The music of David Gorton first began to receive attention in 2001 when he was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize while still a student. The subsequent commission for the London Sinfonietta, Oblique Prayers, outlined a distinctive and unique sound-world described by one commentator as combining “an acute imagination for delicate timbral invention with a prodigious command of the unfolding of this half-hour ritual drama” (The Independent).

Gorton studied composition with Harrison Birtwistle and Simon Bainbridge. His music can be described as technically demanding for the performers, and for the listener it is complex and challenging - one commentator remarked that it is music in a constant state of restless evolution.

As a soloist and chamber musician Neil Heyde has appeared throughout Europe, and in the USA and Australia. Since the mid 90s he has been the cellist of the Kreutzer Quartet and he now heads the postgraduate programmes at the Royal Academy of Music, where his work focuses on the relationships between performance, composition and analysis. He has commissioned and premiered many solo and chamber pieces and is also dedicated to performing and recording neglected areas of the repertoire.