Gavin Osborn | flutes
Nina Whiteman | mezzo soprano
Alice Purton | cello
Trio Atem work collaboratively across genres, commissioning new music and performing for audiences across the UK. At home working with old and new technologies, the group frequently perform with electronics and multimedia.
Since forming in 2007, engagements include Kings Place, York Late Music Festival, Bridgewater Hall (BBC Philharmonic Ink Still Wet series), RNCM, BBC Philharmonic Studios (Media City), Leeds University Contemporary Music Festival, The University of Manchester lunchtime series, Liverpool Hope University, Kingston University, and residencies at the RMA Student Conference, and Novars Electroacoustic Studios (The University of Manchester).
The trio members are all composer-performers, making them ideally placed to give expert advice and encouragement to student composers. We regularly run workshops with students at a range of institutions, including University of Manchester, Royal Holloway, and the RNCM.
With only a small number of existing works for the flute-mezzo-cello combination in the repertoire (Helmut Lachenmann’s temA chief among them), Trio Atem have been committed to commissioning new work, with a particular focus on engaging emerging artists. Those commissioned in the last fifteen years include: Ian Vine, Pia Palme, Richard Whalley, Mic Spencer, Matthew Sergeant, Lauren Redhead, Chris Swithinbank, Tom Coult, Eric Lyon, Manuella Blackburn, Martin Iddon, Eleri Pound, Scott Wilson, and Larry Goves. We have been funded by Arts Council England on a number of occasions to commission and tour new compositions (e.g. Northern Arcs in 2014 and TEN in 2017) as well as securing funding from the RVWTrust and PRS for Music Foundation.
Atem are actively involved in work beyond the concert hall and traditional repertoire formats. This includes a series of ‘hypergraphic scores’ by artist Michael Mayhew: The Alchemy Collection (funded by the PRS for Music Foundation). This work involved spatialised, mobile performances at the Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester) using scores whose content goes beyond musical notation to include social, cultural, ecological and scientific concerns. We have also performed in pubs and community spaces, including songs from the album Unknown Pleasures at the launch of New Dawn Fades (a graphic novel about Joy Division and Manchester) in 2018.
Most recently, Trio Atem have been central to BELOW GROUND, a collaborative interdisciplinary project bringing people together to explore ideas of the subterranean. Artists across disciplines meet subterranean specialists (including geographers, ecologists and horticulturalists) and create multimedia, multisensory performances and sonic gardening workshops in the community. This is an ongoing iterative project, and the work in 2023 was funded by an Arts Council England project grant.
Trio Atem have recorded on the Another Timbre and Engraved Glass labels.
Gavin Osborn is a flautist, composer, interdisciplinary artist & teacher based in the Northwest UK. Active for over 20 years as a performer, Gavin specialises in new music, whether acoustic or electroacoustic, through-composed, open-form, graphic or improvised. As a flautist he predominantly works with composers, commissioning & performing new works. Collaboration is at the heart of his work, whether with composers, other performing musicians, or across disciplines with dancers (Charlotte Spencer, Jennifer-Lyn Crawford), visual & performance artists (Michael Mayhew, Clare Wardman, Lisa Gorton, Karen McLeod) & others. As a composer, he creates works for the concert hall & elsewhere, often combining musical notation with text & visual image. Gavin is a flute tutor at the University of Manchester, where he also coaches chamber ensembles & gives classes/workshops. He has also taught flute for the Universities of York & Huddersfield as a special consultant, & for Manchester Metropolitan University. He also teaches flute for primary & secondary school children.
Nina Whiteman is a composer, vocalist and multimedia artist based in Manchester, UK. Her current work, BELOW GROUND, engages with the environment, ecology, and ideas of the subterranean. She works across media and disciplines and is interested in the gamification of musical experiences as well as innovative uses of technologies and novel approaches to notation. Nina has been commissioned and performed by the BBC Philharmonic (BBC Radio 3), Distractfold, Psappha, and the Royal Opera House. Nina is also Artistic Director Manchester Contemporary Youth Opera (creating opportunities for young and emerging artists to make opera). She is Reader in Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London as well as teaching at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Alice Purton is a cellist, vocalist and improviser living in London. She specialises in contemporary chamber music, performing regularly with her ensembles Distractfold, Plus Minus and Trio Atem. Alice has performed at festivals and venues including Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemasse Musik, Austria; Maerzmusik, Berlin; Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Germany; Rainy Days, Luxembourg; ESS, Chicago; No Hay Banda, Montreal. Alice regularly performs cello and vocals for recording sessions and pop performances. She has recently collaborated with singers including Jamie Cullum, Alice Zawadzki and Ana Silvera; she has recorded for composers including Mica Levi, Bobby Krlic, Jon Opstad, Chris Roe and Daniel Hart. She can regularly be heard on both radio and television. Recent television and film credits include ‘Trigger Point’ (ITV1, 2022); ‘The Green Kinght’; After Love (2020); ‘Midsommar’ (2019). As an educator Alice is invited to give masterclasses and has held residencies in both cello performance and composition, at institutions including Harvard University, Oxford University, Stanford University, Columbia University, McGill University, Durham University, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Royal Northern College of Music and Manchester University.
