Affiliate Artists

Alfred Brendel studied piano and composition in Zagreb and Graz, completing his piano studies with Edwin Fischer, Paul Baumgartner and Eduard Steuermann. For over 60 years he has enjoyed a distinguished international career concentrating on the works of central European composers from Bach to Schoenberg but also featuring many works by Liszt. He was the first pianist to record Beethoven’s complete piano works, and was highly influential in getting Schubert’s Piano Sonatas and the Schoenberg Piano Concerto recognised as integral parts of the piano repertoire. He has performed regularly at the world’s musical centres and festivals, and with the leading orchestras and conductors, and his extensive discography has made him one of the most respected artists of our time. His final concert appearance was with the Vienna Philharmonic on 18 December 2008, which was voted one of the 100 greatest cultural moments of the last ten years by The Daily Telegraph.

After finishing his studies with Peter Lloyd in 1982, Simon Channing worked regularly as a freelance flautist with the English Chamber Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra before joining the LPO as sub-principal flute in 1988. He was a member of the orchestra for eight years, including three as chairman, and his wide orchestral experience has included playing for many of the world’s great conductors, including Solti, Tennstedt, Mehta, Haitink and Rattle. In 1997 he was granted a year’s sabbatical by the LPO to become Head of Woodwind Brass and Percussion at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts before returning to London as Head of Performance Planning at the Royal College of Music. He became Head of Woodwind at the RCM in 2010.

Described as ‘Britain’s most progressive harpsichordist’ (The Independent on Sunday), Jane Chapman has revitalised repertoire for the instrument. Equally passionate about contemporary and baroque music, she has inspired a generation of composers and is involved in cutting-edge collaborations with groundbreaking musicians, dancers and visual artists, exploring innovative approaches to performance. Her diverse recordings include the first extensive overview of important sources previously unexplored on disc such as the seventeenth-century French Bauyn Manuscript, and electroacoustic works by British composers. Jane received a British Council Scholarship to study with Ton Koopman at the Amsterdam Conservatory. She is an Honorary Fellow of Dartington College of Arts and an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Music, where she is a professor of harpsichord. From 2011 to 2012, she was Artist in Residence supported by the Leverhulme Trust at the Foyle Special Collections Library, King’s College London, researching the ‘Oriental Miscellany’ (1789), and she was Turner Sims Fellow at the University of Southampton from 2013 to 2015.

Nicholas Daniel‘s career began when, at the age of eighteen, he won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition. He has been a concerto soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras, working under conductors such as Sakari Oramo, Sir Roger Norrington, Oliver Knussen, Richard Hickox, Jiri Belohlavek, David Robertson, Sir Mark Elder and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He has premiered works by composers including Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Henri Dutilleux, Thea Musgrave, Nigel Osborne, John Tavener and Sir Michael Tippett. He is a founder member of the Haffner Wind Ensemble and the Britten Oboe Quartet.

Caroline Dearnley studied at the Royal College of Music with Joan Dickson and William Pleeth. She has been principal cello with Britten Sinfonia since 1992 and gave the British premiere of Poul Ruders’ Cello Concerto with the orchestra in 2001. She is also guest principal cello with the London Sinfonietta, ENO and English Chamber Orchestra. She was a founder member of the Joachim Trio, recording extensively for Naxos, ASV and Hyperion.

The Endellion String Quartet has appeared at nearly all of the major series and festivals in Britain and is regularly broadcast on BBC radio and television; it has appeared at the Proms, and it has been featured in the week-long programmes ‘Artist of the Week’ and ‘Artists in Focus’. They have worked with guest artists including members of the former Amadeus Quartet, Sir Thomas Allen, Joshua Bell, Michael Collins, Steven Isserlis, Mitsuko Uchida and Tabea Zimmerman. In 1996 the quartet were winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Best Chamber Ensemble. The quartet has been in residence at the University of Cambridge since 1992.

Margaret Faultless is a violinist and director; performing music from Monteverdi to the present day, she is best known as a specialist in eighteenth-century repertoire. She has been a co-leader of The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment since 1989 and directs the orchestra in some baroque programmes. She is an Artistic Director of the Cambridge University Collegium Musicum, Director of Performance at the Faculty of Music in Cambridge, a Bye-Fellow of Girton College, and Musician in Residence at St John’s College. She is also Head of Historical Performance at the Royal Academy of Music and Director of Studies of the European Union Baroque Orchestra.

Claire Finnimore has been principal viola in Britten Sinfonia for the past twelve years. She studied with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where she was awarded the prize for Unaccompanied Bach and the School Viola Prize. She co-founded and was principal viola in the Guildhall String Ensemble, who were international prize winners, making their Carnegie Hall debut in 1991. As a session musician Clare appears on the soundtracks to films such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Hobbit and James Bond ‘Skyfall‘. She has appeared live with Kylie Minogue and Florence and the Machine.

Angela Hewitt began her piano studies at the age of three, performing in public at four and a year later winning her first scholarship. She then went on to learn with French pianist, Jean-Paul Sévilla. In 1985 she won the Toronto International Bach Piano Competition. Angela Hewitt’s award-winning recordings for Hyperion have garnered praise from around the world. Her ten-year project to record all the major keyboard works of Bach has been described as ‘one of the record glories of our age’ (Sunday Times) and has won her a large following. Angela Hewitt was named ‘Artist of the Year’ at the 2006 Gramophone Awards. She was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2000 and was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2006. She lives in London and has homes in Ottawa and in Italy, where she is Artistic Director of the Trasimeno Music Festival in Umbria.

