Alasdair Nicolson (Course Director) has written music for leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists and his works have been performed in concert halls and festivals all over the world, as well as being broadcast extensively on BBC Radio 3. Commissions have included works for the BBC orchestras, English National Opera, London Symphony Orchestra, the Nash Ensemble, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Alasdair was Composer in Association with the City of London Sinfonia from 1998 to 2005 and he has a strong commitment to music education: he has been Artistic Director the Sound Inventors project, for which he developed his Composition Kits, he taught at the Britten Pears Summer School (2002) and co-hosted the composition summer school held by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies on Hoy (1996). He has led workshops at many UK universities and conservatoires. He is also Artistic Director of the St Magnus Festival.

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Co-Director Sally Beamish is performed and broadcast internationally, her work embracing chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral music. From 1998-2002 she was composer in residence with the Swedish and Scottish Chamber Orchestras, and this relationship continues in 2012 with a new concerto for Colin Currie, co-commissioned also by the Bergen Philharmonic, and Stanford Lively Arts in California. The concerto form is an important source of inspiration for her: The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone, for saxophonist John Harle and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, was premièred at the St Magnus Festival in 1999, and the accordion concerto,  The Singing,  was performed by James Crabb and the RSNO at the 2009 St Magnus Festival. Much of her work is now available on the Swedish label BIS, who have championed her work since 1999. 2011 sees the premiere of her third string quartet at the Proms, performed by the Elias Quartet, and a new work for actor Samuel West, with Psappha. In 1994 and 1995 Sally also co-directed the Hoy Summer School for Composers with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

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Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time. He has written across the widest gamut of musical genres and in many styles. His huge output of orchestral works includes fourteen concertos, several light orchestral works, five works for chorus and eight symphonies. A number of his most important works have been premiered at the St Magnus Festival, including music theatre pieces for children and other works for community performers in Orkney. Maxwell Davies has held the posts of Conductor/Composer of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and of the BBC Philharmonic, and is Composer Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He was appointed Master of the Queen's Music in 2004. He ran a hugely successful Composition Summer School on the island of Hoy for eight years until 1996.

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