The pianist Julius Drake lives in London and enjoys an international reputation as one of the finest instrumentalists in his field, collaborating with many of the world’s leading artists, both in recital and on disc.  The New Yorker recently described him as the “collaborative pianist nonpareil”.

He appears regularly at all the major music centres and festivals: the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich, Schubertiade, and Salzburg Music Festivals; Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre New York; The Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and Philarmonie, Berlin; the Châtalet and Musée de Louvre Paris; La Scala, Milan and Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid; Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Vienna; and Wigmore Hall and BBC Proms London.

Director of the Perth International Chamber Music Festival in Australia from 2000 – 2003, Julius Drake was also musical director of Deborah Warner’s staging of Janáček’s Diary of One Who Vanished, touring to Munich, London, Dublin, Amsterdam and New York. Since 2009 he has been Artistic Director of the Machynlleth Festival in Wales.

Julius Drake’s passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for Wigmore Hall, London, the BBC and The Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. His annual series of song recitals – Julius Drake and Friends – in the historic Middle Temple Hall in London, has featured recitals with many outstanding vocal artists including Sir Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Iestyn Davies, Veronique Gens, Sergei Leiferkus, Dame Felicity Lott, Simon Keenlyside and Sir Willard White.

Julius Drake is frequently invited to perform at international chamber music festivals – most recently, Lockenhaus in  Austria; West Cork in Ireland; Oxford in England; Boswil in Switzerland and Delft in the Netherlands.

Julius Drake’s many recordings include a widely acclaimed series with Gerald Finley for Hyperion, from which the Barber Songs, Schumann Heine Lieder and Britten Songs and Proverbs won the 2007, 2009 and 2011 Gramophone Awards; award winning recordings with Ian Bostridge for EMI; several recitals for the Wigmore Live label, with among others Alice Coote, Joyce DiDonato, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Christopher Maltman and Matthew Polenzani; recordings French Sonatas for Virgin Classics with Nicholas Daniel; of Kodaly and Schoeck sonatas with the cellists Natalie Clein and Christian Poltera for the Hyperion and Bis labels; Tchaikovsky and Mahler with Christianne Stotijn for Onyx; English song with Bejun Mehta for Harmonia Mundi; and Schubert’s ‘Poetisches Tagebuch’ with Christoph Prégardien, which won the Jahrpreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2016.

Julius Drake’s most recent CD’s include a critically acclaimed performance with the Scottish tenor Nicky Spence of Janacek’s Diary of One who Disappeared (Hyperion), ‘The Garden of Eve’ (Alpha) with the Austrian soprano Anna Prohaska, Liszt Complete Songs – vol 6 (Hyperion) with the German soprano Julia Kleiter, and Argento’s Diary of Virginia Woolf (Signum) with the English mezzo, Alice Coote.

Julius Drake holds a Professorship at Graz University for Music and the Performing Arts in Austria, where he has a class for song pianists. He is regularly invited to give master classes worldwide; recently in Aldeburgh, Brussels, Utrecht, Cincinnati, New York, Toronto, Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, Vienna, and at the Schubert Institute in Baden bei Wien.

Concerts in the coming seasons include a series to celebrate the Beethoven anniversary at the 92nd St Y in New York and a Mahler series at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, recitals at La Scala, Milan with Aleksandra Kurzak, at Wigmore Hall with Alice Coote, in Barcelona with Sarah Connolly, in Berlin with Angelika Kirchschlager, at the Schubertiade, Austria with Christoph Prégardien, Ian Bostridge and Gerald Finley, , and tours in Europe with Anna Prohaska and Eva-Maria Westbroek.

Stephen Kovacevich is widely recognised as one of the most revered artists of his generation.  With an international career spanning more than six decades, he has long been recognised as one of the most searching interpretors – “A musician completely absorbed in his craft, his interpretations are like no one else’s and always eminate directly from the heart: musical messages of wisdom, peace, resignation, and hope” (The Washington Post).

Kovacevich is known for never being afraid to take both technical and musical risks in order to achieve maximum expressive impact.  Through this, he has won unsurpassed admiration for his piano-playing, none more than from Leopold Stokowski, who famously wrote: “You do with your feet what I try to do with my Philadelphia Orchestra”.

Born in Los Angeles, Kovacevich laid the foundation for his career as concert pianist at the age of eleven.  After moving to England to study with Dame Myra Hess, he made his European debut at Wigmore Hall in 1961.  Since then, he has appeared with many of the world’s finest orchestras and conductors, including Hans Graf, Bernard Haitink, Kurt Masur, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Sir Simon Rattle, and the late Sir Georg Solti.

