Festival
Performance Festival 2026
Supported by the Colwinston Charitable Trust
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Career Insight: Music and Optimism
What can a sustainable career in music look like, and why is there still reason for optimism?
+44 (0)20 7942 2000
Past Event
Join the V&A Youth Collective as they host a conversation with artists, exploring the challenges and possibilities of building a career in the creative industries.
From navigating different career pathways to developing resilience and improving accessibility, speakers will share honest insights into the challenges they face, and the opportunities shaping the future of music and sound.
Joining us for the event will be
From navigating different career pathways to developing resilience and improving accessibility, speakers will share honest insights into the challenges they face, and the opportunities shaping the future of music and sound.
Joining us for the event will be
- Electra Perivolaris, Composer and Pianist
- Victoria Karlsson, Inter-disciplinary artist and researcher
- Clio Harwood, Musician and Violinist for Art-rock band ‘Man/Woman/Chainsaw’.
This event is hosted and co-produced by the V&A Youth Collective.
This event will be live streamed to online audiences from the V&A Museum. Book a ticket on this page to join us online, or click here to join the live audience at the V&A.
Electra Perivolaris is a British-Greek composer and pianist. Her work is rooted in the landscapes of her home on the Scottish Isle of Arran and her family’s origins on the Greek island of Chios. Engaging with the natural world as a fragile living organism, her music often explores ecological processes, memory, and myth through vivid sonic imagery. Described as “A Classical Star of the Future” (BBC Introducing), “One of a new generation of female trailblazers” (BBC Radio 3), and praised for her “razor-sharp musical imagination” (The Telegraph), she is emerging as a distinctive voice in contemporary classical music. A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Royal Academy of Music, Electra will complete a Doctorate of Philosophy in Composition at the University of Oxford in 2026. She was the inaugural Young Classical Artists Trust Composer Fellow (2024/25), a Royal Philharmonic Society Composer (2022/23) and a PRS Foundation Classical:NEXT Fellow (2026).
Electra Perivolaris | Home
Victoria Karlsson is an artist and researcher working across sound art and performance. In her practice and research, she explores cultural aspects of sound and listening through performance, visual and text scores, writing and sculpture. She is interested in working with ‘inner sound and listening’, which she defined through her practice based PhD research at CRISAP, UAL as “sounds we hear in our minds, similar to, but different from, an inner voice." (Karlsson, 2022). She is also interested in intersections between sound, listening, queer theory and affect.
Electra Perivolaris is a British-Greek composer and pianist. Her work is rooted in the landscapes of her home on the Scottish Isle of Arran and her family’s origins on the Greek island of Chios. Engaging with the natural world as a fragile living organism, her music often explores ecological processes, memory, and myth through vivid sonic imagery. Described as “A Classical Star of the Future” (BBC Introducing), “One of a new generation of female trailblazers” (BBC Radio 3), and praised for her “razor-sharp musical imagination” (The Telegraph), she is emerging as a distinctive voice in contemporary classical music. A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Royal Academy of Music, Electra will complete a Doctorate of Philosophy in Composition at the University of Oxford in 2026. She was the inaugural Young Classical Artists Trust Composer Fellow (2024/25), a Royal Philharmonic Society Composer (2022/23) and a PRS Foundation Classical:NEXT Fellow (2026).
Electra Perivolaris | Home
Victoria Karlsson is an artist and researcher working across sound art and performance. In her practice and research, she explores cultural aspects of sound and listening through performance, visual and text scores, writing and sculpture. She is interested in working with ‘inner sound and listening’, which she defined through her practice based PhD research at CRISAP, UAL as “sounds we hear in our minds, similar to, but different from, an inner voice." (Karlsson, 2022). She is also interested in intersections between sound, listening, queer theory and affect.
www.victoriakarlsson.co.uk
Clio Harwood is a classically trained violinist and pianist who plays electric violin in the rising UK Art-rock band ‘Man/Woman/Chainsaw’. The band tours internationally and is about to release their debut album ‘Cannonball’ on Fiction records. In 2025 they flew to America to perform at SXSW and KEXP radio.
Clio Harwood is a classically trained violinist and pianist who plays electric violin in the rising UK Art-rock band ‘Man/Woman/Chainsaw’. The band tours internationally and is about to release their debut album ‘Cannonball’ on Fiction records. In 2025 they flew to America to perform at SXSW and KEXP radio.
While she works towards graduating from Goldsmiths UOL this summer, Clio is also a founder and songwriter of the electronic project ‘Miss U’, This is a three piece band who run the club night ‘Miss Universe presents’ which blends live music with club cultures (Venue MOT, The bunker club).
Clio’s Miss Universe/ Miss-U project pushes beyond the conventions of contemporary dance music by treating it as a form of performance art rather than pure sound.
Built around a deliberately constructed alter ego, it interrogates ideas of identity, femininity and artificiality, introducing an emotional ambiguity rarely found on the dance floor.
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