Stephen Fitzpatrick started playing the piano at the age of four, and three years later commenced with harp studies. After initial lessons in his native North Wales, he was accepted as a student at the Royal College of Music in London with Marisa Robles. Further studies at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with Edward Witsenburg and privately with Sarah Bullen in Chigago culminated with a performance diploma in addition to the degree and teaching diploma already attained in London.

As an orchestral musician, Stephen has been principal harpist with the English Symphony Orchestra, co-principal harpist at the Gothenburg Opera Orchestra and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, guest principal at the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm and in 2000 he was chosen by Daniel Barenboim to be Principal Harpist at the Deutsche Staatskapelle in Berlin. From 2007 to 2014, he was harpist at the Bayreuther Festspielorchester. He has freelanced with many world class orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and La Scala, Milan, and was regularly invited by Christoph von Dohnyáni to be Guest Principal Harpist at the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg.

Stephen has been active as a chamber musician and soloist throughout Europe. He has given solo recitals in England, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria and as member of  various chamber music ensembles has given numerous tours throughout France and Spain. He is committed to contemporary music and has given critically acclaimed performances of works by living composers.

He has been invitied to be a jury member with many important competitions such as the ARD Music Competition, Deutsche Musikwettbewerb and the International Harp Competition in Szeged and is also regularly invited to be jury member for auditions with internationally renowned orchestras.

Stephen was invited by Daniel Barenboim to be a founder member of the newly created Boulez Ensemble, which gave its debut performance for the inauguration of the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin in 2016.

Stephen was member of the harp faculty at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin from 2008-2011 and Professor for Harp at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Seville from 2004-2011. In 2010, he was appointed Professor of Harp at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and from 2018 he will be a teaching regularly at the Royal College of Music in London.

Most unusually David Lardi gained his LTCL Performer’s Diploma in Recorder while still at school.  From there he went on to study at Trinity College of Music for six years as well as at the Accademia Musicale Chigana in Siena, Italy.  Additionally he took  Master Classes with Frans Brüggen.

On concluding his studies he was immediately appointed Professor of Recorder at Trinity – at the time one of the youngest ever such professorial appointments – where he founded the Early Music Department in the Junior College and held this position for over twenty years.

During his years as a recorder player he has given well over three thousand recitals, lecture/recitals and concerto appearances  in many venues including in London the Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and the National Theatre on the South Bank as well as churches too numerous to mention.   Additionally he has been a regular player in numerous early music ensembles, most notably the Holborne Concert of which he was a founder member.

Like Brüggen before him he quickly moved over to a career as a professional conductor. His knowledge of period performance practice has helped inform his interpretations over a whole range of music.

He has adjudicated in competitive music festivals throughout the length of the country.

Martin Outram studied at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music. He is a member of the internationally renowned Maggini Quartet and also appears regularly as a soloist. He has recorded over fifty discs with the quartet and other chamber music ensembles and has been the recipient of the Gramophone Award, the Diapason d’Or, a Cannes Classical Award, three Grammy nominations and the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for chamber music. His solo discs have been widely acclaimed, including five star reviews in the BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone and Strad magazines. Several works have been written for him, including concertos by Peter Aviss, Adam Gorb and David Gow. He has appeared as a concerto soloist at the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall and performed on tour in South America as a soloist with the Britten Sinfonia. His recital partner is Julian Rolton, with whom he has given recitals throughout the UK and at international viola competitions and congresses. He has given masterclasses in Austria, France, China, Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the USA and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and an Honorary Fellow of Brunel and Canterbury Christ Church Universities. He plays on a very fine viola by Henricus Catenar, made in Turin in 1680.

Josephine Horder studied in London, Salzburg and Düsseldorf. Her career in chamber music has included many performances at the Wigmore Hall, and the South Bank as well as numerous recordings for radio. She was a founder member of Divertimenti Ensemble and the Schubert Ensemble and was a member of the Adriano String Quartet. Her commercial recordings include several with Divertimenti, most notably the Mendelssohn Octet, and chamber works of Arnold Bax, Brahms and Weber. Her recording of the complete Mozart Flute Quartets for Collins Classics has remained consistently high on the classical ‘charts,’ and was the recommended version on BBC Radio 3’s Record Review. In recent seasons she has played with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under the batons of Sir Mark Elder, Sir Roger Norrington and Marin Alsop at the Proms and in Brussels, Warsaw, Glyndebourne and Helsinki. She is a committed and highly respected cello teacher. In 2015 she graduated as a Feldenkrais Method practitioner, teaching weekly public classes in ‘Awareness Through Movement’ in West Hertfordshire. She  has held specialist Feldenkrais workshops for musicians, notably for the  European String Teachers Association in London, a weekend for musicians at Benslow, and most recently at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

