DIRECTOR
Thomas Fournil
Artistic direction, Composition, Hurdy-gurdy, Portative Organ
Thomas Fournil is a Corsican composer-researcher, singer, and instrumentalist (hurdy-gurdy, portative organ, keyboards) working between medievalism, oral traditions, music archaeology, spectralism/spectrality, and technology. He specialises in troubadour song and Old Roman chant, and explores how recent work in musicology, archaeology, and medieval literature, in dialogue with living oral traditions, can inform historically informed performance and experimental composition. He is especially interested in ornamentation, micro-intonation, vocal technique, improvisation, heterophony, logogenetics, and questions of identity. His practice-based doctorate as a medievalist composer informs both his artistic work and his teaching, supporting approaches that welcome diverse backgrounds, skills, and learning styles, and enabling enquiries in postcolonial, non-modern, queer, and feminocentric fields.
SINGERS
INSTRUMENTALISTS
BIOGRAPHIES
Irini Arabatzi
Voice
Irini Arabatzi is a Greek singer songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She developed a deep passion for jazz and improvisation after years of classical piano training. She studied law in Athens but pursued music simultaneously, performing with renowned jazz musicians across Greece. She was part of the vocal group “Fonés” and appeared in musical theater productions like West Side Story and Shrek. She also collaborated with the BBC Radio-hosted Euroradio Orchestra during her time at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Irini completed her Master’s Degree at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and joined the jazz vocal group London Vocal Project. She is set to release her debut EP with Alberts Favourites label in 2024 and continues to perform at major festivals and venues in the UK, Greece, and Belgium. Irini is equally passionate about teaching singing, working with choirs, vocal groups, and individuals, as well as providing musicianship and Kodaly training to young children.
Dunja Botic
Voice
Dunja Botic is a London-based singer, educator, bandleader, and actor known for her powerful performances and distinctive vocal style rooted in her Greek and Serbian heritage. She blends influences from Balkan, Mediterranean, and Near Eastern folk traditions with jazz and makam improvisation, creating evocative world-music and storytelling through song. Dunja performs both as a solo artist and with ensembles such as Mandalakia and vocal trio Alkanna Graeca, bringing intensity and cultural depth to every stage. In addition to performing, she teaches vocal technique, Balkan ornamentation, and performance expression through workshops informed by her holistic approach to voice and body.
Layale Chaker
Voice
Composer and violinist Layale Chaker was raised on the verge of multiple musical streams in her native Lebanon. Her complex sound universe, described by NPR as “beguiling” with “bright and beautiful strands… gorgeous, wine-dark swirls,” lies at the intersection of classical contemporary music, jazz, Arabic music, and improvisation. Her practice is committed to art as both sanctuary and crossroads—a place where ancestral narratives meet contemporary voices in a continuous reimagination of the world we inherit, live in and bequeath. Layale commenced her musical training at the National Higher Conservatory of Beirut in her native country, before pursuing higher degrees at the Conservatoire de Paris and the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Oliver Dover
Kaval, Ney
Oliver Dover is a saxophonist/clarinettist/kaval/ney player based in Leeds. He specialises in the crossover between jazz and the music of the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean, and has been fortunate enough to have studied with some of the great masters of Greek, Turkish and Bulgarian folk music. He has toured internationally with The Turbans, Beats and Pieces Big Band, Mohammed Alnuma, Hassan Eraji, HAWA,The Near East Collective, Kourelou, Polar Bear and many others.
Noémie Ducimetière
Voice, Oud, Electric Guitar
Noémie Ducimetière (Noum) is a London-raised French-Swiss singer, songwriter and producer. Her diverse and often unconventional path has long intertwined her immersion in vernacular music with her own songwriting. Her fruitful collaboration with Thomas Fournil, who exposed her to troubadour, Corsican and Old Roman chant when Idrîsî was in its infancy has played a big part, as have her interests in Anglo-celtic ballads, their bluegrass counterparts, and the many cultures covertly interwoven with the rock and country genres. Through her pseudonym Noum she is carving out a place between London’s folk‚ rock & electronic music scenes, and anticipating the release of her debut album in March 2027. Her scoring & sound design work in radio, film and theatre has lead her to work for the likes of Girls in film‚ Falling Tree, NOWNESS and the BBC‚ most recently creating the immersive score of 8-part series ‘Holdfast!’.
