Stephanie Eslake — founding editor
Stephanie Eslake founded Level and Gain in 2019 to extend the conversation about music for film, game, and TV — and why screen composition is just as “serious” an artform as the classics. It comes after she launched classical music magazine CutCommon in 2014 to create an inclusive community for arts practitioners in Australia. CutCommon has since grown to a digital readership of 20,000 visits a month, and was shortlisted for the Classical:NEXT Innovation Awards, placing it as one of the top 10 classical music projects in the world.
Stephanie has degrees in media, music, and sociology; and certificates in screen and business. You may have read her journalism in SBS, Limelight Magazine, Junkee, The Music, ArtsHub, and The Herald Sun among others. She’s also written program notes for major Australian orchestras, and was selected for the ARIA Awards Voting Academy, and the APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards judging panel.
She is addicted to fuelled by coffee, which she sips in between rounds of Mario Kart on her Switch, and Professor Layton on her 3DS.
Angelo Valdivia — contributor
Brought up on an indulgent diet of pop culture throughout his life, Angelo somehow developed into a classical trumpet player and music teacher, while also moonlighting as a writer and videographer. He’s played in a wide range of ensembles: ska bands, pop bands, concert bands, brass bands, symphony orchestras, pit orchestras, jazz groups, and even recently started a video game big band.
Community banding has been at his core as a musician since high school, and he participates in whatever band needs a trumpet/cornet player around his Australian home city of Adelaide, competing regularly in the State and National Band Championships.
As a writer, Angelo has been published in CutCommon, The Adelaide Review, HYPER Magazine, OZY, The Serenade Files, and is a game reviewer at Vooks. As for video, Angelo films and edits promotional videos for various musical organisations, and also wrote, edited and presented reviews/feature segments for local television show Player Attack. He also hosts his own podcast Game Composure.
Christopher Leon — contributor
Australian composer and music producer Christopher Leon graduated from the University of Tasmania in 2013 with majors in journalism and music technology; and shortly after, he returned to study ICT — he’s now a games major.
Christopher is CutCommon’s Global series editor, and also dabbles in motorsport journalism. But he’s big into music, too — in 2011, he worked on a team to produce the score for American feature film Christmas With The Dead, and in 2013 was responsible for scoring a TV commercial for the Tasmanian State Government. Since picking up the guitar at age 12, Christopher has performed his own classical and Flamenco-influenced guitar compositions across major venues in his home state, and has swept through genres on his way to electronic and orchestral music production.
When he’s not rocking the crowds as a DJ at the Falls Festival, he’s switching between The Witcher and Fallout on his gaming consoles.