Peter Facer - Oboe
Peter Facer is one of the most up-and-coming oboists of his generation. He currently holds the Howard de Walden Scholarship at Royal Academy of Music, where he is in his first year of postgraduate study. Prior to this, Peter studied at Girton College Cambridge, where he graduated with Double First Class Honours in Music and won numerous prizes for academic achievement. Peter is very grateful to be assisted in his studies by the Charles Leggett Award from the Musicians Benevolent Fund.
Peter has given solo recitals in many different venues including various Cambridge colleges, Cambridge’s premiere chamber music venue: Kettle’s Yard, and at London venues St-Martin-in-the-Fields, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Foundling Museum. Peter has also performed concertos by Vivaldi and Marcello in the West Road Concert Hall, and has recently performed the Boughton Oboe Concerto with the Penzance Symphony Orchestra and Bach’s second Brandenburg Concerto with the RAM Baroque Orchestra.
During his teens, Peter was a member of the National Youth Orchestra in which his orchestral solos were described by reviews in the Independent and Guardian newspapers as “expert” and “very affecting”. In his final term at the Junior Academy, he won the Senior Woodwind Prize and was awarded National Youth Orchestra’s Howard Gough Prize. Peter still greatly enjoys orchestral playing and frequently plays principal oboe or cor anglais with the Royal Academy’s Symphony and Concert Orchestras, and whilst at Cambridge, he was principal of the University Chamber Orchestra.
Peter is the oboist of the Ellipsis Quintet, a newly-founded wind ensemble comprising postgraduate students at the Royal Academy. The Quintet’s recently won the RAM’s Nicholas Blake Prize for Chamber Music.
When not playing the oboe, or sitting on the Jubilee Line, Peter enjoys cheese, both edible and musical. He loves musicals, and occasionally writes his own and then persuades people to put them on. His satirical review of his Cambridge college (Girton – the Musical!) was recently performed for the fourth year running! His favourite cheese is Gorgonzola.
Peter currently learns with Melanie Ragge, and plays on a Marigaux oboe.
Richard Uttley - Piano
Born in Bradford in 1987, Richard read Music at Clare College, Cambridge, graduating in 2008 with a Double First. He studied piano with Ian Buckle for ten years, and in 2008 began studying with Martin Roscoe at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he now holds a Fellowship. In 2010 he was awarded a Distinction in his Master's of Performance and also won 1st Prize in the Haverhill Sinfonia Soloist Competition. He was selected for representation by Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) in 2011.
Over the last year Richard has appeared at the Royal Festival Hall in a Martin Musical Scholarship Fund concert (where his programme included Schubert’sWanderer Fantasy alongside the world premiere of Barkham Fantasy by Mark Simpson), given recitals at Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room (for the Park Lane Group), taken part in the Ribble Valley International Piano Week and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and undertaken a tour of France performing Stravinsky’s Les Noces.
In 2009 he worked with Louis Andriessen in a BBC Proms Composer Portrait recorded by Radio 3 and in 2011 with Brian Ferneyhough as part of a BBC Total Immersion Day followed by a recording for the 'Hear and Now' programme. His concerto work has included performances of works by Gershwin (Symphony Hall Birmingham), Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Grieg, Poulenc, Rachmaninov and Ravel, as well as music by Adams (Grand Pianola Music) and Stockhausen (Kontra-Punkte). Engagements this season include recitals at Purcell Room and Bridgewater Hall, a live broadcast and interview on BBC Radio 3, a performance of the Grieg Concerto with the Northern Lights Symphony Orchestra at Cadogan Hall, and a three week Creative Residency at The Banff Centre in Canada.
An exceptionally versatile musician, Richard has commissioned works from composers including Timothy Jackson, Mark Simpson and Chris Willis, with funds from UH Recordings and the RVW Trust. He has released two discs of 20th and 21st Century piano music on the UH Recordings label to critical acclaim. The first CD features premiere recordings of works by Robin Holloway and led to a Rising Star feature in BBC Music Magazine. The discs are available on iTunes and Amazon, and also on Spotify. As a chamber musician Richard was an Instrumental Award Holder at Cambridge and now regularly works with various singers and instrumentalists. He has played orchestral piano for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and their contemporary music chamber group, Ensemble 10:10.
During his studies Richard won numerous prizes and awards, including 1st Prize in the Moray Piano Competition 2005 and the British Contemporary Piano Competition 2006. He has received postgraduate funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Council; an Education Award (2008) and the Myra Hess Scholarship (2009) from the Musicians' Benevolent Fund; a grant from The Tillett Trust (2011) to study contemporary repertoire with Nicolas Hodges and Ian Pace; and support from the Worshipful Companies of Drapers and Salters. In masterclasses, Richard has played to Peter Donohoe, Rolf Hind, Robert Levin, Paul Lewis, Steven Osborne and Yonty Solomon, amongst others.
Aside from classical music, Richard loves film (particularly Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen), the novels of Ian McEwan, and musicals by Stephen Sondheim. As well as performing, Richard teaches piano privately and at City University, London. He also composes occasionally, and had his short song cycle, Five Yeats Songs, performed by baritone Stephen Varcoe and pianist Christina Lawrie earlier this year.
Programme
|
