ABOUT THE ARTIST Richard Sladek, Pianist, has performed professionally in the Chicago area for the past 20 years. A native of Chicago, he has been the recipient of several awards including those from the Chicago Musical Arts Club and the Grace Welsh National Piano Competition. Mr. Sladek has received a New York Film Festivals award for Outstanding Achievement for his Original Music for Video with the nationally acclaimed education theater troupe, Wavelength. As their musical director/composer for 16 years, he performed for over 100,000 educators in North America and the Netherlands.

He has served as staff accompanist for Columbia College and the Second City National Touring Company. He has also accompanied for the Salt Creek Ballet, and The Academy of Movement and Music. He has played keyboards in numerous musical theater productions, most notably for the Shubert, Marriott Lincolnshire, Theater at the Center, Apple Tree and Circle Theaters, and the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse.

Jeni Slotchiver's historic 1997 all-Busoni recital, at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City (the first in thirty years), received the 'heart-felt appreciation' of the Busoni Foundation. Her series, Busoni The Visionary has received worldwide critical acclaim. Anthony Tommasini, writing for The New York Times (December 30th 1999), selected her debut CD for an article titled 'Appropriate For Millennial Reflection.' Michael Tanner, in CLASSIC CD, described her performance as, "A towering spiritual statement, especially in a performance as fine as Slotchiver's, where the technical accomplishment is entirely at the service of the music's inward grandeur." From Singapore, Tony Gualtieri wrote, "A revelation…Bold and brazen…Jeni Slotchiver is a pianist of the highest artistry. Fully in control of this notoriously difficult material, she has the technical equipment to let the music speak without impediment…One feels the music is being allowed to sing." David Hurwitz, in Classics Today, made the point succinctly when he described her playing as, “Quite simply mesmerizing…positively physical."

Her North American piano repertoire ranges from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, to Nathaniel Dett and Luis Gottschalk to the avant-garde Frederic Rzewski. Moreover, her expansive Latin American repertoire includes the work of; Alberto Ginastera, Carlos Guastavino, Ernesto Lecuona, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Francisco Mignone, Win Muller, Astor Piazzolla, and Frutuoso Viana.

His musical studies started at 6 years of age and included the Birmingham School of Drumming and the Conservatoire. He toured internationally at 15 and taught at the B.S.D. from 16 and subsequently in many schools and colleges.

He has worked as a Session Musician, Recording Engineer, Producer and Music Industry Consultant and with many international artists including Jerry Lee Lewis, The Herd, The Crystals, Dave Pegg (Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention), Fats Domino and many more. He is currently with the Joe Cocker Experience and AfroCuBaz.

Between 2001-3, being awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award, Gregory undertook a Master of Creative Arts degree studying performance practice issues in Russian piano music. And has since undertaken research into the music of Nicholas Medtner. Gregory has presented several papers on the music of Medtner, including the Australian Musicological Society in Sydney in 2005, and the combined Australian and New Zealand Society Conference in Wellington in 2003.

Gregory is a freelance composer and accompanist. As a soloist he has played in Malaysia as part of the University of Newcastle's overseas graduation ceremonies, and Japan, as part of the Newcastle-Ube Sister City 20th Anniversary celebrations in 2000. In July 2001, he was a participant in the London Master classes, run by Norma Fisher.

Besides that stage-work she has made 15 albums, many of them being listed as indispensable to refined music lovers.

Raphaella Smits is internationally praised as an inspiring teacher for both guitar and chamber music. In addition to her chair at the Lemmens Institute in Belgium, she regularly gives master classes in West and East Europe, in North and South America and in Japan. Organizers of international music competitions ask Raphaella as a member of the jury because of her ability to listen and to judge so accurately.

Richard is a conductor for the Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association, working with three ensembles: Symphonic Band, Jazz Band 2 and String Orchestra 3.

In 2002 Richard was inducted into the New Mexico Music Educator's Hall of Fame. He has served as adjudicator and clinician for many schools and districts around the state.

Since 1989 the Italian society of music and the theatre organizes important musical appointments, international manifestations, work, ballets, course of improvement and an international competition of chamber music "Premio Abruzzo". Between the concertistic reviews ChietiMusica (concert season) and MajellArte (musical walk in the green Majella National Park). The s.i.m.t. moreover it is present all over the world with important cultural productions, that they have seen one always greater attention from part of the specialistic critic. Melbourne (1999), Friburgo (1999), Londra(1993), Moscow (2001), Quito (2002), Toronto and Ottawa (1996-97), Camberra (1998), are only some of the great cities of the world that have seen the presence of cultural productions of the s.i.m.t. The group of the Fiati Italiani, represents one of the things better than the s.m.t.i. it has organized, are by now considers one you between the best European chamber ensamble.

Professor of Composition, Guildhall School of Music, London from 1967 to 1980; then director of music at Bretton Hall, University of Leeds, UK until retirement 1993. Currently freelance composer, conductor,writer, music journalist.

First Prize Winner in the International Organ Competition "Agati-Tronci" in Pistoia in 2008, and in both the 2004 and 2005 editions of the "Alessandro Esposito" Organ Competition held in Lucca, Italy, Simone Stella maintains an active concert schedule, both as a soloist and in various chamber formations, in Italy, Spain, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands. His repertoire includes the vast majority of Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard works, as well as organ music from every historical era up to and including the present day. He is an active composer of instrumental music, both for solo instruments and chamber groups, in addition to working on free urtext editions of keyboard works by italian renaissance and baroque composers.

He was titular organist at the historical Orsanmichele Church in Florence.

He formed Outofinto in 2000, playing and recording their unique brand of British Heavy metal. Jim is also a regular in the drum seat of the popular Dr Hexters Healers blues band.

Christopher has been a recipient of the RNCM’s ‘Winfield/Grayam’ prize for solo woodwind and devotes much of his time to chamber music. He has recently been awarded first place in the RNCM's most prestigious chamber music prize, the Granada Prize, for his performance of Penderecki's Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio. He was also a finalist in the same competition with the Coupland Ensemble playing Brahms' Clarinet Trio.

Christopher has made numerous other appearances at the RNCM as a chamber musician, including performances of Malcom Arnold's Divertimetno for Wind Octet, Schumann's 'Fairy Tale pieces', Khachaturian's Clarinet Trio and Ravel's 'Introduction and Allegro' for flute, clarinet, string quartet and solo harp.

I play piano and Keybaord , my composetions is a modern oriental style