As concerto soloist, recent and forthcoming highlights include Aurora Orchestra/Nicholas Collon, Los Angeles Philharmonic/Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal/David Zinman, Sydney Symphony/Vladimir Ashkenazy, and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony/Sylvain Cambreling.

In recital, recent and forthcoming highlights include performances in Europe, Asia, and the United States – including the NCPA (Bejing), the Phillips Collection (Washington), the Bridgewater Hall (Manchester), and the Wigmore Hall (London). Kovacevich also performs regularly across the Far East, Australia, and New Zealand, and is a regular guest at prestigious festivals worldwide – including Lugano, Verbier, and the Mariinsky International Piano Festival (the latter by personal invitation of Valery Gergiev).

Over the course of his extensive career, Kovacevich has forged many long-standing artistic partnerships, such as that with the late Sir Colin Davis with whom he made numerous outstanding recordings, including the legendary Bartok Piano Concerto No.2 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.  Another such long-term affiliation is his professional partnership with Martha Argerich, with whom he regularly performs in duo on the world’s leading concert stages.  Recent and forthcoming highlights for the Argerich-Kovacevich Duo include recitals at Het Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Philharmonie (Paris), Victoria Hall (Geneva), the Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), and the Wigmore Hall (London).

Kovacevich is a committed chamber musician, with collaborations over the course of his long career including with such luminaries as the late Lynn Harrell, Jacqueline du Pré, and Joseph Suk.  Kovacevich now enjoys regular artistic collaborations with such violinists as Nicola Benedetti, Renaud Capuçon, and Alina Ibragimova; cellists Gautier Capuçon, Steven Isserlis, and Truls Mørk; flautist Emmanuel Pahud; and the Amadeus, Belcea, and Cleveland quartets.

Stephen Kovacevich has enjoyed an illustrious long-term relationship with recording companies Philips and EMI.  To celebrate his 75th birthday, Decca released a Limited Edition 25-CD Box Set of his entire recorded legacy for Philips.  In 2008, he re-recorded Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, exactly 40 years after his first recording of the work.  This Onyx recording won him the Classic FM Gramophone Editor’s Choice Award (2009) and the Gramophone Magazine Top Choice Award (2015), to quote: “His seasoned yet fearless mastery reveals something new with each hearing…”.

Matthew Barley’s musical world has no geographical, social or stylistic boundaries. His activities in performance, improvisation, crossdisciplinary projects, composition, and pioneering community programmes have developed to form a uniquely eclectic international career. He has been described as ‘the world’s most adventurous cellist’ and is as comfortable with core-classical repertoire and improvisation as he is in a night-club or the Amazon rainforest.

‘Deeply fortunate to be doing what I love, I am a magpie, finding a way to play whatever music I love – so I collaborate, improvise, juxtapose, arrange and rearrange.’ His studies were at the Guildhall School in London, and the Moscow Conservatoire, and he is a passionate advocate of lifelong learning – constantly seeking to evolve and develop the art of being a travelling musician living in a vibrant community of family and friends.

Matthew has played in many of the world’s great concert halls, given premieres by Pascal Dusapin, James MacMillan,Thomas Larcher, Dai Fujikura, Detlev Glanert and Nitin Sawhney; performed with Amjad Ali Khan, Matthias Goerne, the Labeque Sisters, Dima Slobodeniouk, Marin Alsop, Jon Lord (Deep Purple), Martin Frøst and Avi Avital, and records for Signum Classics.

Matthew is married to Viktoria Mullova with whom he loves to make music, lives in London and they have three children. He plays a Cesare Gigli cello from Rome, c.1750

Singer, songwriter and composer Nicki Wells followed her 1st class honours degree in Music touring as a featured vocalist in Nitin Sawhney’s band. She has performed in some of the world’s most prestigious venues from London’s Royal Albert Hall and Sydney Opera House to Glastonbury’s main Pyramid Stage. Her voice has contributed to a number of films including Andy Serkis’s Mowgli, Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children, Renny Harlin’s The Legend of Hercules and was a major part of the scores of BBC Documentaries such as The Human Planet series. Her first solo album as TURYA ‘Ocean’ was released to critical acclaim in 2018.

“Blessed with an unparalleled memory for melody and vocal technique from virtually any culture, Nicki is able to easily leap from folk, French trip-hop, deep gospel, jazz or choral vocals to Indian classical or Arabic inflections as if all were emanating directly from her soul,” describes long time collaborator Nitin Sawhney who adds that: “Nicki is an entirely new phenomenon. She is truly the first global singer.”

