Malcolm Forsyth (umGcomo) (commissioned for Hammerhead Consort through The Alberta Foundation for the Arts) has composed over eighty works, including three symphonies, five concertos, orchestral and chamber music, choral and vocal music; commissions from CBC, Canada Council, Shell Canada, Banff Centre, etc.; recipient of Juno Award for "Best Classical Composition," 1987 and 1995; numerous recordings of his compositions; works performed on five continents; published by E.C. Kerby Ltd, and BMG Ariola (Italy). Former principal trombonist, Cape Town (SA) and Edmonton Symphony Orchestras; guest conductor, National Symphony Orchestra (SA) and Alberta Ballet Company; former faculty member, Banff School of the Arts; Visiting Professor, University of Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town.

James Harley (Consort: Dances of the Borealis) (commissioned for Hammerhead Consort with CBC Radio), born 1959, Vernon, B.C., Canada, began studying composition in 1980. Prior to that, he had been active as a pianist, jazz and classical, played percussion, and also studied electroacoustics at Western Washington University. After graduating in 1982, he took up residence in the UK, in order to study composition with Paul Patterson at the Royal Academy of Music. Recipient of grants from the Canada Council and the Leverhulme Trust, among others, Harley remained in London for three years, benefitting from a number of performances and prizes. In 1985, having been awarded the prestigious Mendelssohn Scholarship, which enables British composers to spend a period abroad, he moved to Paris. There, Harley studied aesthetics (Iannis Xenakis) and musical acoustics at the Université de Paris, attended seminars at IRCAM and the College de France (Pierre Boulez), and worked extensively with the UPIC computer music system at CEMAMu. While in Paris, Harley won a number of prizes, including two in the 1986 CBC Radio Young Composers Competition in Canada. Then, in 1987, Harley moved on to Warsaw, thanks to a Polish Government Scholarship, to spend a year at the Chopin Academy of Music. He attended the composition class of Wlodzimierz Kotonski, participated in the Summer Courses for Young Composers organized by the Polish Society for Contemporary Music, and had a piece premiered at the 1987 Warsaw Autumn Festival. In 1988, Harley returned to North America, taking up doctoral studies at McGill University in Montreal. Under the guidance of Bruce Pennycook and Bo Alphonce, he pursued research there in the domain of computer-aided composition, developing CHAOTICS, compositional software based on functions derived from chaos theory. Harley graduated in 1994 with his D.Mus. in composition, having completed a large-scale thesis work, Cantico Delle Creature, under the supervision of John Rea and Bruce Mather. Over the next year, supported by a major Artist's Grant from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec, he composed a series of chamber works, also teaching part-time in the Faculty of Music at McGill University. In 1995, Harley took up a sabbatical replacement position as Assistant Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. There, he taught composition, electroacoustics, contemporary music theory/literature, and directed the Electronic Music Studio. At the same time, he completed a major commission for the Musiques-Echanges festival in Montreal. In the fall of 1996, Harley moved to Los Angeles, and has been teaching part-time at USC and the California Institute of the Arts. For the year 1999-2000, he is teaching Music Technology at Moorhead State University in Minnesota. Harley is married to Maria Anna Harley, musicologist and Director of the Polish Music Reference Center at the University of Southern California, and has three children: Marcin (b.1979), Ania (b. 1989), and Ian (b. 1993).

Piotr Grella-Mozejko (Takussunsittuq) (commissioned for Hammerhead Consort through CBC Radio), born in Poland and based in Canada since 1989, Piotr Grella-Mozejko holds M.Mus. in Composition degree from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, where he studied with Alfred Fisher, Henry Klumpenhouwer, and the late Christopher Lewis, as well as M.A. degree in Social Science from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Earlier, he took composition courses with the distinguished Polish composer Prof. Edward Boguslawski. In 1994, Grella-Mozejko was the only Canadian selected to participate in the prestigious "June in Buffalo" Festival and Conference, where he attended lectures by and master classes with Milton Babbitt, Donald Erb, David Felder, Lukas Foss, Roger Reynolds, and Charles Wuorinen. Currently, he is enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta, focusing on interdisciplinary research involving music and other arts. His teachers there include such distinguished scholars as Marisa Bortolussi, Nasrin Rahimieh, Edward Blodgett, Milan Dimic, Edward Mozejko and Paul Robberecht.
His works have appeared on Arktos and Clef Records labels, have been broadcast and published in Canada, USA and Europe, and performed at numerous festivals and concert series including CMC at 35 (A National Festival of Canadian Music Creation), Conversatorium, Dancing on the Edge (Vancouver), Edmonton New Music Festival, 25th Anniversary of Ensemble MW2, Espace Musique, Fascinating Music Festival, Fringe (Edmonton), I Gdansk Encounters of Young Composers, X International Evenings of Organ and Chamber Music, III International Festival of Organ Music (Warsaw, Poland), 1st International Organ Academy "Pipeworks '96" (Edmonton), June in Buffalo '94, Laboratorium, New Music Alberta, Open Ears Festival, Pacific Market, Poznan Music Spring, Silesian Tribune of Composers, and Warsaw Autumn.
Member of the Canadian League of Composers, voting member of the Canadian Music Centre, President of the Edmonton Composers' Concert Society Grella-Mozejko is also producer of the New Music Alberta concert series and editor of The Alberta New Music and Arts Review.

Kim Helweg (America Fantasy) - the first published work by Kim Helweg (b. 1956), Hvidheden og Stilheden from 1975, shows clearly which composers influenced his formative years - namely Penderecki and John Cage. But a chance with American fusion-music two years later drastically altered his course and led to an extended period of jazz/rock compositions - inspired primarily by Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul and Chick Corea - culminating in a couple of rock-symphonies and the rock-operas Ulysses and Black Mass (the latter recorded in 1985). By 1988, however, he had turned full circle and was again writing for classical ensembles, and his works since that time include a Violin Concerto and a Cello Concerto, two symphonies, four chamber concertos and a requiem.
America Fantasy - a tribute to Leonard Bernstein has a double structure: it is a sonata in four movements, and at the same time it consists of variations on the song "America" from Bernstein's West Side Story. It is 'America's' rhythmic structure - a mixture of 6/8 and 3/4 - that is the inspiration for the work.The theme appears briefly as a coda at the end of the work. In addition, the beautiful song 'Maria' becomes the basis for the second movement. Watch for an example of some virtuoso clapping at the beginning of the Finale.