RARESCALE - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Artistic Director, Alto / Bass Flute
• Artistic Director, Alto / Bass Flute .More

Carla Rees is a British low flutes player, composer and arranger, working to raise the profile of her instruments through research, performance and collaboration. Her career incorporates solo and chamber music performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, and recordings, including a discography of over 30 CDs. She has premiered several hundred works for low flutes, many of which are now published by her company Tetractys Publishing and is currently working on a project to create contemporary repertoire for baroque flute. She has nearly 100 published arrangements and compositions, including her 2016 work for solo piccolo, Nightsong, which has been performed in the UK, France, Germany, Poland, USA and Canada and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3. She is Artistic Director of the contemporary chamber music ensemble rarescale, with whom she has performed in the UK and internationally and appeared on BBC Radio 3, and Director of its associated ensemble, rarescale Flute Academy. She has a PhD from the Royal College of Music in London. She became the first Professor of Low Flutes and Contemporary Flute at the Royal Academy of Music in September 2021, teaches the flute at Royal Holloway University of London and is Music Programme Leader for the Open College of Arts where she designed and now runs an innovative online music degree course. She has taught masterclasses and workshops for flute players and composers at some of the world's leading institutions, including the Juilliard School in New York and USC in Los Angeles. Recent performances include in Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Japan and Brazil, as well as at Café Oto, Iklectik and the Coronet Theatre in London, and the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast. During the pandemic she has been working on telematic improvisation systems and has given a number of transatlantic performances streamed on YouTube. Carla plays Kingma System flutes, made for her by Eva Kingma, Bickford Brannen and Lev Levit. She is Editor of the British Flute Society's magazine, PAN, and Chair of the New Music Advisory committee for the National Flute Association of America.

Job Titles:

• Associate
• Associate Composer
• Associate Composer .More

Claes Biehl was born in 1978. He studied composition with York Höller, Music Theory with Reinhardt Kretschmer, piano with Michael Endres, and computer music with Clarence Barlow at the Hochschule für Musik Köln (Cologne). In 2003 Claes was awarded the composition prize of the HfM Köln, and later that year graduated with "high honours" from the conservatory. Other awards include the Cobbett and Hurlstone Prize and the Theodore Holland Prize in Composition. In 2004 Claes embarked as a student on the MMus course at the Royal College of Music, London where he studied with David Sawer. After completing this course in 2006, Claes studied with Dai Fujikura, David Sawer, William Mival, and Michael Oliva for a Doctor of Music degree (dissertation topic: "Microtonality in the Post-Spectral Era") which he was awarded in 2011. His music has been performed in Europe and North America at venues such as the Southbank Centre, the Cadogan Hall, the Mercatorhalle Duisburg, the UK Microfest and UC San Diego, and is published by Augemus Musikverlag. As a researcher, he has given lectures and conference presentations at the Royal College of Music London, Coventry University, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and at the documa Summer School. Since 2009 Claes has been the associate composer of the ensemble rarescale. In collaboration with artistic director Carla Rees and other members of the ensemble he has been researching and developing new concepts of writing microtonal music for acoustic instruments. In 2011 Claes joined the artist collective 4Arts Krefeld which specialises in developing works of art based on intermediate synthesis concepts. Their first collaborative work "Der Himmel ist ein Nomade" (featuring text, paintings, videos, live and electronic music as well as aspects of spatialization) was premiered in 2012 to great acclaim. Claes currently works as a freelance composer and teaches composition and music theory. Upcoming projects include a new work for rarescale and the incidental music for a new production of Max Frisch's play "Biografie: Ein Spiel" for the Aachen Theater.

Tom Armstrong introduces his work, To The Measures Fall, for baroque flute and guitar