After performing around the world for seventeen years with the GRAMMY®-nominated British vocal ensemble VOCES8, Andrea has established an international reputation for her clarity of tone and expressive communication. Her journey as a singer began in the children's choir of her local church in Kent, England, before she joined numerous youth choirs and went on to study Music at Cardiff University.

With VOCES8, Andrea performed around 120 concerts each year, touring extensively across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia in programmes ranging from a cappella concerts to collaborations with leading orchestras, conductors and soloists. She has performed and recorded in many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Vienna Konzerthaus, Abbey Road Studios, Washington National Cathedral, Tokyo Opera City, and Sydney Opera House. She recorded 24 albums with the ensemble (signed to Decca Classics), and enjoyed many collaborations with artists including Paul Simon, Jacob Collier, Cody Fry, and Sami Yusuf.

Andrea continues to perform as a soloist and ensemble singer, with recent highlights including appearances with Eric Whitacre, VOCES8 Foundation, Ringmasters and The Gesualdo Six. In the summer of 2025, she also worked with Justin Vernon, Kurt Wagner, and Blake Morgan on indie band Lambchop’s album ‘Punching the Clown’, (released in August 2026).

Andrea is also leading workshops and masterclasses internationally, focusing on developing singers’ ensemble musicianship and communication, including attending the World Choir Games 2026 as juror and clinician, and co-directing The Consort Project for Sing the North Festival in Victoria, BC. Beyond her work as a vocalist, she also has experience in creating digital artwork, audio production, lyric writing and poetry, arts administration, social media management, and has a particular interest in vocal health.

Whether at home or on the road, Andrea enjoys great food (with a gin and tonic), and is rarely without a yoga mat, notebook, and watercolour paints. 

Image by Mantas

The GRAMMY® Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer is known around the world as “an orchestra of voices” for its wide-ranging repertoire and dazzling virtuosity. Founded in San Francisco in 1978 by singer and musicologist Louis Botto, Chanticleer quickly took its place as one of the most prolific recording and touring ensembles in the world, selling more than one million recordings and performing thousands of live concerts to audiences around the globe.

Rooted in the Renaissance, Chanticleer’s repertoire has been expanded to include a wide range of classical, gospel, jazz and popular music and to reflect a deep commitment to the commissioning of new compositions and arrangements. The ensemble has dedicated much of its vast recording catalogue to these commissions, garnering GRAMMY® Awards for its recordings of Sir John Tavener’s Lamentations & Praises and the ambitious collection of commissioned works entitled Colors of Love. Chanticleer is the recipient of Chorus America’s Dale Warland Singers Commission Award and the Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. During his tenure with Chanticleer, Music Director Emeritus Joseph H. Jennings received the Chorus America Brazeal Wayne Dennard Award for his contribution to the African American choral tradition.

Named for the “clear-singing” rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chanticleer continues to maintain ambitious programming in its hometown of San Francisco, including a large education and outreach program, and an annual concert series that includes its legendary holiday tradition, A Chanticleer Christmas.

Chanticleer—a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation—is the current  recipient of major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Bob Ross Foundation, Dunard Fund USA, E. Nakamichi Foundation, Mid Atlantic Arts, and the Negaunee Foundation. Chanticleer’s activities as a not-for-profit corporation are supported by its administrative staff and Board of Trustees. 

Image by Stephen K Mack

Jessie Maryon Davies is musical energiser. In 2018, she was awarded The Unsung Hero award by Time Out recognising her achievements in building community through music. She performs regularly as a pianist both in classical and pop settings (Kate Nash, Ren Harvieu, Tone). She leads creative music projects in schools and community groups across the U.K and has conducted children’s choirs in Palestine and India. Jessie is Musical Director of trans-inclusive, women’s pop choir Lips who have performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall and live on BBC Television. In 2015 she co-founded the award-winning charity Spark the Noise to help build self-esteem and confidence among girls, trans and non-binary youth in London. As a composer, she specialises in co-creation and has written music for English National Opera, Wigmore Hall, City of London Sinfonia, Britten Pears Arts and Hightide Theatre. In 2026 she wrote the music and lyrics for children's musical Mrs Armitage - a live stage version of Quentin Blake's much loved classic (Southbank Centre, Edinburgh Fringe). A passionate speaker on music’s unique power to strengthen community and enable personal development, Jessie has spoken live on BBC radio, delivered a Tedex talk and chaired panels at the Southbank Centre and Serious Festival. She trains and mentors young professional musicians at the Wigmore Hall and the Royal Academy of Music,  where she was recently awarded the honour of Associate. 

The Montreal-based quartet ARCHITEK PERCUSSION creates artistic experiences that entertain, captivate, and challenge audiences, often simultaneously. Founded in 2012 by members of McGill University’s Percussion Studio, Architek is equally comfortable performing classic quartet repertoire and exploring new terrain through commissions and premieres, often using instrument batteries that extend far beyond the traditional arsenal of instruments associated with percussion. Architek regularly performs in Montreal, having partnered with Codes d’Acces, Innovations en Concert, Le Vivier, Suoni per Il Popolo, Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). In addition, the quartet has collaborated extensively with the Montreal Arts Council’s CAM En Tournée program, which presents free, accessible arts programming across the 19 boroughs and 15 independent municipalities that comprise the Island of Montreal.

