CoDI ELECTRONICS: Swansea Laptop Orchestra

Dr Jenn Kirby is a composer, performer, lecturer and music technologist. She teaches music technology and composition at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Her output includes contemporary instrumental composition, electroacoustic music, sound art, noise music, laptop orchestra performance, musical theatre and solo live electronics. Jenn is very active in the performance of electronic music as a performer and a software developer. She builds software and re-purposes games controllers as musical interfaces to create and perform theatrical and often humorous live electronic music.

Simon Kilshaw is a composer, performer, sonic artist, songwriter, producer, software designer, inventor and instrument builder, systems programmer, Digital Creator through coding. Simon invents new musical instruments using a wide variety of digital technologies, from sensors and tracking hardware to pure coded environments, and composes new repertoire for them. Simon describes his research as "Digital Lutherie". Simon is the Programme Director for Music Technology at University of Wales Trinity Saint David. His work is inspired by the early 20th century pioneers of electronic noise machines, particularly the Italian Futurist movement.

First introduced to composition by Dr Dhamabutra and Dr Premananda at Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok, Thailand), Poumpak Charuprakorn went on to obtain his Master of Music in Composition from the Royal College of Music (London).

His compositions have been read and performed in Thailand, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom which also offered him the opportunities to work with many professional musicians and ensembles including Sara Minelli (flute), Mieko Kanno (violin), Aisha Orazbayeva (violin), Sarah Dacey (soprano), Sian Cameron (mezzo-soprano), Gwenllian Llyre (harp), Ensemble Suono Giallo, Trio Anima, Carducci Quartet, and Riot Ensemble.

Poumpak recently participated in ilSuono Academy of Young Composers and Valencia International Performance Academy and Festival.

Poumpak, supported by the Office of Higher Education Commission of Thailand, is currently pursuing a PhD in Composition at Cardiff University under the supervision of Dr Arlene Sierra. His research explores the use of non-motivic development and the organisation of harmonic space and rhythmic intensity in musical composition.

Kirsten is an award winning, female composer currently completing her studies in composition at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff. She balances her compositional work with her work as a vocalist, appearing predominantly as a session vocalist in her own and others work. Kirsten has recently scored short films for companies such as Cloth Cat Animation, who's work appears on channels such as Disney or Netflix, whilst her other work has appeared on channels such as BBC 2 Wales. Kirsten is currently building a new multi sensory, children’s installation with sponsorship from Help Musicians UK through their Fusion Fund. The installation will open at RWCMD in May.

Tanya Dower works with sound and music as a therapeutic tool for health and wellbeing and creates electronic and natural soundscapes that very often reflect the environment and surrounding landscape of the South Wales valleys. Using natural and electronic sounds including voice, she has composed for inclusive theatre, international multimedia and local community exhibitions.

Daniel Soley introduces a new work infusing sound with performance art for the Swansea Laptop Orchestra. This narrative solo feature represents the artist’s first explorations with the eye-catching Gametrak ‘Tether’ controller, handling spatial data in self-coded programming and implementing interpretive choreography to access a novel medium for sonic performance. Together it allows gestures and movement, made at the discretion of the performer, to generate, reveal and manipulate a soundworld inspired by a day-dream, as the audience witness a bewildered castaway struggle against fate in a hopeless vessel.

Richard McReynolds is a Cardiff based composer and sound artist.  Born in Belfast, he left to study a music at Liverpool Hope in 2008.  Remaining there to complete his Masters he moved to Cardiff to study for his PhD in music composition supervised by Arlene Sierra.  He has had tuition under Ian Percy, Martin Bresnick, Johannes Kreidler, Marc Andre and Zygmunt Krauze.

A composer of both electronic and acoustic works his current output examines interaction in electro-acoustic music with recent studies at IRCAM informing his practice.  Richard has had his music work-shopped with a variety of ensembles including The Sixteen, Liverpool Philharmonic Performers, The Carducci Quartet, Rarescale and the Lontano Ensemble along with performances of his music by Psappha and the E-Mex Ensemble.  He is also passionate about promoting the collaboration between different artistic practices, organising concerts and collaborative events between composers and artists from other media.

Following a hiatus, Alan Chamberlain’s recent activities have included the performance of The Gift at Oxford House, London as part of Audio Mostly, composed using software produced by Dave De Roure, University of Oxford. This performance has been used in presentations at the Turing Institute, the Digital Music Research Network (London) and Lausanne University, Switzerland. Alan composed and recorded the music for Into the Looking Glass film, which was awarded a British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) at the British Film Institute 2018. He is currently working on other soundtracks to be premier at the Art and Archaeological Imagination Conference, Aberystwyth 2019.