European Talent Competition

Stephen Warbeck (president of the jury)

Stephen Warbeck (born 1953) is an English Oscar Award-winning composer, best known for his work on television and film. He has composed the music for Prime Suspect, Mrs. Brown, Mystery Men, Billy Elliot, Quills, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Charlotte Gray, Proof and Princess Kaiulani, amongst others. He won the Oscar for Best Soundtrack for his work on Shakespeare in Love in 1999.

Gordon Hamilton

As a composer, several recent works by Gordon Hamilton subvert expectations of the orchestra, including 'Thum Prints' (for beatboxer Tom Thum and orchestra, 2015) and '482 Variations on a Very Short Theme' (2016). His 'Action Hero' (2016) pairs the recorded voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger with orchestra. In December 2018 he traveled to Antarctica to compose ‘Far South’ which was premiered in 2020 by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Maya Lavelle

Maya Lavelle gained a large fanbase with chart success, a feature film sync, Walking Dead fans, BBC Introducing and quirky music videos. Described by Clash Music as an "icon-in-waiting", she has been featured in many notable online publications including Consequence of Sound, Uproxx, LA Music Critic, Indie Nation, Live Limbo and many more listed below.

Diego Baldenweg

Diego Baldenweg (CH/AUS), film music composer, producer, publisher and co-founder of GREAT GARBO.Together with his siblings Nora Baldenweg and Lionel Baldenweg, the multi award-winning composer trio has created music for TV series like «The Unlisted» (Netflix), international TV commercials (Dove, Mastercard, Sony) and for films like «The Little Witch», «Head Full of Honey», «The Reformer Zwingli» (World Soundtrack Award Nominee) and the Oscar nominated «La Femme et le TGV» starring Jane Birkin. Baldenweg is a member of the European, Swiss and Australian film academies, the Swiss Media Composers Association, the Australian Guild of Screen Composers and the World Soundtrack Academy.

Francesco Berta

SCORE

Francesco (*1989) is an Italian born music composer, pianist and visual artist.

In the first ten years of his career Francesco has been able to collect a substantial list of wide-ranging achievements: from conducting his own music in the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London to releasing an impressive number of albums as a solo artist; scoring movies and documentaries to directing award-winning short films.

Francesco’s work ethic is second to none, but his greatest asset is, undoubtedly, his unconditional love for film: having a bachelor’s degree in Film Technology and a burning desire to create stories that will stand the test of time.

Drawn to simplicity and driven by a fanatical attention to detail, Francesco creates music that blurs the lines between ambient, electronic and orchestral.

His instinctive use of acoustic instruments combines the elegance of traditional orchestration with complex, electronic landscapes, melding into emotive and exquisitely elegant hybrid-orchestral compositions.
Francesco’s music takes listeners on a passionate journey through images and emotions, creating stories and shaping memories.

Ben Falkenroth-Steinbach

SCORE

Ben Falkenroth-Steinbach was born in 2001. He worked for years as a voice actor and since 2009 he is a member of the Cologne Cathedral Choir. In 2019 he won the Regional Competition "Jugend komponiert NRW 2019".

Georgios Georgopoulos

SCORE

Born in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. He started with piano lessons at the age of 7 and at the age of 15 with guitar lessons.
Georgopoulos Started rather late being interested in orchestral music, arranging and film music at the age of 23.
Since then he has been working on small film projects for film students or theatre.

Thérence Guillerme

SCORE

Born February 20th 1995, in Annecy, France, Thérence Guillerme first stepped into the music world by learning to play the guitar. He became passionate with music in its wholeness, whether by playing other instruments, including piano and bass guitar, or by conducting choir and orchestral ensembles. With the desire of discovering the world of music, he decided to enter in 2013 at the University of Grenoble Alpes to pursue a degree in Musicology under the direction of Patrick Révol and Marie Demeilliez. In 2016, he graduated in Music and Musicology with honors.
In addition to his university studies, he joined Roger Saez's class in guitar at the Conservatory of Grenoble. In 2015, he was accepted in the Sound Design class at Conservatory of Annecy supervised by Jean Favory, from which he graduated with honors in June 2019. In 2016, he entered Olivier Militon's class in film scoring of the same Conservatory and he is currently finishing his composition degree. In September 2019, he attend the Master MAAAV (Master in film scoring) in Lyon under the supervision of Jean-Marc Serre. His compositions combine many influences such as electroacoustic music, orchestral music, jazz, contemporary music and art-song.

Nick Harbourne

SOUNDDESIGN

Nick Harbourne started learning the piano when I was a wee lad. As my teacher frequently told me at the time, I wasn’t very good at it. Since then, I have gone on to earn a BA from the University of Huddersfield and an MSc from the University of Edinburgh, and been affiliated with multiple award-winning films. I am a sought-after composer and sound designer in Edinburgh, working in film, theatre and live sound.

Gary Hirche

SCORE

Gary Hirche is a 35 year old composer, arranger and music teacher based in Postdam/Germany. From 2005 to 2010 he studied Music Education at the Berlin University of the Arts in the subject bassoon. After working at several music schools for five years, he took up the Filmmusic Masters Program at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in 2016. Since then he composed the music for several short films, animation films and theatre projects.

Dennis Le Rose

SCORE

Dennis Le Rose was born in Herford in 1990. His musical development started at the age of 10 when he took his first classes in piano and keyboard. He would later take classes in singing, composition, music theory and ear training, as well. After his graduation in 2009, he decided to follow his passion and dedicate his life to music and film.