Architek regularly concertizes and conducts educational outreach across Canada, collaborating with New Music Edmonton, the Winnipeg New Music Festival, The Cluster Festival of Music and Integrated Art (Winnipeg), Jeunesses Musicales Canada, Debut Atlantic, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Music on Main (Vancouver), The University of Toronto New Music Festival, The Music Gallery (Toronto), New Music Concerts (Toronto), the Scotia Festival of Music (Halifax), and nearly all of Canada’s post-secondary music institutions. Architek’s international touring has taken them across Northern Europe in collaboration with the Ultima Festival (Oslo), NyMusikk Bergen, NTNU (Trondheim), Fylkingen (Stockholm), the Universities of Glasgow and Huddersfield (UK), Rainy Days Festival (Luxembourg), and the Royal College of Music (Stockholm).

Architek has commissioned and/or premiered over 60 works by composers from around the world. Several of these commissions have led to commercial recording projects, of which Architek appears on eight: Bookburners (Nicole Lizée / Centrediscs, 2014), A Boat Upon its Blood (Jason Sharp / Constellation Records, 2016), Metatron (Eliot Britton / Ambiances Magnétiques, 2017), Katana of Choice (Ben Reimer / Redshift Records, 2017), The Privacy of Domestic Life (Architek Percussion / Centrediscs, 2018), Six Changes (Architek Percussion 2022), Call Sign (Architek Percussion, 2022), and Apparitions vol. I (Olivier Alary / Line Imprints, 2023). Architek’s remarkably diverse artistic output is guided by the quartet’s belief that, given proper context, every audience member should feel welcomed, included, and challenged. Architek Percussion is Noam Bierstone, Ben Duinker, Alexander Haupt, and Alessandro Valiante.

Image by Julianna Schutz

Adventure, interdisciplinarity and, above all, a critical engagement with today’s world — often through the use of new technologies — lie at the heart of the Nadar Ensemble’s guiding principles. The ensemble takes its name and spirit from Gaspard-Félix “Nadar” Tournachon (1820–1910), the celebrated photographer, caricaturist, spy and art critic. Nadar was also known for hosting informal “salons” that brought together artists, thinkers, writers and scientists. In addition, he was a famed balloonist: in 1864 he launched from Brussels in his balloon, ‘Le Géant’, a mass spectacle at the time and the origin of the name of the surrounding fences.

Our 21st century is pluralistic, multi- and transmedial, and increasingly inhabited by digital natives and a networked generation. That is why the Nadar Ensemble is not only fascinated by contemporary music but also by film, visual arts, performance, theatre, installation art and everything that these categories encompass – or perhaps not. In this way, it aims to anchor new music more firmly in today’s world by developing alternative concert formats. These can range from walks and living room concerts to compositions with construction cranes or hot air balloons. 

Nadar has performed at the Darmstadt International Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Ultima Oslo, Musica Strasbourg, Platforma Moscow, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Holland Festival, San Martin Buenos Aires, reMusik Saint Petersburg, Tampere Biennale, Wien Modern, Gogolfest Kiev, Cité de la musique Paris, Harvard University Boston, MaerzMusik Berlin, Warsaw Autumn, etc.

Nadar is an artist in residence at DE SINGEL Antwerp and also maintains strong ties withConcertgebouw Brugge, Muziekcentrum De Bijloke Gent, CC Sint-Niklaas and Transit Festival Leuven. Nadar is based in Sint-Niklaas, where it organises its annual Summer Academy. Incidentally, this city is also famous for its annual festival for... hot air balloons.

Watch a Video of Nadars work here

Wannes Gonnissen is Nadar Ensemble’s technical coordinator, and has been part of the ensemble since 2012. On concert nights, sound is still his main job, but those who pay attention will often see him juggling lighting, video and live electronics too.

As a teenager in the ‘90s, he started experimenting with sound on a simple cassette 4-track, and recording himself as a one-man-band on several instruments. That curiosity eventually took a more formal shape at the Conservatory of Ghent, where he studied Music Production. A few years later, when already combining live sound withstudio work, he crossed paths with Nadar: after a recording with a few members of the ensemble, they invited him to do sound for what was meant to be a single concert. He never quite left.

Outside Nadar, Wannes still mixes bands in the pop and rock world, and he’ll insist that he doesn’t see much difference between that and contemporary classical - to him, it’s all just sound. At home, he’s often found scouring the internet for cool vintage gear, preferably defective, so he has an excuse to take it apart on his workbench. Sometimes he even puts it back together correctly

Why Dries Tack started playing the clarinet is still a mystery. Perhaps due to his parents’ attempt and effort to get him off from the streets. Nevertheless, Dries finally started his study at the conservatories of Brussels, Antwerp, and Tilburg. His fascination for noise and the pleasure of sharing ideas with the others guided him towards his love of chamber music in contemporary experimental music and the field of music theatre. As a clarinet and object player, he enjoys playing with Ensemble Nadar, the Curious Chamber Players and the trio Lambda. Dries is also one of the core members of the chamber music collective ‘Glow’. As a passionate teacher, he teaches at music academies of Vilvoorde, Schaarbeek, and Grimbergen. For the moment, Dries loves running and tries to bake his own bread. It is not edible yet.

As sounds of all sorts trigger Katrien’s brain, she is constantly looking for a new sound world, whether it is through contemporary music or old music on period instruments. Katrien studied the flute and baroque flute in Ghent, Brussels and Strasbourg, with maestros Carlos Bruneel and Mario Caroli. During her studies she was inspired by master classes and summer courses like the Lucerne Festival Academy with Pierre Boulez, the Ictus Studio and Centre Acanthes Metz. She is a founding member of Nadar Ensemble and co-artistic director of Glow Collective and shares the love for her instruments, teaching the flute and baroque flute. Growing up at the seaside, she loves long walks on the beach and fighting the waves. Breathing is as important while playing the flute as on her yoga mat, as an irregular yogi and breathwork coach. She never forgets to remind her friends to keep on breathing.