"Nicola Romano, born in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1974. From an early age, Nicola has developed a close association with chamber music, which has since become the centre of his musical orbits. For many years, he has performed concerts with Lucerne-based Dreilindenquartett as well as with the ONYX Quartet and the Basel String Quartet.Since 2004, Nicola has been a member of the "ensemble für neue musik zürich", which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. With "klangcombi", a quintet dedicated to innovative Swiss folk music, he has found the perfect musical paddling pool, in which he enjoys maximum stylistic freedom and openness. Together with LAUS and the Trabant Echo Orchestra, Nicola has been exploring and experimenting with musical arrangements which straddle the interface between serious and light music. Besides this, he has been busy giving concerts as part of various projects by the Swiss jazz and free improv scene. Nicola also teaches at the Uri School of Music (Musikschule Uri) and at Küsnacht High School (Kantonsschule Küsnacht)."

"Sebastian Gottschick was born in 1959 in Düsseldorf. He studied conducting, composition and violin in Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg and in the Juilliard School in New York. Currently he performs as a conductor, violist and violinist, composes music and teaches.

In 1989, he became a member of the Oriol Berlin ensemble, and in 1993, he became its artistic director. In this role, he collaborated with Christian Tetzlaff, Andreas Stayer, Anner Bilsma, Christina Schäfer, Markus Stockhausen, Petra Mullejans and Bernhard Fork among others.

In 1994, he founded the Manon Quartett Berlin. From 1994-2003 he was the music director of the Neuen Opernbühne Berlin. He performed as a conductor at the Berliner Kammeroper, the Hans-Otto-Theater Potsdam, the Theater Basel, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and the Teatro Sao Carlos in Lisbon. Since 2005, he has been the music director of the Wien/Berlin ensemble, which explores new forms of musical theater. He gave concerts with the ensembles Klangforum Wien, MusikFabrik, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra as well as the Frankfurt, Warsaw, Berlin, Stuttgart und Munich radio orchestras.

He actively collaborates with the Ensemble für Neue Nusik Zürich, for which he wrote Partita (2008), compositions Whisper of Heavenly Death (2009) and Memento Mori (with Christoph Coburger, 2011).

Sebastian Gottschick teaches at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln."

"Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 - May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Later in life, the quality of his music was publicly recognized, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". He was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Hence, he is often regarded as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century.

Sources of Ives' tonal imagery included hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster."