Count Eugène Traey (1915-2006) was born in Amsterdam of Belgian parents and studied music at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Antwerp, where his piano teacher was Emmanuel Durlet. He went on to study in Paris under Robert Casadesus and in Germany under Karl Leimer and Walter Gieseking. After this international training as a pianist, Eugène Traey pursued a career both as a concert performer and a teacher at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, of which he was the director until 1980. He gave recitals, performed with orchestras and took part in chamber music recitals with Arthur Grumiaux and Jean Laurent, as well as performing piano duos with Frédéric Gevers. He was the founder of the deSingel concert hall in Antwerp and was a regular member of juries at international competitions (Moscow, Warsaw, Munich and Tokyo, among others). From 1982 until 1995 Eugène Traey presided over the jury of the Queen Elisabeth Competition.

Claude Arrieu (1903-1990), who was born in Paris, fills a niche all by herself amid the ranks of contemporary French composers, because of her personality and her independence spirit.

Her symphonic and instrumental production reveals the vivacity of her style as well as the originality of her harmonic and orchestral language. But the very large number of works written by Claude Arrieu (lyrical works, cantatas, melodies, songs) attests the firmness of her thinking and the naturalness of her melodic vein.

Stéphane Mallarmé, Francis James, Louis Aragon, Jacques Audiberti, Jean Cocteau, Paul Eluard, Jean Follain, Maurice Fombeure, Jean Tardieu, Louise de Vilmorin - the names of but a few of these poets would perhaps suffice to indicate the eclecticism and refinement that she puts into everything and of which her music is the reflection - witty, intelligent and sensitive.

Mauro Bortolotti studied piano with Caporali, organ with Germani and composition with Goffredo Petrassi at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He also attended composition courses in Darmstadt and worked at the electronic music studio of Pietro Grossi in Florence. He was one of the founders and members of the Nuova Consonanza Association. His works have been performed at the most important Italian and international contemporary music festivals. He has taught composition and was a member of the musicians council of the Istituzione Sinfonica Abruzzese.

The parents of Jacqueline baroness Fontyn recognised her exceptional talent when she was only a toddler and entrusted her, soon after her fifth birthday, to the wonderful Russian piano teacher Ignace Bolotine. She had lessons daily, and Bolotine encouraged her to develop her taste for improvisation. At the age of fourteen, she decided to become a composer. She received her grounding in the techniques of composition from Marcel Quinet, then went to Paris where Max Deutsch, a fervent disciple of Schoenberg, taught her the twelve-tone system. She wrote in this style until 1979, although always with considerable freedom and flexibility. In 1956 she attended Hans Swarowsky's conducting class at the Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna.

From 1963 to 1990 she held the post of Professor of Music Theory, rising to Professor of Composition, first at the Koninklijk Conservatorium, Antwerp and then at the Royal Brussels Conservatoire. She is a regular guest of universities and conservatoires in Europe (Germany, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland), the United States, the Middle East, Asia (China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan) and New Zealand. Her catalogue of over a hundred works covers orchestral, vocal, chamber and instrumental pieces which are played throughout the world, figuring in the programs of leading orchestras and major festivals.

She has received many awards, most notably the Spanish Oscar Espla Prize and the Prix Arthur Honegger from the Fondation de France. She was asked to write the set piece, a Violin Concerto, for the finals of the 1976 Queen Elisabeth Competition, and has twice undertaken commissions from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, Washington.
Since 2006, all her manuscripts are kept in the Library of Congress. Jacqueline Fontyn is a member of the Belgian Royal Academy and in 1993 the King of Belgium granted her the title of baroness in recognition of her artistic merit.

Broad harmonic effects, rhythmic flexibility and never ceasing exploration of instrumental resources are the hallmarks of her constantly evolving musical language. Its expressive and poetic dimensions appeal to the sensitive listener keen to discover new horizons.

Alberto Ginastera was the leading Argentinian composer of the twentieth century. He was born in Buenos Aires in 1916 and studied musical privately as a child, later enrolling at the National Conservatoire of Music in his home city.

In 1946-47 he spent a year in the United States on a Guggenheim fellowship, joining the teaching staff of the National Conservatory upon his return home; he was later the Dean of the Faculty of Musical Arts and Sciences at the Catholic University. His first opera, Don Rodrigo, was premiered to immediate acclaim in 1966 and was soon followed by two others, Bomarzo (1967) and Beatrix Cenci (1971).) In 1969, finding himself out of sympathy with the prevailing political climate in Argentina, Ginastera left the country, settling in Geneva.

In the early 1950s the nationalist element in his music gradually lost its dominance, and more explicitly modernist characteristics began to make their presence felt in what Ginastera called his ‘neo-expressionistic period’. He actively adopted the twelve-tone technique and his works also incorporated microtones and polytonality. By the time of his death, on 25 June 1983, his modernism had softened, and he began to look again at the tonality and folk-music inflexions of his early output.

