Violist Jing Chen resides in Solingen, Germany where she balances her work in music management and new music performance projects. “Different Kinds of Love” combines her fascination with literature, anthropology, and music. Having lived and worked all over the world, she sees a common thread through the lives of people, regardless of backgrounds.

She grew up between the South Side of Chicago and the almost too quiet suburbs where access to music education and performances were hard to come by. This disparity in arts access drives much of her work, including “DKL.” While in Germany, she is currently focused on her concert exam for her Masters in New Music at Folkwang Universität der Künste and her other solo and ensemble collaborations.

Lucy Humphris is a British trumpeter; a soloist and chamber musician who specialises in performing contemporary music. A regular guest of Ensemble Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, and The Monochrome Project, ​she has a passion for pushing boundaries as an instrumentalist and working closely with composers. In 2023 she released her debut album Obscurus, with pianist Harry Rylance, exploring themes of obscurity and the hidden. She is an ever-curious musician, and has collaborated with artists and musicians across genres, from folk to electronic music; in all sorts of venues - from some of Europe’s greatest concert halls to Orcadian ruins and Napoleonic spiral staircases.

Rie Watanabe is a percussionist specializing in contemporary, improvised music, and music theatre. Alongside her work as a freelance musician with various ensembles, such as Ensemble Musikfabrik and Ensemble Resonanz, she leads her own groups and projects, including the Honda Yuya Archive, TRAVEL MUSICA, and Ensemble DEHIO. In these projects, she pursues close, personal collaboration with composers and direct engagement with audiences.

Hannah A. Barnes (*1997) is a Montréal-based composer and conductor. Her work centres on crafting structured yet dynamic, multi-faceted musical worlds characterized by mercurial, off-kilter, and seemingly incompatible materials. These works straddle tension and expression for both performers and listeners. Barnes' main concerns are (re)defining Modernism in the twenty-first century, investigating manifestations of complexity and polyphony, and addressing questions of syntax and semantics within a non-narrative musical language that encompasses both pitch- and noise-based materials. Having been described by a performer as composing “alien music,” she embraces the strange, unpredictable and mysterious in art of all kinds. Holding degrees in composition from DePaul University (both Master of Music with Distinction 2021 and Bachelors of Music with High Honours 2019) with additional studies in conducting, she is currently a Doctor of Music student at McGill University, studying with Philippe Leroux.

Kyungjin Lim (*1991) is an active international composer born in Seoul, South Korea and based in Hamburg, Germany. He received early training in piano, theory, and composition with Sunhee Cho and studied composition with Kyungmee Rhee at Hanyang University and continued in the Master of Music program at HfMDK Mannheim with Sidney Corbett. Since 2015 he has been artistic director of Ensemble SONOR XXI and is currently completing his concert exam in composition at HfMT Hamburg with Gordon Kampe. His music has been featured in international festivals in Europe and abroad. His first opera work, Das Ebenbild (Spieltriebe 8), was commissioned by Theater Osnabrück in 2019, and in 2026, he was commissioned for a following work by Theater Münster. He was awarded the publisher’s prize at the 1st Impronta Ensemble Composition Competition in 2020, and his works are published by Impronta Edition UG and BabelScores. Past ensemble collaborations have included Ensemble SONOR XXI, Ensemble DCMF, Ensemble TIMF, Ensemble E-MEX, Two Button Brass, Ensemble Resonanz, Ensemble RADAR, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Motocontrario Ensemble, Reactive Ensemble, the Chungbuk Philharmonic Orchestra, the Sinfonieorchester TonArt Heidelberg, and the Symphoniker Hamburg.

Philipp C. Mayer is a composer and improvisational musician. He studied composition with Isabel Mundry at the HMTM Munich, with Stefano Gervasoni at the CNSM de Paris (as part of an Erasmus exchange in 2015/2016), and with Martin Schüttler and Joanna Bailie at the HMDK Stuttgart. He is currently completing his concert exam at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln with Brigitta Muntendorf. He has written music for the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Quartetto Maurice, the Quasar Quartet, and many others. Recently, he has been working extensively in the field of music theater and drama (productions at the Staatstheater Kassel, Staatstheater Nürnberg, Staatstheater Mainz, Schauspiel Frankfurt, Volkstheater Wien, ORBIT Festival Cologne), with a particular interest in working with various media and interdisciplinary processes. Mayer was a scholarship recipient of the German National Academic Foundation from 2017 to 2021. He currently lives in Cologne.

Roni Glaser is a composer of instrumental and vocal music. Born in London and based in Berlin, he has also lived in Japan and Spain. His music strives to evoke the natural dynamism of performers through a deep appreciation of the physiology and materiality involved in the practice of sound production. Each piece invites the listener into new sound worlds with vivid atmospheres with surprises of sharp humour. He studied composition with Mark Barden, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf and Francisco Martín Quintero, and is currently completing a master’s degree at HfM Detmold. His music has been performed worldwide, including festivals such as impuls and SONV, by performers such as Mivos Quartet. He plays classical guitar and is a shihan (master) in the Gokū shakuhachi lineage.