Associate Artists

Our partner organisations contribute to and help us shape key areas of our programme

Our Associate Artists and partner organisations help us fulfil our artistic vision and strategic objectives, through collaborations, co-commissioning and co-curation.

Counterpoints Arts

A leading national organisation in the field of arts, migration and cultural change, Counterpoints Arts’ mission is to support and produce the arts by and about migrants and refugees. They seek to ensure that the contributions of migrants and refugees are recognised and welcomed within British arts, history and culture.

We collaborate with Counterpoints Arts on projects throughout the year and on Refugee Week events and activities in June.

Find out more

Unlimited

Unlimited is an arts commissioning programme that enables new work by disabled artists to reach UK and international audiences. 

As long-standing collaborators, we have partnered on Unlimited festival biennially since 2012, and in 2021 we’re collaborating on our first co-commission as one of the Unlimited Partner Awards.

Joseph Wilk Wheel Trails

Colin Currie

Colin Currie is a solo and chamber artist at the peak of his powers. Championing new music at the highest level, he is hailed as being ‘at the summit of percussion performance today’ (Gramophone). Currie's dynamic ensemble the Colin Currie Group was formed in 2006 to celebrate the music of Steve Reich and made its five-star debut at the BBC Proms. Since then, with Reich’s personal endorsement, Currie and his ensemble have taken on the role of ambassadors of Drumming, which they have performed at many venues and festivals internationally. In October 2017 Currie launched Colin Currie Records, in conjunction with LSO Live, as a platform for recording his diverse projects, celebrating the extraordinary developments for percussion music in recent times.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja

A combination of depth, brilliance and humour, violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja brings an inimitable sense of theatrics to her music. Whether performing a violin concerto by Tchaikovsky, Ligeti or Schoenberg or presenting an original staged project deconstructing Beethoven, Ustwolskaja or Cage, her distinctive approach always conveys the core of the work. Kopatchinskaja is the Artistic Partner of Camerata Bern, performing regularly with the ensemble at home and on tour. Kopatchinskaja also explores music staged through contemporary contexts, such as Dies Irae, a deconstruction of the traditional concert experience inspired by the growing climate crisis, and is also a humanitarian ambassador for Terre des hommes, the leading Swiss child relief agency.

Víkingur Ólafsson

Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson’s remarkable originality and powerful musical conviction have seen him, in just a few years, take the music world by storm to become one of the most sought-after artists of today. Ólafsson is the driver behind a number of original projects, broadcasting a series on Icelandic radio; presenting his own prime time Icelandic television series called Music Bites; and creating the BBC Radio 3 series Transcribe, Transform. Always pushing boundaries, Ólafsson set up his own record label prior to signing to Deutsche Grammophon, created and presented the Icelandic television series on classical music Útúrdúr, and founded the award-winning Reykjavík Midsummer Music festival.

Bryce Dessner

Bryce Dessner is a vital and rare force in new music. He has won Grammy Awards both as a classical composer and with the band The National, of which he is founding member, guitarist, arranger and co-principal songwriter. He is also an increasingly high-profile presence in the world of film score composition, with credits including Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning The Revenant. Dessner is in his natural element when collaborating across art forms. His colleagues include the world’s most creative and respected artists such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Alejandro González Iñarritú, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Paul Simon, Sufjan Stevens, Caroline Shaw, Jonny Greenwood, Bon Iver, Justin Peck, Kelley O’Connor, Ragnar Kjartansson and Nico Muhly.