PAUL BARRITT (violin, viola) has been leader of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the English Chamber Orchestra and until recently, the Hallé, having performed with this orchestra for the past 20 years. His numerous recordings for violin and piano include the complete violin sonatas of Howells, Ireland, Stanford and Schoeck as well as the salon pieces of Albert Sammons (‘The English Kreisler’) and violin works of Rheinberger. During the 2005-6 season he recorded the complete Beethoven violin and piano music with James Lisney. With the ECO he performed Bach’s Double Concerto with Igor Oistrakh at the Barbican and with Maxim Vengerov at the Proms. With the Hallé Orchestra he gave performances of Beethoven Triple Concerto and Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending. A recording of the Brahms Violin Sonatas on the Woodhouse label followed as well as a recording of Antony Hopkins’ Partita for solo violin. Paul Barritt and James Lisney have presented cycles of the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas some 20 times, most recently in Holland and Belgium. In addition, he teaches and gives masterclasses as well as adjudicating at music festivals. In recent years Paul has been much in demand giving talks on the subject of Birds and Music, most notably for the Linnean Society of London.  Since leaving the Hallé, Paul looks forward eagerly to a musical life playing concertos, chamber music, recitals as well as teaching

Zoe South is in demand as a dramatic soprano, and as an interpreter of the roles of Wagner and Richard Strauss in particular. She had a first musical career as a professional flautist, freelancing across the UK and Europe and as a relatively late-starter as a singer, she was the first Sophie’s Silver Lining Fund scholarship holder at The Opera School Wales, where her roles – then as a mezzo soprano – included Jezibaba (Rusalka) and Giovanna Seymour (Anna Bolena), and engagements with Swansea City Opera.

Retraining as a soprano with the late Richard Smart, her professional debut was with The Opera Project/Longborough Festival Opera in Britten’s Albert Herring. Zoe has participated in masterclasses with David Syrus (former Head of Music at the Royal Opera House), respected mezzo soprano Ann Murray DBE, and German mezzo soprano Petra Lang, the last of these at the invitation of The Wagner Society, who also asked her to sing Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene at their Annual Dinner in the presence of Dame Gwyneth Jones.

She has performed over 40 complete operatic roles, including Brünnhilde in Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle, Isolde, Eva, Kitty Oppenheimer Doctor Atomic, Richard Strauss’ Elektra, Dyer’s Wife, and the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos. Other career highlights include creating the role of The Woman in the world stage premiere of Robert Hugill’s When a Man Knows, and being one of a small number of singers worldwide to have performed all three endings of Puccini’s Turandot.

She has also worked extensively on the concert platform and as a session singer, with credits including the Classical Brit Awards, Children in Need, and several credits for both ITV and the BBC, not least backing the late Luciano Pavarotti on the Parkinson show with Southwark Voices. She is also proud to have been an artist for Lost Chord – a charity bringing music to dementia sufferers – for the past decade and a half. Zoe has a thriving private teaching practice specialising in adult voices, including being an approved teacher for the City of London Choir, and for voice majors from Hollins University Abroad on their semester in the UK. She is the vocal consultant for WOW (Weekend Opera Workshops), and a member of AOTOS.

Internationally renowned, Joan Rodgers is equally established in opera, concert, and as a recitalist.    She has appeared in concert with conductors including Solti, Barenboim, Mehta, Harnoncourt, Mackerras, Ashkenazy, Salonen and Rattle and is a regular guest at the BBC Proms. Operatic engagements have included engagements at the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Opera North and Glyndebourne in Britain, Paris, Munich, Brussels, Amsterdam and Vienna in Europe, and the Metropolitan Opera, New York. Joan Rodgers has also appeared in concert and recital throughout Europe and the USA including London, Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Moscow and New York.

Joan Rodgers’ recordings include Mozart’s da Ponte trilogy with Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic, The Turn of the Screw (Virgin), solo discs of Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Wolf (Hyperion), The Creation (Philips), Rachmaninov songs with Howard Shelley (Chandos) and Shostakovich Seven Romances on Verses by Alexander Blok with the Beaux Arts Trio (Warner Classics) and most recently a recording of songs by Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich and Britten (Hyperion).

Joan Rodgers received the Royal Philharmonic Society award as Singer of the Year for 1997, the 1997 Evening Standard Award for outstanding performance in opera for her performance as The Governess in the Royal Opera’s production of The Turn of the Screw and an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Liverpool University in July 2005.  Joan Rodgers was awarded the CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List.

