BIO: Henry Meng is 11 years old, a student at Takapuna Normal Intermediate, where his favourite subjects are Maths and Writing.  He was born in Auckland, and speaks Mandarin and English.  He started learning the piano at age 4, and also learnt the violin for several years.  He has been composing for many years, and has already written over 150 works, including piano solos, violin sonatas, piano trios and orchestral works. His favourite composers at the moment are Chopin and Grieg.

 

BIO: Alex Taylor is one of New Zealand’s leading young composers of orchestral and chamber music. His works have been featured in concerts in New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, America and Europe, performed by groups such as the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and 175 East. As well as composing, Alex is a multi-instrumentalist, poet, critic, lecturer, conductor and impresario. He has performed across a range of vocal and instrumental genres, including as lead vocalist for the Blackbird Ensemble, as concertmaster for the Auckland Youth Orchestra on their European tour in 2011, and as the Sorceress in his own recomposition of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Frances Moore’s Unstuck Opera. After studying English Literature and Music, Alex completed a Masters in Composition with First Class Honours under the Supervision of Eve de Castro-Robinson and John Elmsly in 2011. He has a special interest in the relationship between words and music, having set poetry by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Wallace Stevens, Stephanie Christie and Iain Sharp, among others. His choral work “two years later”, a setting of the great gay poet John Wieners, was performed by the New Zealand National Youth Choir and at the ISCM Musicarama Festival in Hong Kong. He has collaborated across art forms – for example with visual artist Michael Smither, and with theatre-maker and actor Renee Lyons. In 2012 Alex was the youngest recipient to date of the SOUNZ Contemporary Award, New Zealand’s most prestigious composition prize. He has since won a number of significant honours including the 2013 CANZ Trust Fund Award, and representing New Zealand at the 2014 Asian Composers League Festival in Tokyo. Recent projects include a critically acclaimed Bassoon Concerto for Ben Hoadley and the Auckland Chamber Orchestra, and co-convening the 2014 and 2015 Nelson Composers Workshops. In the first half of 2015 he was the Caselberg Trust Creative Connections Artist in Residence in Broad Bay, Dunedin, creating work in response to the life and music of the late New Zealand composer Anthony Watson. Alex’s work burlesques mecaniques is featured on NZTrio’s most recent CD release, Lightbox. He is currently writing an opera based on David Herkt’s The Last Delirium of Arthur Rimbaud.

BIO: Flavio Villani completed a Bachelor of Piano Performance with Matteo Napoli at the Conservatory “G.Martucci” in Salerno in 2007. In 2012 he completed a Master in Piano Performance at the University of Auckland with first class honours under the guidance of pianist Stephen De Pledge. Flavio has performed many recitals as a soloist as well as in different duos extensively in New Zealand. He has played in various festivals including the Venice Biennale (2011) for the exhibition and installation of the New Zealand pavilion, “Lamezia Festival” (2013 and 2014), “Pianino Festival” (Mallorca), “Maggiociondolo Festival” (Alessandria) as well as performances in Salerno, Rome and Barcelona. His latest collaborations include performances of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto n.2 alongside the Orchestra Filarmonica of Calabria in Italy and again with the Orchestra of CalArts in Los Angeles. He was invited to give Master Classes in the Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music in Lamezia Terme (Italy) and at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok (Thailand). His latest collaborations have seen him perform both as a soloist and together with other renowned musicians (Uwe Grodd, Mark Menzies, and others) in various cities around New Zealand and internationally.