Mihailo Trandafilovski (1974, Macedonia) studied at the Faculty of Music in Macedonia, Michigan State University, USA (BMus) and the Royal College of Music, UK (MMus, DMus). His work has been supported by the Macedonian Ministries of Science and Culture and the British Government (Chevening scholarship), amongst others. Several of his pieces have been shortlisted by the Society for the Promotion of New Music (now Sound and Music) in the UK and he received the ”Panče Pešev” Award at the Days of Macedonian Music festival in 2006. He is a member of the Kreutzer String Quartet, with whom he has performed and recorded extensively, and is one of the founders and a Music Director of FuseArts.  Recent commissions include a clarinet quintet for Roger Heaton, violin concerto for Peter Sheppard Skærved, and a new work for the New London Chamber Choir. A portrait CD with his chamber music performed by Lontano (conductor Odaline de la Martinez) and the Kreutzer Quartet was released in 2011 by LORELT.

Star Factory (2010) for string quartet. This piece was commissioned in 2010 for the South London Gallery (situated in deprived Peckham, South East London), which was itself the starting point: I considered the acoustics, but also the way in which I experienced the gallery space during several exhibitions in the months running up to the concert – in particular, the contrast between it being very dense and very sparse felt, for me, attractive and intense. I also explored the surrounding area – a walk down Jamaica Road revealed some parallels: areas of density (rectangular council housing tower blocks) juxtaposed with sparseness (“empty” areas in between). But in both cases, I felt there was a unifying factor too: the contrasts in the gallery space and during the walk seemed to me more “fluid” when considered in time and as experienced during the actual physical process of walking. This is reflected in the musical structure of the composition: a wave-like, organic development integrates the opposing blocks. In a different context, similar physical processes are active in nebulae – clouds of density in space, where gas and dust collapse under gravity, crystallising in the formation of stars …