

Leif Elggren [Electronics]

Linköping-born Leif Elggren is a contemporary artist, active for over 25 years. His work runs the gamut of conceptual art, making Elggren something of a Swedish Marcel Duchamp. He thrives upon stark minimalism, yet there is a vivid humor and unique approach to ideological and political concerns that separates his work from that of his colleagues. Elggren became much more visible in the States through his Firework Edition label, a carefully curated distributor of print publications, records, and videos of Elggren-related endeavors.

Christian Fennesz [Electronics]

Christian Fennesz uses guitar and laptop to create electronic soundscapes of enormous range and complexity. "Imagine the electric guitar severed from cliché and all of its physical limitations, shaping a bold new musical language." [City Newspaper, USA]. His densely layered compositions - anything but sterile computer experiments - have an inherent naturalism, evocative of light and atmosphere. His latest album, 'Venice' [Touch, 2004] has been hailed as a masterpiece, and is by some distance the label's best-selling CD.

Cor Fuhler [Piano]

Amsterdam-based Cor Fuhler works in the field of electronic and improvised music. Piano is his main acoustic instrument, and he seeks to take it musically beyond usual perceptions, specializing in sustained sounds with use of various string stimulators: 12 ebows, rotating threads, spinning disks. Fuhler also manipulates sounds from turntables, linguaphones, springs etc and filters them through an analogue synth: the EMS Synthi AKS, his main electronic instrument. Curently he is working on a new analogue set up: the NIGLO 1. He often builds his own instruments/ instalations/ modifications such as the Keyolin: a violin with keys.

Leif Inge [Installation]

Leif Inge is a conceptual artist whose installation works have incorporated various media including ice, light installation, earthworks, stained glass, as well as sound. Recent work has explored the possibilities of stretching sound over extended periods of time to create beautiful but thrilling and powerful soundscapes. The recent ‘9 Beet Stretch' - a 24 hour long concert with the time-stretched 9th Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven – was an epic and compelling sound sculpture that reserved widespread critical acclaim. Inge lives and works in Oslo, Norway.

Philip Jeck [Turntables & Sampler]

Philip Jeck is perhaps best known for his highly subversive work 'Vinyl Requiem' (Time Out Performance Award, 1993) with Lol Sargent, a performance for 180 Dansette record players, 12 slide- projectors and 2 movie-projectors. In his performances, recordings, and collaborations Jeck combines samples, loops and scratches from various analogue sources to create complex, highly involving and often moving soundscapes. He has released 4 albums on Touch since 1995.

Charles Matthews [Organ & Programmer]

Charles Matthews was born in 1966 and studied at the Royal College of Music, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar. His teachers have included Beryl Tichbon, Gwilym Isaac, David Pettit, Nicholas Danby, Patricia Carroll, Dr. Richard Marlow and Charles Spinks. From 1987 to 1989 he worked almost exclusively as a church organist. Since this time he has pursued a diverse and international career as organist, pianist, composer and teacher. In Spain his activities have mainly involved performances of piano chamber music; he also works each July on the Matisse International Music Course in El Escorial.Charles Matthews has won many awards, perhaps most notably in 1999 the first prize in the Ferenc Liszt Organ Competition in Budapest. His CD recordings present piano solos and chamber music by Sir Arnold Bax (1994, Olympia) and an organ recital from the Madeleine Church in Paris (2002, Priory). Currently he teaches organ at the Birmingham Conservatoire and is Organist of St. Catharine’s Church, Chipping Campden, England. In 2005 he inaugurated the new organ at the Auditorio in Tenerife, Canary Islands.

Robert Millner [Voice]

Operatic tenor Robert Millner studied singing with Thomas Hemsley, Paul Hamburger and Franco Corelli. Touring internationally, he has sung the roles of Alfredo for Music Theatre London's Olivier Award-nominated production of La Traviata, Ferrando (Così fan tutte), Rodolfo (La Bohème) and Eisenstein (Der Fledermaus) among others. At the Hermitage in St Petersburg, he performed Britten's Serenade and he sang Turiddu in the inaugural performance of Cavalleria Rusticana at the Vietnam Opera House in Ho Chi Minh City.


Amy Moore [Voice]

BJNilsen [Electronics & Organ]

Born in 1975. He has been active with experimental music since the early 90´s with various constellations. For the past 5 years he has been releasing records as Hazard on the UK labels Ash International and Touch, making music and sound for documentary film, television and commercials. He is focused on the sound of nature and its effect on humans, field recordings and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound, often electronically treated.

Henrik Rylander [Electronics]

Henrik Rylander was born 1966 in Malmö, Sweden and he lives and works in Göteborg, Sweden. With Joachim Nordwall he formed The Skull Defekts, and is also a founder-member of Union Carbide and Audio Laboratory.


and the production team:

Mike Harding [Producer, Curator, Programmer & Conductor]

He has been running Touch with Jon Wozencroft since 1981 and is the Curator and Producer of Spire.

Jana Winderen [Assistant Producer]

Studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London with a background in mathmatics and chemistry from the University in Oslo. She has since 1993 worked as an artist, curator and producer, initiating and producing several independent international art projects. Her most recent production was the seminar: Sound in the White Cube at UKS in colaboration with Maia Urstad, Freq_out 2 at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and Generator.x conference at Atelier Nord. Her most recent art work is an interactive sound installation Hard Rain, recently exhibited at The Idea of North, at Dalhousie Art Gallery in Halifax, Canada.

Jon Wozencroft [Consultancy & Design]

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