Miquel Bernat
Miquel Bernat received his musical education at the conservatories of Valencia, Madrid, Brussels and Rotterdam and at the Aspen Summer Music Festival (USA). He was granted the "Premio Extraordinario Fin de Carrera" in Madrid, the Special Prize for Percussion at the Dutch Gaudeamus Competition, the 2nd prize at the Aspen Nakamichi Competition in USA and the award for "researchers and Cultural Creators of the 2016 BBVA Foundation” for the promotion of the collection Marimba Concerto Studies published in 2017. The 2nd volume will be publish in 2025 and currently is working on the Vibraphone Concerto Studies with the support of Casa Mateus Foundation and the Portuguese Culture Ministry.
Musician of great versatility, he has played with the Orquesta Ciutat de Barcelona and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, as well as the Ensembles Ictus, Trio Allures, Duo Contemporain, among others.
Soloist in numerous performances, he has premiered the Concerto for Marimba and 15 instruments by David del Puerto at the Ars Musica Festival in Brussels and at the Ensems Festival in Valencia, Spain. In 2002 he premiered Campos Magnéticos by Cesar Camarero with the Orquesta Nacional of Oporto, Portugal and the Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, Mantis Walk in a Metal Space by Javier Alvarez for Steel Drums with Ictus IRCAM 2003; Sombrío by Luis de Pablo at “Música de Hoy” Madrid; Night by Mauricio Sotelo Casa da Música of Porto 2007; Controlador del Univeso (2021) by Arturo Fuentes with Cepromusic in México City.
Formerly a professor at the Rotterdam and Brussels conservatories, he is currently engaged intensively in pedagogical activities at the “Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya” in Barcelona, Spain and at the "Escola Superior de Musica do Porto" (Portugal).
In Porto he founded DRUMMING: Grupo de Percussao, which was selected as Resident Music Group of Porto 2001 Cultural Capital of Europe. DRUMMING-GP has also performed numerous concerts in Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Russia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, South Africa, Argentina, Chile and Brazil.
He is regularly invited to the most reputed international contemporary music festivals and has performed extensively with various dance companies, having performed (also as soloist) in Just Before, Drumming Live, RAIN Live, Steve Reich Evening by the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and her company Rosas, Ballet de l´Opera de Paris, and in “Psappha” by the choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti with the Ballet Gulbenkian of Lisbon.
A passionate performer of new music, Miguel Bernat has worked with numerous composers (many works have been dedicated to him) thus contributing to the expansion and constant evolution of the contemporary repertoire for percussion.
Manuel Campos
Manuel Campos (1971) has been one of the leading performers on the contemporary Portuguese percussion scene for many years, and since 1994 has been Professor and coordinator of the Percussion Department at the Porto School of Music and Performing Arts (ESMAE).
Manuel began his musical education at the age of 11 at the Music School of the “Sociedade Filarmónica Vestiariense Monsenhor José Cacella” and the Escola Profissional de Música de Espinho. For his outstanding artistic and academic achievements, Manuel was awarded a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to study at the Würzburg School of Music (Höchschule für Musik Würzburg, Germany), under the guidance of professors Siegfried Fink and Mark Lutz. His went on to complete his studies at CODARTS (Conservatorium Rotterdam, Netherlands), under the direction of Robert van Sice and Miguel Bernat.
Manuel currently divides his time between teaching and a busy career as an in demand performer. Co-founder of the internationally recognized percussion group ‘Drumming - Grupo de Percussão”, Manuel is also a solo percussionist of the Remix Ensemble Casa da Música, which he has been a member of since its creation in 2000 as part of Porto 2001 - European Capital of Culture. The Remix Ensemble has grown into one of the great European and world reference groups in contemporary music, performing regularly on the biggest concert halls in Portugal and abroad, and working with many todays important musical figures.
Internationally, as part of the Remix Ensemble, Manuel has performed in Valencia, Rotterdam, Huddersfield, Barcelona, Strasbourg, Paris, Orléans, Bourges, Reims, Antwerp, Madrid, Budapest, Norrköping, Berlin, Milan, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Vienna.
As a freelance percussionist Manuel has worked on many solo, orchestral and chamber projects, and has been engaged regularly as artistic director of numerous projects linked to musical interpretation. He has collaborated with many of Portugal´s most prestigious musical instituions including the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Oporto National Orchestra, Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestras and in Spain with JONDE (Spanish National Youth Orchestra).
He has conducted and directed masterclasses and advanced courses for percussionists and served on juries for music competitions such as, in 2009, the 1st International Chamber Music Competition in the city of Alcobaça, in 2010, the jury for the National Prize for Young Musicians and, in 2023, the Young Musicians Prize (Portuguese Musical Youth) for Chamber Music.
Rui Penha
Composer, intermediate artist and performer of electroacoustic music, Rui Penha was born in Porto in 1981. He completed a PhD in Music (Composition) at the University of Aveiro.
His music has been performed and recorded by musicians such as the Arditti Quartet, Peter Evans, Remix Ensemble and Orquestra Gulbenkian. He was the founder and curator of Digitópia (Casa da Música) and has a great interest in the relationship between music and technology. His recent projects include interfaces for musical expression, software for sound spatialization, interactive installations, musical robots, improvising automatons and educational software. In recent years, he has focused in particular on the role of artistic creation in an academic context.
He has taught at several Portuguese higher education institutions (FEUP, DeCA-UA, ESART, ULP), and is currently an Adjunct Professor at ESMAE and Researcher at CESEM. More information at http://ruipenha.pt.