Konstantinos Glynos
Kanun
Konstantinos Glynos is a London-based kanun player. He performs music spanning from Balkan, Greek, Turkish and Arabic traditions. Moreover London offered him the platform to expand his range of performance skills in jazz ensembles and experimental music. He has collaborated with numerous musicians, dancers, visual artists, composers and directors and he has performed in many world music festivals as well as London venues such as Green Note, Harrison's pub and Magic Garden as well as Ronnie Scott's, Union Chapel and The Place. He is currently a MA student at Goldsmiths university, pursuing a degree in Performance and Related Studies and his research is focusing on arranging, transcribing and performing western baroque music on the Turkish kanun.
Elsa Hackett Esteban
Voice
Elsa Hackett Esteban (elsas) is a London-based multidisciplinary artist, producer, and vocalist born in Barcelona. She graduated with First Class Honours from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 2019, specializing in Jazz Vocals and Composition. Trained in classical piano and choral music from a young age, she founded the Catalan a cappella group In Crescendo, winners of the Spanish TV competition Oh Happy Day in 2014, before moving to London.
Since graduating, she has worked as a touring and recording musician, songwriter, and collaborator with artists including Florence Welch, Little Simz, Duval Timothy, Jockstrap, Obongjayar, and Nia Archives. Since early 2023, she has been a core member of Sampha’s band and a close collaborator, touring internationally and opening as a solo artist on his U.S. tour.
In February 2026, she released her genre-bending EP APORIAMOR (“the death of love’s contradiction”) under her artist name elsas, receiving recognition from The Guardian, NME, She Said So, among others. The influence of her South American and Mediterranean heritage has profoundly informed her artistry and vocal expression, which she continues to explore through her work with Idrîsî Ensemble.Instagram: @elsas_hi Learn more
Lucine Musaelian
Vielle, Voice
Lucine Musaelian is an Armenian-American viola da gamba player, singer, and composer. She graduated from Yale University in 2020 with a B.A. in Music. In July 2022, Lucine completed her M.A. in Historical Performance at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, where she studied viola da gamba with Paolo Pandolfo and voice with Rosa Dominguez. She continued her viol studies with Jonathan Manson at the Royal Academy of Music, where she recieved a Professional Diploma in Viola da Gamba Performance as a recipient of the Enlightenment Award. Lucine is now a Royal Academy Chamber Fellow with the duo Intesa, which specialises in self-accompaniment and multi-genre performance. Her recent performances include a concert in the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Night Shift series, and with Phantasm and Dunedin Consort. In March, she will play with the BBC Philharmonic in a performance of J.S.Bach’s St. John Passion.
Eliza Oakes
Voice
South London artist Eliza Oakes is a vocalist, writer and performer whose work focuses on the exploration of the voice, blending improvisation, songwriting and performance across a spectrum of genres and music traditions. Graduating from the Guildhall School of Music with a first-class honours degree in Jazz Vocals, she combines the learnings of her early gospel roots with two decades of study in jazz, pop, classical music & musical theatre. As a session vocalist and touring musician, she has collaborated with artists including Jordan Rakei, Florence + The Machine, Jules Buckley, Fred Again.., Gracie Abrams, Elbow, Disclosure and more. Previously supported by the PRS ‘Women Make Music’ Fund she is currently exploring her next body of original work, weaving together folk, Americana and gospel influences through the voice.
