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Season 2012/13
Watch this space for details of the 2012-13 season. Details will be published HERE first! - Bookmark This Page
29th September 2012 |
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17th November 2012 |
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12th January 2013 |
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2nd March 2013 |
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Pure Brass Quintet
The award winning Pure Brass is a vibrant, young and well established brass quintet that perform regularly to critical acclaim. Formed in 2006 at the Royal Conseratoire of Scotland the group has quickly become a prominent ensemble within the Scottish chamber music scene. Pure Brass is part of the Live Music Now! Scheme and are past recipients of the June Emerson Launchpad Prize. The quintet are also half way through a tour which marks the end of the group’s two year Residency Project with Enterprise Music Scotland. The project has led to various mentoring sessions with internationally renowned chamber musicians, as well as a newly commissioned work by Alasdair Nicolson entitled, The Vanishing, which the group premiered at the St Magnus Festival 2011 in the breathtaking St Magnus Cathedral to a sold out audience. The ensemble have also been accepted onto the Musicians’ Company Concordia Foundation Concert season as well as the Park Lane Group which will see the quintet appear at both the Wigmore Hall and Purcell Rooms in the coming months. Pure Brass have won a variety of competitions including the RSAMD Governors’ Prize for Chamber Music, which was subsequently made into a recording for BBC Radio Scotland, the Mary D Adams Award and the Norman Cooper Prize at the Aberdeen International Youth Festival. The quintet has performed in solo recitals in some of the leading venues in the UK including; St Martin in the Fields London, the Usher Hall Edinburgh, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and at festivals such as the Edinburgh Fringe, Durham Festival of Brass, and the Sauerland-Herbst, Germany and T in The Park! The group has a passion for new music and has performed premieres at the “Sounds New” Festival, Canterbury, “Plug” Festival, Glasgow, and a sellout recital of contemporary music at the RSAMD. Education is also central to the work of Pure Brass, and the group’s infectious enthusiasm creates a fun learning experience for children of all ages.
Fujita Piano Trio
The Fujita sisters from Japan have been playing chamber music together since early childhood. They made a highly acclaimed debut at the Wigmore Hall in March 1999.
Concert engagements have taken the Trio to more than 100 venues in the UK. Overseas, they have played in Canada, France, Italy, Ireland, Romania, Egypt, Morocco and Turkey, and they have won numerous awards and prizes, both as a Trio and individually.
Arisa studied with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music, London (where she now teaches), Honoka studied at the Guildhall School with Jennifer Ward Clarke and Raphael Wallfisch, where the Trio also received coaching from the Takacs Quartet. Megumi studied at the Menuhin School with Louis Kentner, Simon Nicholls and Vlado Perlemuter and continued her studies at the Royal College of Music with Irina Zaritskaya. They won the Chamber Music Prize at the Guildhall School in 1994.
The sisters have performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto numerous times with orchestras including the G..Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra (Romania) and the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra in venues including the Barbican Centre, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and the Atheneum Hall (Bucharest). They have toured Loire, France with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire. Their performance of the Triple Concerto with the Romanian National Radio Orchestra at the Radio Hall, Bucharest was broadcast live by national television and radio.
In England, the Trio has performed at more than 100 venues including the Barbican Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall, St.Martin-in-the-Fields, Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, and at the Exeter, King's Lynn, and Salisbury Festival.
The Trio has recorded Toru Takemitsu Chamber Works for ASV Records, Tchaikovsky Piano Trio, Shostakovich/Ravel Piano Trios, Schubert Piano Trios, and the Dvorak/Smetana Piano Trios with the Swedish label Intim Musik. Arisa has released Ysaye 6 Sonatas for Solo Violin Op. 27, and Megumi, Rachmaninov 24 Preludes and a Piano Solo recital disc featuring works by Beethoven, Ravel and Rachmaninov.
2006 saw a return visit to the Wigmore Hall Sunday Coffee concert series and a performance of Beethoven Triple Concerto in Japan with Kyoto Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 2007, awarded the Kyoto Aoyama Barocksaal Prize for their recital in Kyoto, Japan.
Future engagements include concerts in Sweden and throughout the UK.
"(Between Tides) is as heartbreakingly beautiful as anything in all of music....simply magnificent"
American Record Guide, Takemitsu CD review
"tour de force in all respects."
Musical Opinion, Wigmore Hall Recital
Duo Dorado
Hazel Brooks violin
David Pollock harpsichord
Hazel Brooks and David Pollock have been charming audiences with their performances since 1999. Fired by a shared commitment to present music of the 17th and 18th centuries in an accessible way, these two prize-winning musicians have performed together throughout the UK and beyond. Of particular note are their highly-acclaimed concerts at the Early Music Festival in Barcelona.
Programmes by the duo have been praised for their varied and colourful textures; they mix great composers such as Bach, Handel and Vivaldi with other rare treats, producing a varied and colourful range of sound-textures. Hazel and David have developed a sensitive and communicative performing style which has led to many return invitations from promoters. Spoken introductions bring to life the musical and historical context of each piece and form an important part of their concerts. Duo Dorado performances are also visually interesting. Their beautifully decorated harpsichord forms a stunning centrepiece making each concert a feast for the eyes as well as the ears.
They have released a CD, L’Eleganza, on the Singing Space label, followed in 2011 by a new recording of music by William Croft on the CRD label.
Hazel Brooks studied at Clare College, Cambridge. After graduation she went on to study the violin at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Leipzig, and the Guildhall School of Music in London, where she specialised in early music. Here she won the Christopher Kite Memorial Prize and the Bankers Trust Pyramid Award, and she was a finalist in the international competitions in York and Antwerp.
As a baroque violinist, Hazel now works regularly as a recitalist and in chamber ensembles including Duo Dorado, the Brook Street Band and the Feinstein Ensemble. Solo recital venues have ranged from the South Bank Centre in London and St George’s Brandon Hill, to the Barcelona Early Music Festival. Hazel is frequently asked to lead orchestras and enjoys appearing as a concerto soloist.
Hazel also has an interest in unusual instruments and her recitals often include the viola d’amore. She is in demand as a medieval-fiddle specialist throughout Europe and America, and has released recordings with the Boston Camerata, USA (Warner Classics) and duo Trobairitz (Hyperion). She has been involved in a project combining Western and Moroccan musicians. Hazel has taught workshops at the Guildhall and Trinity College of Music.
David Pollock studied harpsichord at the Royal Academy of Music where he won the Croft Early Music First Prize. Since then he has appeared at such venues as the Purcell Room and St John’s Smith Square London, St George’s Bristol and St David’s Hall Cardiff. David has given critically acclaimed recitals at the Fairfield Halls Croydon and has performed in international music festivals in Great Britain and abroad. As a concerto soloist he has performed the complete harpsichord concertos of JS Bach.
An interest in contemporary music has led to composers writing specially for David. He gave the premiere of a large-scale work Seven Mimicries for Solo Harpsichord (1996) by Gavin Stevens, and recently Colin Hand’s Five Portraits for the Virginals (2008) and Robert Page’sSonata for Harpsichord (2009) have been the latest contributions to David’s repertoire of new music.
Solo CDs are The French Harpsichord and O Mistris Myne:150 years of English virginals music on the London Independent Records label. He is also harpsichordist with The Parnassian Ensemble whose A Noble Entertainment – Music from Queen Anne’s London was released in 2006 on the Avie label.
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.
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