Jackie Walduck - Artistic Director, vibraphone
Jackie is a composer and vibraphone player, whose work explores the exchanges between written and improvised music and the musicians that create it. She works with classical, contemporary and jazz musicians from beginner to professional, and collaborates with dancers, artistis and film-makers in a range of contexts to create new work. In 1998, City University awarded her a PhD in collaborative composition. She was invited by the British Council to work in Oman in 2001-3, where she developed a creative strand for the Omani music curriculum, as well as composing the first ever collaborative piece with children and Omani musicians. Her film score for The Dress was premiered at Cannes in 2007. Recent collaborations have been with Kala Ramnath, Amjad Ali Khan and musicians from Shivanova.
In 2008 she formed Ignite with Wigmore Hall Learning a new type of chamber ensemble, working through improvisation. As Wigmore Hall's Learning Ensemble in Residence, Ignite engages people of all ages from the Westminster community with the creative and interactive aspects of chamber music making. The band has become an energetic and adventurous ensemble, commissioning over 20 new improvised works from leading composers, and breaking new ground at Wigmore Hall with the first late-night concerts, Open House days, and large-scale community projects. Beyond Wigmore Hall, Ignite is making its mark as a fiery new music ensemble, performing at Kings Place, NAtional Portrait Gallery and Whittington Chamber Music Festival.
Viyki Turnbull
Victoria Turnbull’s work is often a material investagiation of the objects and people in the world around her. Her work examines the underlying structures that govern these, drawing on perspectives from art, science and education.
Central to Turnbull’s practice are long term collaborative, site specific projects, where she works with other artists, musicians and teachers.
Viyki is currently on a six month long sabbatical in Germany.
Adrian Lee - guitar
Adrian is a composer, creative arts facilitator and multi-instrumentalist. His output includes numerous scores for theatre, TV, radio, film, dance and music theatre. Commissions include music scores for the UK’s principal broadcasters and theatre companies.
Music composed for the Royal National Theatre includes Robert Lepage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Adrian has undertaken various collaborations with Artistic Director, Gregory Doran including Macbeth ,The Canterbury Tales and most recently, Morte d’Arthur. He composed and produced music for Channel 4’s film adaption, Macbeth and has undertaken numerous nature documentary soundtracks for the BBC's Natural World, NatGeo and Animal Planet. He formed his own publishing company, Musicotopia, through which he has continued to provide media composition and production services, including music for the highly-successful River Monsters series.
His compositions for gamelan have been performed in a range of concert venues in the UK, Europe and South-East Asia, including the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Dewan Filamonik Petronas, Kuala Lumpur. Works specifically for gamelan ensemble include Alicesongs, The Knight with the Lion, The Island Princess and Hakikat Air and Wujud Antara, both commissioned by Malaysia’s leading contemporary gamelan ensemble, Rhythm in Bronze.
Ben Markland - double bass
James Risdon - recorder
James took up the recorder aged seven and remains captivated
by this most simple yet versatile of instruments. He is passionate about
introducing the recorder and its rich musical heritage to new audiences. His
repertoire encompasses the Middle Ages to the 21st century,
including several of his own transcriptions, dedications and commissions. He
has a particular interest in how to tackle graphical scores as a Braille music
reader.
James studied with Alan Davis in Birmingham and latterly
Rebecca Miles in London, gaining his LRSM with distinction. In 2011 he was
runner-up in the international competition for blind musicians held at the Jan
Dale Conservatoire in Prague.
He has given concerto performances with the Prague Chamber
Orchestra, London Musici alongside Piers Adams and Devon Baroque under
violinist Margaret Faultless. Solo performances have taken him to, among
others, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Regent Hall and The Handel House Museum in
London; The Great Hall, Dartington; the Treasury Music Society; King's Lynn
Minster; Anglesey Abbey and Eton Hall, Chester. More unusual engagements have
included the Bath & West Showground for a production of Benjamin Britten’s
Noye’s Fludde with Charles Hazlewood and the Kneehigh Theatre Company, a pod on
the London Eye and a performance for the Japanese government in Soporo.
James is a member of the Paraorchestra under its founder
Charles Hazlewood with whom he has performed at the TED conference in Brussels;
the Queen Elizabeth Hall and at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Paralympic
games in London with Coldplay.
Upcoming engagements include a performance with the
Paraorchestra at the Colston hall, Bristol alongside the Southbank Sinfonia, his
debut performance at the Wigmore Hall in a concert celebrating the Elizabeth
Eagle-Bott Memorial fund, and a return invitation to perform two concertos with
the Prague Chamber Orchestra.
2015 also sees the release of his debut album of music for
solo recorder entitled Echoes of Arcadia.
Since 2008, James has been the Music Officer at the RNIB
supporting blind and partially sighted musicians. This varied work has seen him
lead workshops at the Handel House Museum; feature on Radio 3 for a celebration
of Louis Braille's bicentenary and perform with members of the RPO at the
London Aquarium.
