Nadia Sirota and Liam Byrne

Violist Nadia Sirota’s varied career spans solo performances, chamber music, and broadcasting. In all branches of her artistic life she aims to open classical music up to a broader audience. Nadia’s singular sound and expressive execution have served as muse to dozens of composers, including Nico Muhly, David Lang, Bryce Dessner, Missy Mazzoli, and Marcos Balter. Nadia won a 2015 Peabody Award, broadcasting’s highest honor, for her podcast Meet the Composer, “the world’s best contemporary classical music podcast” (Pitchfork), which deftly profiles some of the most interesting musical thinkers living today.

As a soloist, Nadia has appeared with acclaimed orchestras around the world, including the Detroit Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Spanish National Orchestra, and the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France. To date, she has released four albums of commissioned music, most recently, Tessellatum, Donnacha Dennehy’s groundbreaking work for viola and microtonal viola da gamba consort, featuring Liam Byrne.

Nadia is a member of the chamber sextet yMusic and has lent her sound to recording and concert projects by such artists and songwriters as Anohni, The National, Arcade Fire, and Paul Simon. In 2013 she won Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Prize, awarded to pioneering artists and scholars with an emerging international profile. She received her undergraduate and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School, studying with Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory, and Hsin-Yun Huang.

Liam Byrne spends most of his time playing either very old or very new music on the viol. An obsession with the instrument’s most obscure 16th and 17th century repertoire is a recurring theme in his work, whether in devising experimental baroque performance installations for the Victoria & Albert museum, or in collaboration with the Appalachian fiddler Cleek Schrey, or creating new electronic works with Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurðsson.

Liam’s solo performances frequently combine old viol music with new works written for him by composers such as David Lang, Nico Muhly, and Edmund Finnis, among many others. Summer of 2017 also sees the release of two massive studio-based works: Donnacha Dennehy’s 40-minute long Tessellatum for multi-tracked viol and viola (with Nadia Sirota), and Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Dissonance, a 23-minute deconstruction and explosion of a Mozart string quartet using many layers of Liam’s improvisation. Both are released on the Icelandic label Bedroom Community.

In June 2017, Liam was commissioned by the Victoria & Albert museum to create a site-specific sound installation for their new Courtyard Gallery, which resulted in the 8-hour long piece Partials, an exploration of the space’s resonance derived entirely from upper partial harmonics played on the viol. In 2015 Liam also collaborated with Nico Muhly on a sound installation for the National Gallery’s Soundscapes exhibition, and in 2016 was commissioned by the Dulwich Picture Gallery to make an immersive sound work in their Mausoleum, in response to two 17th century paintings by Gerrit Dou.

Over the years, Liam has worked closely with a wide variety of musicians, from Damon Albarn to Emma Kirkby, Nils Frahm and Shara Nova (My Brightest Diamond), and is a frequent guest of new music ensembles Stargaze, the London Contemporary Orchestra, and Crash Ensemble. With a background in Historical Performance and degrees from Indiana and Oxford Universities, Liam has played and recorded with many of Europe’s leading Early Music ensembles, including the Huelgas Ensemble, Dunedin Consort, The Sixteen, i Fagiolini, and the viol consorts Phantasm, Concordia, and most notably Fretwork, with whom he toured and recorded extensively for several years.

Born in Dublin in 1970, Donnacha Dennehy has had work featured in festivals and venues around the world, such as the Edinburgh International Festival, Royal Opera House London, Carnegie Hall New York, The Barbican London, The Wigmore Hall London, BAM New York, Tanglewood Festival, Holland Festival, Kennedy Center, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK (which opened its 2012 Festival with a portrait concert devoted to Dennehy’s music), Dublin Theatre Festival, Prototype Festival (New York), ISCM World Music Days, Bang On A Can, Ultima Festival in Oslo, Musica Viva Lisbon, the Saarbrucken Festival, and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival.

Dennehy has received commissions from Dawn Upshaw, the Kronos Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, Third Coast Percussion, Icebreaker (London), the Doric String Quartet (London), Contact (Toronto), Lucilin (Luxembourg), Bang On A Can, Orkest de Ereprijs (Netherlands), Fidelio Trio, Percussion Group of the Hague, RTE National Symphony Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, BBC Ulster Orchestra and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players among others. Collaborations include pieces with the writers Colm Tóibín (The Dark Places) and Enda Walsh (including the opera The Last Hotel, and a forthcoming opera The Second Violinist), the choreographers Yoshiko Chuma and Shobana Jeyasingh, and the visual artist John Gerrard.  In 2010 his single-movement orchestral piece Crane was ‘recommended’ by the International Rostrum of Composers.

Returning to Ireland after studies abroad in the USA, France and Holland, Dennehy founded Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s now-renowned new music group, in 1997. Alongside the singers Dawn Upshaw and Iarla O’Lionáird, Crash Ensemble features on the 2011 Nonesuch release of Dennehy’s music, entitled Grá agus Bás.  NPR named it one of its “50 favorite albums’’ (in any genre) of 2011.  In October 2014, RTE Lyric FM released a portrait CD of Dennehy’s orchestral music. Other releases include a number by NMC Records in London, and Cantaloupe in New York.  Previously a tenured lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, Donnacha was appointed a Global Scholarat Princeton University in the Autumn of 2012.  He was also appointed composer-in-residence for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in Texas (2013-14).  He joined the music faculty at Princeton University in 2014.

STEVEN MERTENS is a director and animator who has worked in many forms, from traditional stop motion animation to 3D motion graphics, live action and design. Steven has directed music videos for artists including Regina Spektor, Cedris Gervais, Dan Auerbach, Nickel Creek, Louis the Child/K Flay, Deca, Elysian Fields and The Subways.

Steven was a featured artist in the Tribeca Film Festival’s New Online Work (“NOW”) program, which recognizes creators of fresh online work and highlights the next generation of online storytellers. Steven got his start as an animator by using the “multi-plane” method to create fantastic landscapes from cut out paper. His work explores surreal subjects, often with roots in science fiction.

Before starting his career in animation, Steven toured extensively as a bassist with The Moldy Peaches, Adam Green and Here We Go Magic, among others. This background allows Steven to seamlessly connect his visual creations to music.

Originally from New York, Steven now resides in Los Angeles.