Aidan O'Rourke, Alice Zawadzki and Héloïse Werner

Aidan grew up in an Irish family in Argyll and learned fiddle in Oban in the West Highland style. His roots are in Scottish and Irish music but he has a tendency to roam the edges of those traditions. Lau came together in 2006 and have ventured a new sound in progressive, politically-charged folk music. The trio have released five studio albums, multiple live albums and EPs and a 2017 retrospective charting their first decade. They won Best Group at the BBC 2 Folk Awards an unprecedented four times. 

In life outside Lau, Aidan joined The Caledonia Ramblers aged 14 in 1989; formed the duo Tabache with Claire Mann in 1994; became a member of Blazin’ Fiddles in 1998; founded the quartet Kan with whistle player Brian Finnegan in 2010; formed a duo with jazz pianist Kit Downes in 2016 and joined Donal Lunny's new collective Atlantic Arc in 2017. He plays with Brìghde Chaimbeul and produced her debut album The Reeling in 2018. Solo albums include Sirius (2006), An Tobar (2008), Hotline (2013), 365: Vol 1 (2018), Vol 2 (2019) and Best of 365 (2020). Aidan was named Musician of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2014. As a composer he has written for Scottish Ensemble, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Sage Gateshead, Celtic Connections, the Tolbooth in Stirling, An Tobar, Cottier Chamber Project, Capella Nova and is three-time awardee of the PRSF New Music Biennial commission at London’s Southbank Centre. In 2017 he wrote the official opening music for the new bridge across the Firth of Forth (the Queensferry Crossing). 

A major project of recent years was the epic tune-cycle 365. In response to a short story collection by James Robertson, Aidan wrote a fiddle tune every day for a year, and the result is (yes!) 365 tunes which he recorded with Kit Downes, guitarist Sorren Maclean and harpist Esther Swift. In 2019, Aidan and Kit wrote a new work for the Scottish Ensemble inspired by the poetry of Edwin Morgan. According to The Herald, 'rarely has this land’s musical community spoken as eloquently of an outward and forward looking approach to its roots and heritage'. Aidan wrote the music for the first ever feature-length Gaelic cinematic documentary, Iorram, which premiered at Glasgow Film Festival in 2021. The Guardian called the film 'a feast for the ears'.  In the same year he was presented with a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists. 

'Loosely connected to the world of jazz, but realistically inhabiting her own realm' (Clash Magazine), Alice Zawadzki has found home in the peripheries of the classical, folk, and jazz world, 'all propelled with a voice of velvet suppleness and gutsy emotional power' (The Arts Desk). The award-winning multi-lingual singer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer has released two critically-acclaimed albums of her solo work, Within You Is A World Of Spring (2019) which was The Guardian’s Contemporary Album of the Month, and China Lane (2014) – described by MOJO Magazine as 'something of a phenomenon', and by The Guardian as 'a genuine original'. 

Alice has performed throughout Europe, the Far East, Central Asia, Russia, Turkey, the United States, Canada, Brazil and Argentina, performing her own music as well as interpreting new works for the voice with an array of exciting collaborators. 2023 saw her first steps into theatre with her new monodrama, Bag of Bones, weaving Eastern European folklore with psychology, ceremony and ritual, in a UK tour commissioned by the Manchester Collective, described by The Guardian as 'a haunting meditation on family and freedom… a perfect marriage of music and theatre'. In Autumn 2022 Alice took her first steps into journalism, presenting the BBCs documentary Yiddish Glory, working in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan on a mysterious body of supposedly lost songs. In 2023 she will record her new album for the iconic ECM label, with Fred Thomas and Misha Mullov-Abbado. She was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2022.