As a Composer in her own right, Nicki has scored for Tanika Gupta’s theatrical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Howard Brenton’s play Drawing the Line, receiving critical acclaim. She co-composed the score to Khyentse Norbu’s feature film Vara – A Blessing and has also composed five of contemporary dancer Aakash Odedra’s shows, which have featured in venues like Sadlers Wells, Royal Opera House and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, (winning the Amnesty International Award for the politically conscious show #JeSuis). Nicki also composed the score to documentary film maker Koen Suidgeest’s: Girl Connected and then joined forces with renowned sitarist Anoushka Shankar to compose the score for upcoming documentary film An Officer and His Holiness.

Nicki joined forces once again with Aakash Odedra and Chinese dancer Hu Shenyuan, composing the score and also performed in the new epic production Samsara which premiered in the Melbourne Arts Centre February 2020.

Nicki is currently scoring the music to Indian Classical dancer Aditi Mangaldas’s new contemporary dance show to be premiered in India‘s NCPA theatre in Mumbai, 2021.

Over the last year, during the pandemic, Nicki has created a multitude of new material, including her much anticipated second studio album which is expected to be released in the Autumn of 2021

Adrian Freedman (b. 1962) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist specialising in the shakuhachi, Japanese zen flute. Adrian is a musician of extraordinary breadth. His musical journey encompasses the fields of Baroque music, contemporary and improvised music, folk-fusion, soundtracks for theatre and dance, Japanese traditional music and devotional songs.

Adrian studied music at Manchester University, Guildhall School of Music, and Kyoto Arts University. He lived in Japan for 7 years, where he studied the shakuhachi with renowned master Yokoyama Katsuya. He later lived in Brazil where he became immersed in sacred music rituals of the forest. Arising from his musical and spiritual journey, Adrian has received a collection of more than 100 original songs and chants.

As a composer and musical director, he has worked for Kneehigh Theatre, Wildworks Theatre, Scottish Contemporary Dance, Stopgap Dance Company and many others. Adrian has performed solo recitals and concerts with various ensembles at international festivals and in sacred spaces around the world.

His music is heartfelt and full of subtle dynamics that conjure an atmosphere of rarefied peace, spaciousness and delicate beauty. The scope of his music is diverse, including songs as well as instrumental music, but an ineffable sense of the sacred is felt throughout.

Violist Meghan Cassidy graduated in 2010 from London’s Royal Academy of Music, where she had studied with Garfield Jackson. In 2007 Meghan joined the award-winning Solstice Quartet, with whom she has performed at the Wigmore Hall and on BBC Radio 3.

She continued her studies as a pupil of Tatjana Masurenko in Leipzig, Nabuko Imai in Hamburg and Hartmut Rohde in a masterclass given in Cornwall.

Meghan has played chamber music at several European festivals and has performed with the London Conchord Ensemble, Ensemble MidtVest and the Monte and Fidelio Piano Trios. She has been guest principal viola with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Opera North, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the London Mozart Players. This year’s highlights include performances of Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in which she will be principal viola.

Meghan also directs the Marylebone Music Festival in London, which she founded.

The Italian cellist Claude Frochaux began playing the cello at the age of six at Suzuki Talent Center, then at the Conservatory of Turin. Studies followed in Frankfurt with Michael Sanderling, where he completed his Diploma and his concert examination with the highest rating in the soloist class, as well as postgraduate studies in Essen and Madrid. He received further artistic impulses from Eberhard Feltz, Menahem Pressler, Ralf Gothoni. Claude was supported by the foundations De Sono, Live Music Now and Anna Ruths.

As a sought-after and passionate chamber musician, he is a guest at festivals such as Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Mozartfest Würzburg, Beethovenfest Bonn, Heidelberger Frühling, and in other European countries and North and South America. He played at Wigmore Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt and Laeiszhalle Hamburg, and was broadcast repeatedly on the radio (BR, WDR, SWR, Deutschlandfunk and Radio Classic). Upcoming Engagements bring him among others to the Konzerthaus Berlin, Musikverein Wien, King’s Place and Wigmore Hall in London, as well as Enescu Festival Bucharest.

In addition to prizes of national competitions in Italy, he won the 1st prizes of the competition of the Polytechnic Society and the DAAD Frankfurt. In 2008, he founded Monte Piano Trio with which he won numerous international prizes (Maria Canals Barcelona, Brahms Austria, Schumann Frankfurt, Folkwang Prize) and regularly gives concerts. He also works in other groups such as O/Modernt Stockholm, Ensemble Midwest Denmark, Amici Ensemble Frankfurt, Ensemble Ruhr, and has appeared in numerous orchestras such as Bamberger Symphoniker, Spira Mirabilis and Orchestra Filarmonica di Torino.