Away from music, and with possible relevance to the Tactile
Project, James has spent a curiously large amount of time voluntarily in
complete darkness. As a former goalball player, he represented Great Britain at
the 1996 Paralympic Games and in three European championships and is a
seven-times national cup winner. Having gained a Master’s degree in translation
studies from Leeds University, he spent three months working as a guide at
Dialogue in the Dark in Hamburg, an exhibition in complete darkness which
allows visitors to explore different environments including a rain forest, boat
trip and bar using their other senses.
Matt Wadsworth - theorbo
Matthew Wadsworth, lutenist, works all over the world as a soloist and
chamber musician. He has appeared at many of the major festivals in the UK , Europe and North
America and is often featured on radio, both in live performance
and on disc.
Matthew has recorded for Avie, Deux-Elles, Linn, EMI,
Channel Classics and Wigmore Live.
His 6 CDs
to date, including a live recording from London's Wigmore Hall, have all
received international critical acclaim, and have been featured as Gramophone
Editors Choice on several occasions.
Matthew studied lute at London’s Royal Academy of
Music, after which he spent a year at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The
Hague.
Matthew is also very involved with technology. He has
recently launched an online platform called TalkingTab.com, which makes lute
and guitar tablature accessible worldwide for anybody with a visual impairment.
Like many musicians, Matthew has a great love of
nice food and fine wine. Along with his wife Kate, he is the founder of GoodFoodTalks.com,
which makes restaurant menus accessible to visually impaired and dyslexic diners.
In 2011, Matthew trained to do a long distance
motorcycle jump. He achieved a distance of more than 70 feet. A documentary was made and can be
found on YouTube.
Notable engagements of late include the closing ceremony
of the 2012 Paralympics and at the John Williams and friends series at the
Globe theatre in London in 2014.
Other recent
engagements include the Bruges festival, the Flanders festival, the Wigmore
Hall, Purcell Room, the Georgian Concert Society (Edinburgh), the Metropolitan
Museum of Art (New York) and the Lufthansa, Beverley, Spitalfields, Budapest,
Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal Baroque, Mitte-Europa and Innsbruck festivals.
Matthew has also worked with The Academy of Ancient Music, English Touring
Opera, Birmingham Opera Company, Independent
Opera, The Netherlands Bach Society, I Fagiolini, The English Cornett and
Sackbut Ensemble, The Musicians of the Globe, Arion, Constantinople ,
The Theatre of Early Music and Les Violons du Roy.
For more information, visit www.matthewwadsworth.com
Julian West - oboe
As an oboist and performer, Julian’s commitment to new
music has led to him taking part in premiers of new works by composers
including Julian Grant, Errolyn Wallen, Ken Hesketh, David Knotts, Alasdair
Nicolson, Andrew McBirnie and Judith
Weir.
Julian's career has been eclectic: he has
premiered new works for solo oboe at the Purcell Room, recorded Stockhausen for
BBC Radio 3, performed as a soloist on BBC Radio 2, and appeared with the band
Paris Motel at Glastonbury. He is also a founding member of The Assembly
Project, a new production company and performing ensemble.
Central to Julian's performing career is his
membership of Pipers
3 oboe trio, along with Jessica Mogridge and Mark Baigent. Together, they form one of Europe's leading
oboe trios, their CD Intercession being seen as a landmark recording. They have performed throughout the UK, in
venues as diverse as Wigmore Hall, Tate Britain, Manchester's Royal Exchange
Theatre, and for many music clubs. A strong commitment to widening
participation has seen Pipers 3 performing in schools, day centres, care homes,
hospitals, prisons and hospices throughout the UK.
Julian’s interest in the role of the arts within society has led to him
being in demand as a creative music leader, mentor, trainer and
consultant. He is Head of Open Academy,
the Royal Academy of Music’s creative learning and participation department, and where he
lectures on creative music leadership. Julian works regularly with Wigmore Hall, for whom he initially devised Chamber
Tots in the Community, an acclaimed project for early years settings which has
been running every year since 1999. Initially devised for the Belcea Quartet,
he continues to lead Chamber Challenge, which has taken emerging young string
quartets into primary schools across the country, most recently with the Heath
Quartet. Julian has been the external mentor for Wigmore Hall’s trainee animateur
scheme since its inception.
In addition, Julian has designed and lead
projects for many organisations, including Glyndebourne Opera, English National
Opera, the Royal Opera House, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, the
London Symphony Orchestra, Spitalfields Music, English Touring Opera, Trinity
Laban, and the Royal College of Music.
Throughout his career, Julian has also worked
with Music for Life, who engage with people living with
dementia and the people who care for them.
This work was the subject of a major piece of research undertaken by the
Research Group Lifelong Learning in Music and the Arts of the Prince Claus
Conservatoire in Groningen and Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.
Julian was elected and Honorary Associate of the
Royal Academy of Music in May 2013.
Twitter: @mrjulianwest
No comments:
Post a Comment