The late Christopher Hogwood, once described as ‘the von Karajan of early music’, was equally active in nineteenth- and twentieth–century repertoire. A celebrated conductor, musicologist and keyboard player, his catalogue of over 200 recordings with the Academy of Ancient Music on Decca includes the complete Mozart and Beethoven symphonies. He worked with most leading symphony orchestras and opera houses in the world. As a musicologist he covers music from the sixteenth century (Fitzwilliam Virginal Book) to the twentieth century (Martinů, Elgar, Stravinsky). He was Emeritus Honorary Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge, Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and Gresham Professor of Music.

Janis Kelly made her debut at ENO after graduating from the RCM Opera School and has since been a regular guest in operas by Mozart, Gilbert and Sullivan, Weill, Monteverdi, Purcell, Humperdink, Offenbach, Birtwistle and Glass. She has performed with the Matrix Ensemble, the Hallè Orchestra, The Sixteen in Spain, the Orquestra y Coro Cumminidad de Madrid and at the BBC Proms. Projects have included Nella in Gianni Schicchi at ROH, Mrs Naidoo Satyagraha at ENO, the title role in Prima Donna by Rufus Wainwright at Sadlers Wells, Toronto, Melbourne, Paris and New York and her debut in Nixon in China at the Metropolitan Opera January 2011. She can be seen as Liu Turandot in the Hollywood movie The Life of David Gale. She has been a vocal professor at the Royal College of Music since 2007.

Joanna MacGregor is one of the world’s most innovative musicians, appearing as a concert pianist, curator and collaborator. Currently Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music, she was Artistic Director of the Bath International Music Festival from 2006 to 2012. In 2010 she curated the multi-arts Deloitte Ignite Festival at the Royal Opera House, as well as ‘Aventures’, an orchestral series for Luxembourg Philharmonie, in 2012–13. As a solo artist Joanna has performed in over seventy countries and has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras and such eminent conductors as Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davis, Valery Gergiev, Sir Simon Rattle and Michael Tilson Thomas, and has premiered many landmark compositions. She made three appearances at the 2012 BBC Proms, two of them televised, and made her debut at the Mostly Mozart Festival in Lincoln Center, New York in August 2012. She awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Jubilee Honours 2012.

Described as ‘one of Britain’s liveliest musical forces and foremost violinists’ (The Times), Madeleine Mitchell has performed in over forty countries as a soloist in a wide repertoire. A highly creative artist, she founded the eclectic international Red Violin Festival under Lord Menuhin’s patronage, and she has received major Arts Council awards for her original collaborations with both voices and percussion. Her FiddleSticks CD of commissioned companion works to Lou Harrison’s Violin Concerto with Percussion Orchestra was shortlisted for both Grammy and BBC Music Awards. Together with pianist Joanna MacGregor she arranged Bach’s Art of Fugue for the BBC Proms, with their Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time being the widely recommended recording. Madeleine Mitchell has had many works written for her, and she has also researched and recorded early twentieth-century British violin sonatas and chamber music. She is a professor at the Royal College of Music and was a Fulbright/ITT Fellow in New York. In 2014 she premiered a violin concerto written for her by Guto Puw at the Bangor New Music Festival.

Alexandra Reid read Music at Selwyn College, Cambridge and graduated in 2006 with first-class honours, after which she continued her studies at the Royal Academy of Music. In 2008 she graduated with Distinction from the Academy having studied with Erich Gruenberg. Since then she has been working in London, and in 2010 she was appointed No. 3 Second Violin in the Britten Sinfonia with whom she tours the UK and abroad. She has also worked with the London Sinfonietta, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. She plays frequently with the London Chamber Orchestra, with whom she was privileged to perform at the Royal Wedding in April 2011. As a keen chamber musician she is a member of the Goldfield Ensemble, Pirani Trio, and Hampden Quartet, as well as performing in a violin duo with her sister.

Helen Reid has given solo piano recitals at venues including the Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, Fairfield Halls and Blackheath Halls in London, St George’s in Bristol, Cheltenham, the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, and the Aldeburgh and the Hampstead and Highgate Festivals. In 2006 she was named a ‘rising star’ in The Independent. She teaches at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Leeds College of Music and Trinity College of Music. Research projects include the ‘Psychological impact of injuries on musicians’, undertaken for the Guildhall School.

Jacqueline Shave studied at the Royal Academy of Music but drew her performance inspiration from her time at the Britten-Pears School in Snape. She then became Leader of English Touring Opera before leading the Schubert Ensemble and then co-founding and leading the Brindisi Quartet for fifteen years. She has appeared as guest leader with many groups including the Nash Ensemble, London Sinfonietta and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. She was appointed Leader of Britten Sinfonia in 2005.

Susan Tomes is a pianist and writer. She grew up in Edinburgh and was the first woman to be admitted to study music at King’s College, Cambridge. She was the pianist of the Florestan Trio, one of the world’s leading piano trios. Her discography contains over fifty discs of solo, duo and chamber music as well as hundreds of radio recordings made around the world. She is committed to the task of opening up classical music for listeners, and in recent years this has inspired her to write about it as well as performing it. She is the author of four books, writes for The Guardian, reviews books for The Guardian and The Independent, and has written and presented programmes on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4.

Roger Vignoles is one of this country’s foremost piano accompanists and chamber musicians. In a career spanning more than forty-five years he has partnered many of the world’s greatest singers and instrumentalists in recitals and recordings throughout Europe, North America, Scandinavia and the Far East. He is also in great demand as a teacher and is Prince Consort Professor of Accompaniment at the Royal College of Music.

Lucy Wakeford is principal harp of Britten Sinfonia and the Philharmonia Orchestra and harpist of the Nash Ensemble. As a concerto soloist Lucy has appeared with the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Guildhall String Ensemble, Ulster Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, London Festival Orchestra and BBC Concert Orchestra. Lucy studied with Daphne Boden and Marisa Robles at the Royal College of Music and with Gerard Devos in Paris and Skaila Kanga in London.