Isadora Pulman
Voice
Isadora Pulman is a London-based vocalist whose work moves between Medieval vocal studies, yiddish song, free-improvisation and jazz, and post punk performance art. She recently graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with a First-Class Master’s in Composition (Electronic Music), following a First-Class honours degree in Religion and Theology with a focus on ethnomusicology, and ancient languages from the University of Bristol. Her musical practice is deeply informed by her undergraduate research, drawing on diasporic vocal traditions, with a particular focus on the harmonic worlds and traditions of her Jewish heritage. She is currently developing a new project exploring the fusion of Yiddish song, jazz, and the sounds of the medieval Mediterranean and Balkans that she practices with the Idrîsî ensemble. She debuted as a soloist with the ensemble at their 2025 EFG Union Chapel concert, performing her rendition of Noam Lerman’s ‘Fargisn Blut’. Having appeared as a soloist at venues such as the Barbican, Sinfonia Smith Square, and Union Chapel, Pulman is also the front woman of the post-punk gypsy jazz band Ignoring Izzy, a Windmill band at the heart of the London scene, whose recent single was described as ‘dripping with a freakish and distorted sensuality’ in a review by Music is to Blame.
Kerttu Sormunen
Voice
Kerttu Sormunen is a Finnish folk singer, songwriter, musician and actor. Originally from Helsinki, Finland, she moved to London in 2017. Kerttu completed a specialised musical and performance centred education in Finland; starting from elementary level, high school ‘Kallion lukio’ and later into vocal technique and contemporary theatre studies. Since her teens she’s worked as a vocalist, both in studio and live for various Finnish groups and in theatre, then formed her own indie folk group ‘Puutarha’ releasing an EP 2010. She went onto writing her own music and performing solo, sharing her songs inspired by Finnish traditional music. Her debut album ‘Saari’ is due to be released in the end of 2024. Alongside performing solo Kerttu has collaborated as part of an international folk music community, attending Ethno camps, as part of the community music project Flotsam Sessions and frequently performing with Flotsam Orchestra. She joined Idrîsî ensemble in 2021.
Henry Tozer
Henry Tozer is a singer-songwriter, producer, pianist, composer and energy practitioner. His music synergises and develops the lineages of Chopin, Sinatra and late-60s singer-songwriters. He has always danced around the borders of classical and non-classical worlds; alongside writing and recording his own music, he continues to work as a classical singer and pianist in choral, recording and concert settings, as well as performing as a jazz pianist and singer.
Originally from the Devon countryside, he studied music at Cambridge, later lived in New York, and has had his compositions featured in film soundtracks and performed at the BBC Proms. He has toured an acclaimed Leonard Cohen show and collaborated with musicians in China.
Henry is currently focused on recording and releasing his original music: songs and piano pieces, arisen through improvisation and hard labour. He records from his London flat, which he has converted into a studio and where he sleeps underneath his grand piano.
Outside of his activities as a musical artist, Henry is also an educator. He has taught extensively as a vocal and music teacher, holding positions such as Head of Vocals within educational institutions, and directed choirs for many years. His wider teaching has also included therapeutic practice and aspects of Chinese medicine. He has taught meditation for many years. His fundamental orientation is internal alchemy, and art as an expression of the dao.
Vasileios Voulgaropoulos
Voice
Vasileios Voulgaropoulos is a Greek multi-instrumentalist and singer based in London. He works in mental health, while his artistic sensitivities provide him with the incentive to strive for their fulfilment. At the age of nine, he self-referred to study Byzantine ecclesiastical music and piano at the conservatory of the Metropolis of Veria, Naoussa & Kampania, whilst participating in multiple choirs. A year later he studied trumpet with the local philharmonic orchestra. Since his university years, he has been exploring folk music and folkloric traditions of the Mediterranean and Middle East, with the guitar and voice being his main instruments. Currently, he studies jazz and teaches folk Greek guitar. He still believes in what initially triggered him to immerse in the world of music: its empyrean and extraordinary qualities.