Bruno Pereira
With a degree in Singing from the School of Music and Performing Arts of Polytechnic of Porto (ESMAE), he joined the Vlaamse Opera Studio (Belgium) in the season of 2009 and the Opera Studio of the São Carlos National Theatre in the season of 2011. He studied with Fernanda Correia and Oliveira Lopes and took master classes with A. Salgado, H. Zadek, L. Sarti, M. Zampieri, P. MacMahon, L. Siew-Tuan and Sue McCulloch, with whom he worked for several years in the UK.
He has sung under the direction of conductors such as Niksa Bareza, J.L. Borges Coelho, M. Tardue, P. Herreweghe, Y. Nézet-Séguin, F. Rathé, I. Maylemans and others with ensembles such as Orquestra do Norte, Filarmonia das Beiras, Orquestra do Algarve, Orquestra Nacional do Porto, Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa, Grupo de Câmara do Porto, Spectra Ensemble, Clepsidra, Casco Phil, Collegium Vocale, hr Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, Rotterdam Symphonic Orchestra, Orchestre des Champs-Elysées, Arte mínima, among others. After more than a decade of intense activity in the field of opera and lyric singing, he has been developing a regular activity in the area of contemporary performance with the creation and presentation of various experimental works in collaboration with artists such as Girilal Baars, Dimitris Andrikopoulos, Horácio Tomé-Marques, Rui Penha, Rodrigo Malvar, António Aguiar, Telmo Marques, Oyvind Brandstegg, Mário Azevedo, Fernando José Pereira, Helena Marinho, Luis Bittencourt and others. In these diverse contexts, which characterise his career, he has performed in Portugal, Germany, Spain, France, Belgium, Holland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Bosnia and Turkey.
He also has a degree in Music Production and Technology and a postgraduate qualification in opera and cultural management. Has completed his PhD at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and is a researcher at i2ADS (Institute for the Arts, Design and Society), where he investigates the voice as a device for aesthetic interaction in contemporary performance practices with a strong focus in improvisation. He teaches at ESMAE where he coordinates the Master in Sound Arts and Technologies.
Michael Jones
Michael Jones is a percussionist and conductor based in Southern California. He has been described by Fanfare Magazine as a “phenomenal player” whose “restraint… carries the music through with otherworldly sounds.” His work focuses on championing new pieces of the 21st century as well as works from the 20th century avant-garde. He is particularly interested in touch, resonance, and the enchanted currents of sounding objects. Composers he has worked closely with include David Macbride, Kevin Good, pluto pell, and Matt Sargent among others. He has performed at the LA Philharmonic’s Noon-to-Midnight Festival, The Ojai Music Festival, The Other Minds Festival, Monday Evening Concerts, The Dog Star Orchestra Festival, and the Hartford New Music Festival.
He’s completed residencies at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Alberta), The Nief Norf Summer Festival (Tennessee), and others. He’s appeared in the past as a member of the Hartford New Music Collective, the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra, the Other Minds Ensemble, the William Winant Percussion Group, Empyrean Ensemble, ECHOI Ensemble, and red fish blue fish. He regularly performs as member and co-founder of the flute/percussion duo Offscreen, with Alexander Ishov, and the piano/percussion project Duo Refracta, with Shaoai Ashley Zhang.
Michael's scholarship focuses on the intersections of 20th-century modernism, instrumental ontology, and continental philosophy. He has presented work at the Nief Norf Festival's Research Summit and the Transplanted Roots Percussion Research Symposium. He currently serves on the Percussive Arts Society's New Music/Research Committee. In 2024 he joined the executive committee of Transplanted Roots, and will help to produce its 2025 conference in Porto, Portugal.
Michael endorses Marimba One vibraphones and marimbas.
Rebecca Lloyd-Jones
Rebecca Lloyd-Jones is a Lecturer at Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, a Marimba One Education Artist, and the Artistic Director of Synergy Percussion. Praised as “captivating” (San Diego Union-Tribune), she has performed at major events such as the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, IMPULS (Graz), soundSCAPE (Italy) and held residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Canada. Rebecca has performed with the PARTCH ensemble, Red Fish Blue Fish and was an adjudicator for the IPEA International Percussion Competition in Hong Kong (2024).
With an extensive research portfolio, Rebecca has received funding from the American Australian Arts Fund, the Creative Arts Research Institute (CARI), and was awarded the 2025 Elizabeth Wood Musicology Research Fellowship from the University of Adelaide. She presented her research at the Transplanted Roots Percussion Research Symposium 2017-2019 and served as the artistic producer for the 2022 symposium in San Diego, USA. As a composer, Rebecca’s works are released on labels including Populist (Los Angeles), New Focus Recordings, and MADE NOW MUSIC, and her pedagogical compositions have been published in the AMEB percussion syllabus.
Rebecca graduated from the Victorian College of Arts with the Desma Woolcock award for academic excellence, received a Master of Music Research from the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, and holds a Doctorate from the University of California San Diego with Distinguished Professor Steven Schick.
Karen Yu
A sound artist and curator based in Hong Kong, Karen Yu’s interests revolve around improvisation with sound objects and bodily movement, and how artistic practices and personal contributions could weave people together in a space through collaborations. With a background in contemporary percussion performance, Yu is currently the Artistic Director of Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong, a Co-Founder of the chamber percussion group, The Up:Strike Project, and an Associate Musician of Hong Kong New Music Ensemble.
She was an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Seoul Dance Center, and commissioned recently by the Hong Kong Arts Centre & Castlefield Gallery, Axel Vervoordt Gallery Hong Kong, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, and Hong Kong West Kowloon Cultural District Freespace. Karen Yu obtained a Bachelor and a Master of Music from McGill University. She is an instrumental instructor at the University of Hong Kong and part-time lecturer at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts School of Theatre & Entertainment Arts.