Recipient of the Michael Cuddigan Trust Award 2018 and Linda Hirst Contemporary Vocal Prize 2017, French-born and London-based soprano and composer Héloïse Werner is currently an Associate Artist of the Wigmore Hall. She was one of the four shortlisted nominees in the Young Artist category of the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards 2017 and one of BBC Radio 3’s 31 under 31 Young Stars 2020. Her debut album Phrases is out on Delphian Records – Sunday Times 10 Best Classical Records of 2022, Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice ('extraordinary range, tone and vocal abilities (…) composer of subtle imagination'), Presto Classical Editor’s Choice ('absolute tour de force'), BBC Music Magazine Choral/Song Choice (*****), Classical album of the week in The Times (****) and described by Apple Music as 'a staggering debut from an imaginative and original voice'. Her second album Close-Ups is coming out in June 2024, also on Delphian Records. 

As a soprano, Héloïse has recently made her debut with the London Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, CBSO, Nash Ensemble, The Grange Festival, and sang the role of Madame DuVal in Sarah Angliss’ new opera Giant, opening the Aldeburgh Festival 2023. As a composer, Héloïse has written for the CBSO, Aurora Orchestra, Clare Choir Cambridge, Maîtrise de Radio France, London Handel Festival, violist Lawrence Power, bassoonist Amy Harman, violinist Hae-Sun Kang (Festival Présences), pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen (Lucerne Festival), CoMA (CoMA Festival), The Gesualdo Six, The Bach Choir, mezzo-soprano Marielou Jacquard, pianist Kunal Lahiry and mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, amongst others. Héloïse is also soprano for contemporary quartet The Hermes Experiment (soprano, clarinet, harp and double bass). They won the RPS Young Artist Award 2021 and the Royal Over-Seas League Mixed Ensemble Competition 2019. Capitalising on their deliberately idiosyncratic combination of instruments, the ensemble regularly commissions new works (over 60 to date), as well as creating their own innovative arrangements and venturing into live free improvisation. They have released two albums, both on Delphian Records, to critical acclaim.

Colin Alexander is a cellist and composer working across a range of disciplines and traditions. Whilst collaborating with artists such as Kit Downes, Héloïse Werner, Abel Selaocoe, Max Baillie and Jas Kayser, Colin also performs regularly with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, LSO Ensemble, 12 Ensemble and a variety of world-music and improvisation groups. Alongside his performing schedule, he has written new works for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Contemporary Orchestra, Contrechamps, The Mercury Quartet, Hyper Duo and Le Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain. He has released two albums with Addelam on the Big Ship label, features on both Tre Voci – Auro and I hope this finds you well in these strange times – vol 2 on Nonclassical and Timelapse on Accidental Records as well as Homework, While Swimming and codi on October House Records. His debut album will be out in June 2024. Colin is currently composer, sound designer and cellist for Bijan Sheibani’s new play The Cord at the Bush Theatre, London. 

Kit Downes is a BBC Jazz Award-winning, Mercury Music Award-nominated solo recording artist for ECM Records. He has toured the world playing piano, church organ and harmonium with his own bands (ENEMY, Troyka and Elt) as well as with artists such as Squarepusher, Bill Frisell, Empirical, Andrew Cyrille, Sofia Jernberg, Benny Greb, Mica Levi and Sam Amidon. Kit performs solo pipe organ and solo piano concerts, as well as playing in collaborations with others including saxophonists Tom Challenger and Ben van Gelder, cellist Lucy Railton and composer Shiva Feshareki. He has written commissions for Cheltenham Music Festival, London Contemporary Orchestra, Biel Organ Festival, Ensemble Klang at ReWire Festival, the Scottish Ensemble, Cologne Philharmonie and the Wellcome Trust, and has performed solo organ concerts at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Lausanne Cathedral, Flagey in Brussels and the Royal Albert Hall in London as well as the Southbank Royal Festival Hall, Rochester Jazz Festival (US), St Olafs Minneapolis, Stavanger Konserthus, Aarhus Philharmonic Musikhuset, Darmstadt Organ Festival, Stuttgart Organ Festival, Laurenskerke in Rotterdam, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Berlin Jazz Festival and the BBC Proms amongst many others.