Bart Spaan (1963) studied musicology and history at the Universities of Nijmegen and Amsterdam. After graduating he made contemporary music programmes for the radio station De Concertzender. He also started to compose himself. Later he took private composition lessons from Daan Manneke and in 1999 he took part in the International Young Composers Meeting in Apeldoorn. At first he mainly wrote piano works, but in recent years he has also composed for ensembles, such as the Barton Workshop and Ensemble ’88. His electro-accoustic compositions were performed at the Gergiev Festival. For a long time he wrote compositions for piano and tape that were inspired by the works of the Spanish painter Alberto Reguera. Five of these have been included on the CD Ralph van Raat (1978) studied piano with Ton Hartsuiker and Willem Brons at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and musicology at the University of Amsterdam. In both disciplines he graduated with distinction. He continued his piano studies with Claude Helffer in Paris, Ursula Oppens in Chicago and Pierre-Laurent Aimard in Cologne.

Van Raat has won many awards, including First Prize at the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition (1999), the Philip Morris Arts Award (2003), an international Borletti-Buitoni Fellowship (2005), the VSCD Classical Music Prize (2005) and the Fortis MeesPierson Award of the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam (2006). Van Raat appears as a recitalist and as a soloist with orchestras in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the United States. He has worked together with Valery Gergiev, Peter Eötvös and Reinbert de Leeuw. He has also collaborated with composers such as John Adams, György Kurtág and Arvo Pärt. Since 2006 Ralph van Raat has an exclusive piano contract with the international Naxos label, and he has been a Steinway Artist since 2003.

The Barton Workshop was founded in 1989 by composer and trombonist James Fulkerson. The ensemble is named after the English house Fulkerson lived in from 1973 to 1984. This name was chosen because it also hints at the research and development of ideas and works. The ensemble is especially interested in works that break through the boundaries between ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ art in both notated and non-notated music.The Barton Workshop has gained international fame with CDs featuring works by Cage, Feldman and Wolff. The ensemble has collaborated with composers such as Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff, Nicolas Collins and Frank Denyer. The Barton Workshop has premiered works by Ustvolskaya, Gorecki, Fulkerson, Hunt and Collins, to name but a few. One of Barton Workshop’s specialities is concerts dedicated to one single composer. The artistic leaders of the ensemble, James Fulkerson and Frank Denyer, are composers themselves. This explains why they prefer to present highly individual composers in an as varied and ‘complete’ way as possible.