Alberto Ginastera is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

From 1943 to 1947 Karel Goeyvaerts studied piano, harmony, counterpoint, fugue, composition and music history at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory in Antwerp, and went on to study at the National Conservatory in Paris, where he pursued studies in composition under Darius Milhaud and analysis with Olivier Messiaen, and where he mastered the 'Ondes Martenot' with the inventor of this instrument, Maurice Martenot.

It was particularly Messiaen who left a great impression on the young Karel Goeyvaerts. The Sonata for 2 Pianos, written in 1950-51, can, for instance, be seen as a synthesis of certain of Messiaen's ideas with Webern's application of dodecaphony, of which Goeyvaerts made detailed analyses. This sonata was to have a major influence on the young generation of avant-gardists in general and Karlheinz Stockhausen in particular. Witness to this are the many personal and musical links between the two men, the extensive correspondence, and compositions by Stockhausen which almost literally took over the basic concept of this sonata (for instance, Kreuzspiel). In 1953, Goeyvaerts and Stockhausen, together with several other composers, realised the first music produced by means of electronic generators (in the studios of the WDR in Cologne).

In 1957 Karel Goeyvaerts temporarily withdrew from the musical world, although he continued to compose. In 1970, he was appointed by the Belgian Radio and Television (BRT) as producer at the Institute for Psycho-Acoustic and Electronic Music (IPEM) in Ghent. After several years, he became the head producer for New Music at Belgian Radio 3 (the classical channel) in Brussels. In June 1985 he was chosen Chairperson of the International Composers' Rostrum a prestigious and active association under the auspices of the UNESCO International Music Council.

Karel Goeyvaerts was a member of the Royal Academy for Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. In 1992, he was nominated as first holder of the KBC Chair for New Music in the department of Musicology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. This position required him to teach a course for final-year undergraduates and to write a composition. The composition Alba per Alban, which he was writing to fulfil the obligations of this position, remained unfinished at the time of the composer's sudden death in 1993.

Jürgen Meyer-Josten served as the head of music of Bavarian Radio in Munich for more than two decades, and has been the director of the International Music Competition of the Broadcasting Companies of Germany in Munich since 1967. Having begun his career as a pianist, he has several recordings to his credit and has authored numerous articles on the piano and pianists.

Frederik van Rossum was born in Brussels. Since he was awarded the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in 1965, his works have won many international awards. His Réquisitoire for brass and percussion, for example, won First Prize at the International Rostrum of Composers backed by UNESCO in Paris in 1981. His First Violin Concerto was the compulsory work at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1980 and was subsequently the subject of five different recordings. In 1988 his Aria a modo di vocalizzo was the compulsory work for the semi-final of the Queen Elisabeth Competition for Singing. A brilliant orchestrator, van Rossum has written a number of works for orchestra with and without soloists. He has also composed chamber music and music for the stage and for opera, along with an extensive and varied range of works for the piano ; he is himself an excellent pianist and his works for the instrument occupy a central place in his oeuvre. Frederik van Rossum is a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. From 1995 to 2000 he was Composer in Residence of the Festival of Flanders.

Joji Yuasa is first of all a composer, one whose work has long aroused international acclaim. He was born in Kôriyama, Japan in 1929. Few composers have so effectively concerned themselves with creating such a variety of journeys through musical time and space, in works for orchestra, media, chamber ensembles and soloists, utilizing Western and Japanese traditional resources as well as advanced computer technology. He has written music for concert hall, films, radio, television and also international exhibitions. His signature work is probably the 1960’s classic ICON on the source of White Noise, while the 1992 orchestral work, Eye on Genesis II, has emerged as another likely candidate.

Joji Yuasa has been awarded commissions from the Koussevitzky and Suntory foundations, IRCAM, the Canada Council, the Helsinki Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, Saarland Radio Symphony, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Tokyo Philharmonic Chorus, among others. His works have been performed at numerous major festivals including ISCM World Music Days, Warsaw Autumn, Horizons ’84, the Darmstadt courses, the Pacific Ring Festival, the Asia Pacific Festival in New Zealand and New Music Concerts in Toronto.

He co-founded the interdisciplinary avant-garde Japanese artistic group Jikkenkôbô, co-organized the seminal Cross Talk concert and intermedia series, and organized the bi-annual Kôriyama Computer Music festivals in Japan. He serves frequently on prestigious juries - in particular, long and distinguished service for the International ISCM-and has been a regular faculty member at UCSD since 1981 until 1994.

From 1981 to 1994 he was a professor at the University of California - San Diego. At the beginning of the Fall 1994, he shifted the center of his bi-continental life back to Japan where he is teaching at three Universities in Tokyo.

His works have been recorded on Camerata, Denon, Deutsche Grammophon (forthcoming), EMI, Fontec, King, Neuma, Ondine, Sony, Toshiba, and Wergo compact discs, and are published by Ongaku no Tomo sha and Schott of Japan.