Simon’s rich bass-baritone voice is much in demand, his busy concert schedule taking him to Europe for much of the year, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. His many solo recordings include Monteverdi’s Vespers, Bach Magnificat (Andrew Parrott) and Charpentier’s Te Deum and Missa Assumpta est Maria (St James’s Baroque Players). He has recorded roles in John Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Locke’s Psyche (Envy and Bacchus), Monteverdi’s Orfeo (Caronte) and The Play of Daniel (Balthasar). He played Caronte in Peri’s Orfeo at the Drottningholms Slottsteater, Stockholm and appeared in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (Sorceress) on London’s South Bank (celebrating 50 years of the RFH). He sang the role of Caronte in a semi-staged production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo at the Royal Festival Hall, directed by Jonathan Miller, to great critical acclaim. Further performances were staged in Norway, Beijing, the Canary Islands, Luxembourg, Warsaw, Budapest and Mexico City. South Bank concerts include the Bach St John Passion (Christus) and Purcell’s Indian Queen. He has also performed Purcell’s The Tempest at the Cite de la Musique, Paris and (in 2016) Prague.
Simon Grant’s involvement in contemporary music includes appearances with the Matrix Ensemble, Electric Phoenix, Ensemble Modern, Tenebrae, Synergy Vocals and Singcircle. He works regularly with the BBC Singers, Capital Voices and London Voices. He has sung The Father in Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins many times, most recently at Glasgow City Halls with the BBC Scottish Orchestra (2016). He sang the world premiere of Where Two World’s Touch (by Helen Chadwick and Howard Moody) at the Salisbury festival and recently appeared in David Byrne’s Meltdown Festival on London’s Southbank.
Simon was a member of the Swingle Singers for a number of years. He can whistle and hum at the same time, an unusual talent he has demonstrated on numerous radio and television programmes worldwide (including Radio 4’s ‘Pick of the Week’). His daughter, Eleanor, shares this talent and they were both featured on the recent radio programme ‘The Whistling Woman’ (BBC Radio 4). Simon’s whistling is featured in the films Shrek, Shiner, Two Brothers, Sherlock Holmes and Wallace and Gromit – Curse of the Were-rabbit. Simon’s vocal ‘special effects’ were used in Hollywood for the 2007 Academy Awards, when he helped recreate vocally the soundtracks to famous scenes from movies such as Jaws (the shark approaching), Brief Encounter (departing train) and Psycho (murder in the shower). He has also appeared in several TV adverts (including Honda, T-mobile and 3 mobile).

Virginia began her music career in earnest when, aged 17, she played Beethoven’s 3rd piano concerto with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Birmingham Town Hall. Having won numerous piano competitions, she then won the FE Beckett piano scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London.

At the Royal Academy she developed her piano skills under Gordon Green and harpsichord under Geraint Jones. Virginia studied piano for 4 years as her principal instrument, winning the Lillian Davies Beethoven Prize and the Dove Prize; she also gained the inter-college Raymond Russell Prize for harpsichord performance and was awarded DipRAM for her final recital.

During her long career at the RAM, Virginia has continued to nurture many talented musicians as professor of harpsichord, chair of postgraduate diploma studies and senior postgraduate tutor. She developed a reputation amongst students for the practical intensity of her performance classes!

In addition to, and in parallel with her teaching work, Virginia has pursued a dazzling worldwide performing career, initially specialising in the virtuoso harpsichord repertoire (“… one of the world’s finest harpsichordists” – Daily Telegraph) and has made many critically acclaimed recordings, TV and radio appearances.

As a performer, she has now returned to her roots as a pianist and has a busy concert schedule playing solo recitals and concertos, with a repertoire encompassing Bach, Schubert, Haydn, Rameau, Soler, Scarlatti, Mozart and Beethoven, together with some more contemporary works. For more information and to listen to Virginia play, please visit www.virginiablack.net.

Virginia has judged many music competitions and continues to influence and mentor rising musicians. She has given numerous external masterclasses and performance classes for specialist music schools and academies, universities and conservatoires around the world.

Virginia is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music (FRAM) an honour limited to 300 members. It is “awarded to those musicians who have distinguished themselves within the profession”.

“… a communicative artist, extrovert, colourful, spontaneous but with a deep sense of poetry.”       Gramophone

Ronald Corp OBE is Artistic Director of the New London Orchestra and the New London Children’s Choir both of which he founded, respectively, in 1988 and 1991.  He is also Musical Director of the London Chorus and the Highgate Choral Society.  He has worked with the BBC Singers, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Leipzig Philharmonic Orchestra.  Among an extensive discography are his award-winning Hyperion discs of British Light Music Classics.  His own compositions include a Symphony, a Piano Concerto, a cello concerto, three string quartets and a clarinet quintet. His choral works include large sacred cantatas (including ‘And all the trumpets sounded’)and shorter works for unaccompanied choir (including a setting of verses from the Dhammapada). He has written over one hundred songs and significant cycles include ‘Fields of the Fallen’ and ‘Letters from Lony’ as well as the scena ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. Operas include ‘The Ice Mountain’ (for children) and ‘The Pelican’. Many of these works are now recorded on CD. His textbook ‘The Choral Singer’s Companion’ is now in its third edition. Ronald Corp was awarded an OBE for services to music in the Queen’s 2012 New Year Honours. He has been made an Honorary Doctor of Music by Anglia Ruskin University and has received an Hon D Mus from University of Hull.