Claude is the founder and artistic director of the Sylt Chamber Music Festival and the concert series Musica+ in Frankfurt, Germany.

Tom Hankey studied the violin with David Takeno, Krzyzstof Smietana, Levon Chilingirian and Yossi Zivoni. He studied at the Purcell School, the Junior Department of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal College of Music.

Tom is a member (as violinist and violist) of the Aronowitz Ensemble. The group took part in the Radio 3 New Generation Artist Scheme which involved frequent performances on the radio – live and pre- recorded from venues throughout the UK, such as Wigmore Hall, The Sage (Newcastle), Bridgewater Hall and the Bath, Cheltenham, Aldeburgh, Kings Place, Spoleto Festival and City of London Festivals. In September 2008 the group performed in the proms chamber concert series. The Borletti-Buitoni Trust award enabled them to release two CDs on the Sonimage label.

Tom was a founding member of Ensemble Na Mara – a piano quartet and string trio. The group won the 2006 Royal Over-Seas league ensemble prize, the Tunnel prize and a Kirkman prize.

Tom recently joined the Callino quartet and looks forward to exploring the quartet repertoire. Also strongly committed to contemporary music he has given frequent first performances. As a soloist he has given many recitals and concerto performances including the Beethoven Triple Concerto, Prokofiev’s first concerto and those by Mendelssohn, Bruch, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi and John McCabe as well as taking part in performances of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale with the Kreisler Ensemble.

His free-lance orchestral work has included touring with Aurora Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, English Chamber Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Sinéad O’Halloran is quickly establishing herself as one of Ireland’s most exciting young musicians. Co-founder and Artistic Director of the Ortús Chamber Music Festival, established in Cork in 2016, Sinéad is passionate about bringing together Irish and international musicians for concerts, education work and audience development in the wider community.

An avid chamber musician, Sinéad has collaborated with musicians including Tasmin Little, Barry Douglas and the Vanbrugh String Quartet. In October 2020 she made her Wigmore Hall debut at the invitation of cellist Steven Isserlis, performing alongside Anthony Marwood, Timothy Ridout and Mishka Rushdie Momen.

Sinéad has recently been appointed the new cellist of the award-winning Marmen Quartet, having been a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO) for seven years. At the invitation of Maestro Iván Fischer, she is a regular guest with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, touring extensively and performing in some of the world’s finest concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and Het Concertgebouw. She has also performed with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Spira Mirabilis, Georgian Chamber Orchestra and the iPalpiti Ensemble of International Laureates. She regularly plays under some of the world’s most renowned conductors, including Bernard Haitink, Gianandrea Noseda, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Jörg Widmann and Vasily Petrenko.

Sinéad has had the pleasure of working with some of the world’s most respected cellists, including Ralph Kirshbaum, Lynn Harrell, Ivan Monighetti, Colin Carr, Raphael Wallfisch, Jérôme Pernoo, Alban Gerhardt, Natalie Clein, Thomas Demenga, Rafael Rosenfeld, Hannah Roberts, Emma Ferrand, David Strange, Cyrille Lacrouts, Péter Szabo, Antonio Lysy and Mike Block.

Sinéad currently plays on a Benjamin Banks cello c. 1780 and a baroque cello and bow generously on loan from the Royal Northern College of Music.

Annette Walther studied in Düsseldorf, Essen and London with Ida Bieler, David Takeno and Vesselin Parschkevov. At the Guildhall School for Music and Drama in London she also took chamber music classes with Sir Colin Davis and the Takacs Quartet. Further masterclasses with Michelle Auclair, Yuri Bashmet, Thomas Brandis, Jürgen Kussmaul and Charles-Andre Linale have been of lasting importance to her musical development.

Annette has been a stipendiary of the Villa Musica and the Hartmut Schuler Foundations, and in 2004 she was awarded the Artland Musikpreis.

In addition to being a founding member of the Signum Quartet, Annette regularly performs with artists such as Carolin Widmann, Nils Mönkemeyer, William Youn, David Cohen, Liza Ferschtman and Priya Mitchell at festivals including the Musikfestspielen Mecklenburg –Vorpommern, Lofoten International Chamber Music Festival, Musiktage Hitzacker and Kammermusikfest Sylt.

She is a regular guest in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and ensemble musikfabrik, concertmaster of the Cologne Chamber Orchestra, the Belgian Chamber Orchestra and the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra. She is a member of the Geneva Camerata and Ensemble Ruhr.

At the beginning of 2016, Annette was appointed as violin lecturer at the Louis Spohr Music Academy in Kassel.