Lin-Ni Liao
Composer
Born in Taipei (Taiwan), Lin-Ni Liao began training as a pianist at the age of 4. She earned her bachelor’s degree in composition from National Taiwan Normal University in 2000 and her master’s degree in composition from the École Normale de Musique de Paris in 2003. She studied under Yoshihisa Taïra, Allain Gaussin, and Philippe Leroux, who became her mentors in composition. In 2019, she was selected by the CDMC (Centre de documentation de musique contemporaine) for the publication of the book “Compositrice – l’égalité en acte ” (Ed. MF) and for the 2025 SuperPhoniques Middle School Award.
Liao Lin-Ni holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Sorbonne University and is an associate researcher at IReMus. She has been the artistic director of TPMC (Tout pour la Musique Contemporaine) since 2011. All her activities in research and creation provide her with an outside perspective that shines through in her compositions.
Her music stems from synesthesia with light, which evokes for her the nobility of breath and silence. Her works evoke nature in symbiosis with time and space, bridging physical and musical gestures, and the visual and auditory realms—particularly in *TTy* forlarge tam-tam, *Time of Trees I & II* forthe gestures of two pianists and shadows, *Look back on time with kindly eyes*, and*one bird, one tree…* forensemble. His works are published by Maison ONA, and his first solo album on NEOS was released in May 2024.

Cairn Ensemble
Instrumental Ensemble
Cairn is the name given to those piles of stones found in the mountains that serve as landmarks and guides for those who venture there; everyone passing by the cairn is expected to add a stone to it. That is what we sought to achieve: to create the sensation of a listening journey within the concert, to put into perspective music as diverse as it may be, to convey a cohesion that mirrors the bond uniting the members of Cairn, and to compose the program as an object in itself, like a musical composition.
The Cairn Ensemble has existed since 1998. With a dual focus on rigorous ensemble and chamber music, the repertoires explored by the Cairn Ensemble are open to other aesthetic forms and artistic practices: jazz, circus, visual arts, dance, literature, video, etc. The concerts are conceived as inner journeys in which each audience member is invited to imagine a sensory relationship with sound.
Cairn’s artistic collaborations include composers and artists from a wide variety of backgrounds, such as composers Gérard Pesson, Philippe Leroux, and Tristan Murail; jazz musicians Marc Ducret, John Hollenbeck, and Jozef Dumoulin; Fado singer Cristina Branco; video artist Pierre Nouvel; choreographers Alban Richard and Hervé Robbe; circus artist Sylvain Julien; and painter Raphaël Thierry...
The Ensemble performs regularly at France’s national venues (Besançon, Arras-Douai, Orléans, Blois, Bourges, Quimper) and internationally. It has also been invited to numerous festivals in France and abroad: Radio France’s Festival Présences, the Festival Manifeste (IRCAM), Festival d’Automne, Royaumont Abbey, the Musica Festival, Ferienkurse (Darmstadt, Germany), Venice Biennale, Tage für Neue Musik (Zurich), Villa Medici (Rome), Borealis (Norway), Archipel (Geneva), Spring Festival, Sonik Festival, Prague Quadrennial.
The Ensemble Cairn currently comprises eleven musicians, with Jérôme Combier serving as artistic director and Guillaume Bourgogne as music director. The Ensemble Cairn is in residence at the Théâtre d’Orléans, a National Stage, and is affiliated with the Centre-Val de Loire region. From 2016 to 2019, it became an Ensemble with National and International Reach.

Alexis Baskind
Musician, sound engineer, and computer music producer
Alexis Baskind trained in sound engineering in Benoit Fabre’s class at the Conservatoire national de région d’Aubervilliers / La-Courneuve, while simultaneously pursuing studies in science and technology (electrical engineering, signal processing, applied mathematics). In 1999, he joined IRCAM, where he conducted research in room acoustics on the topic of “models and methods for the spatial description of sound scenes,” culminating in a Ph.D. in 2003.
Since then, he has been active as a musician and artistic and/or technical producer in contemporary music, improvised music, jazz, and free jazz. He collaborates with numerous labels and production organizations, including IRCAM (Paris), the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse, Les Musiques à Ouïr, TPMC (Paris), GMEM (Marseille), and Umlaut (Paris/Berlin). He has worked with composers such as Philippe Leroux, Beat Furrer, Hanspeter Kyburz, Héctor Parra, Pedro Amaral, François Paris, Philippe Hurel, Vladimir Tarnopolsky, Alexandros Markéas, Fabián Panisello, Turgut Erçetin, and Rebecca Saunders, as well as director Jean-François Peyret, on studio productions and dance, theater, and music creations. He has performed with soloists including Juliet Fraser, Pascal Contet, Uli Fussenegger, Wu Wei, Anil Eraslan, Denis Charolles, Christelle Sery, and Benny Sluchin, as well as with ensembles such as Accroche Note, Bit20, Ictus, 2e2m, Court-Circuit, Ensemble intercontemporain, Percussions de Strasbourg, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, and the American Composers Orchestra.
At the same time, he regularly collaborates on artistic and technical projects requiring the development of specific solutions for sound processing and design, as well as interfacing with gesture capture technologies.
A former professor of sound engineering at the Hochschule der populären Künste FH (Berlin) and having taught in the Tonmeister program at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold as well as at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain), he regularly teaches specialized courses in sound engineering and electroacoustic production at conservatories, universities, and institutes dedicated to musical creation.
He participates in several international festivals such as Warsaw Autumn, Manifeste (Paris), Holland Festival, Agora (Paris), Festival d’Automne (Paris), Bregenzer Festspiele, Munich Biennale, Maerzmusik (Berlin), Printemps des arts (Monaco), Musica (Strasbourg), Tage für Neue Musik festival (Zurich), Ultima festival (Oslo), faraway (Reims), and Propagations (GMEM, Marseille).