After studying in Bonn he later qualified for studies in Arnhem, where he studied composition for film and theater. During this time he got his first opportunities to compose for several small music ensembles and large orchestra. He graduated from the conservatory in 2015.

Benjamin Löfberg

SOUNDDESIGN

Benjamin Löfberg is 23-years-old aspiring sound designer from Stockholm, Sweden. 
At the age of 11 he picked up a bass for the first time, which later moved on to be replaced by drums. During the later parts of middle school and all through high school he started experimenting with recording his own bands, friends' bands and mixing/mastering music. After high school he wanted to explore other ways working with sound. That’s when he discovered film sound and everything that comes with it. This passion landed him at his current university where he is currently studying the second year of his bachelor's degree.

Yin Lu

SCORE

Yin Lu is a composer, arranger and songwriter born in Guizhou, China.

With a strong interest for infusing notated music with sound-based materials, Yin evolved his style during his four years' career as a screen composer and one year's studying at the RCM by using diverse sound-palette. His style varies from contemporary / serious music, to Jazz and electronic music.

Yin composed music for various award-winning feature films, short films, animations, TV series, video games, and live performances. Recent credits include The Captain (Feature film, released in 9 countries), Li Bao Guo (Multi-award winning feature film). Yin's music for concert and theatre was performed at the Royal Academy of Arts (London), the Bird's Nest (Beijing), Mercedes-Benz Arena (Shanghai), etc.

Before pursuing his Masters in Composition for Screen (2018 - 2020) at the Royal College of Music, Yin was not formally trained in composition. Nevertheless, as a result of his enthusiasm and self-directed learning when he was an undergraduate student in Chinese language and literature at Nanjing University, he began writing music for students' theatre shows, short films. After graduation, Yin studied for a certificate program in Music Production (2013 - 2014) at Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The experience won him the privilege of studying with famous composers including Ji Dongyong and An Dong. Subsequently, he worked as a screen composer at Tone Studio and later as the assistant to the leading film composer Yu-peng Chen in Shanghai.

Raphael Pereira

SCORE & SOUNDDESIGN

Raphael Pereira is currently a second-year Sound Design student at the ACFA Multimedia art school in Lyon.
Throughout his musical training he had the opportunity to work on short films (composition and sound design) as well as on commercials (composition and sound design), video game trailers as well as radio jingles.

After graduating, he wants to work as a sound designer, composer, foley artist and mixer for audiovisual and video games companies and is continuing to train in composition, sound design, recording and creative mixing techniques. Music and sound design have no borders for him. Within his projects, music and sound design often mix to create a single entity: "I like to say that there are no real artists. There are only workers in the service of art. So, I work, I sharpen again and again, so that one day I will be one of these workers indeed."

Dilan Safari

SCORE

Dilans Safari's father, who owns a small cinema introduced him to the world of Film at a young age, with the result that he got sucked in rather fast and developed a love to this art form.
Musically speaking he started to play the piano quite early, had some lessons but he concentrated on his own "compositions" until two years ago he decided to combine his both passions. He applied for the Conservatory at the ArtEZ University in Arnhem and passed the Audition.
Now he is concentrating on taking as much as I can in to the "real world" and developing the skills he has, trying to reach his aim becoming a film composer.

Dennis Tjiok

SCORE

Dennis Tjiok is a composer, pianist, organist and a member of BAFTA Crew studies MMus in Composition for Screen at the Royal College of Music in London, and is working as the Director of Music at Christ Church Isle of Dogs.
For his compositions for film, games, tv, theatre and concert he has won the EHF 2010 Composition Award and the RNCM Entrepreneurship Award including support by YAMAHA. He is also co-founder of the chamber music series AD Festival Days in Manchester, and he has assisted the music departments on productions by WDR, BBC and Sony.

Sinan Varis

SOUNDDESIGN

Leo Wang

SOUNDDESIGN

Leo Wang attended high school in Wermelskirchen and and started studiying Filmdirecting/Sounddesign at the Macromedia University of Applied Science Cologne in 2017. He has completed several internships, i.a. at the art gallerie „Jingtong Art Center“ in Shanghai/China and the Cologne Broadcasting Center.

Fabian Zeidler

SCORE

Fabian Zeidler is a German composer, orchestrator and percussionist, working in the fields of instrumental acoustic music, electroacoustic music and film music. Coming from a drummer’s background, his work as composer is influenced by jazz music. In his current concert pieces he tries to create an ambivalent music sphere by implicating jazz-harmonic, -rhythm and -melody into his own musical language. He was supported by scholarships of the Schubert-and Erbs-foundations and his music was played by a variety of European ensembles and orchestras. In summer 2019 he started studying a master degree in film music at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg “Konrad Wolf”.

Dominik Zingler

SOUNDDESIGN

Dominik Zingler is part of the audio department of the game developer Crytek in Frankfurt am Main since mid-2017. In his role as an Audio Designer, he is responsible for the creation, recording and implementation of game audio in various projects, including "The Climb" and "HUNT: Showdown". He focuses especially on the cooperation between the audio department and other disciplines in game development.
As part of his bachelor thesis, he dealt with the audio middlewares SDL Mixer, Fmod Studio and Wwise in combination with CRYENGINE.