PROGRAMME

D Shostakovich: 3 Preludes and fugues op. 87

O Respighi: Nocturne

M Clementi: Sonata op. 40 n. 2

Interval

F. Couperin: Les Barricades Mystérieuses

L.C. Daquin: Le Coucou

J. P. Rameau: Les Cyclopes

J.S. Bach: Toccata in E minor

D. Shostakovich: 3 Preludes and Fugues op.87

BIOGRAPHY

Italian pianist Sofia Sacco played extensively throughout Europe and Asia. She appeared as soloist in more than 80 recitals in Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, and China with latest appearances at prestigious venues including Teatro la Fenice in Venice, Gohliser Schlösschen in Leipzig, Pushkin House in London, Villa Reale in Monza, Fazioli Concert Hall, Centro Cultural Retiro in Madrid among others. She recently toured China giving recitals in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Changsha, Changchun, Hangzhou, Shenzhen. She appeared with the Pollini Symphony Orchestra, the Audentia Ensemble, Orchestra
delle Tre Venezie and the Timía Chamber Orchestra under the baton of G. Medeossi, Ryan Bair, Otis Lineham. Sofia is the recipient of the Francis Simms Prize and first prize winner of the Bach International Music Competition and A. Baldi International Piano Competition. Passionate about Baroque music and polyphonic music, she will release her first CD featuring the 24 Preludes and fugues op.87 by Dimitri Shostakovich in 2025. She has also been recently nominated Artist in Residence at la Società del Quartetto di Bergamo, where she will perform the opera omnia for piano by Shostakovich in the coming years.

Sofia began playing the piano at the age of 6 in Padua with A. Silva and M. Ferrati, and moved to the UK in 2019 to study at the Royal Academy of Music as a scholarship student with R. Hayroudinoff. After completing her Master of Arts and Professional Diploma, Sofia was appointed Hodgson Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music for two consecutive years, and was awarded the Aud Jebsen Fellowship for 2024/2025. She is generously supported by City Music Foundation and was recently nominated CMF Artist 2024.

Inquisitive and widely curious, she also graduated in Physics at the University of Padua. Alongside her performing career, Sofia is an enthusiastic teacher, and she currently holds a teaching position at Trinity Music School and Queen’s College in London as well as teaching at the Royal Academy of Music as part of her fellowship.

BIOGRAPHY

Welsh harpist Eira Lynn Jones combines the three strands of her
illustrious career as performer, teacher and composer. Her harp adventures have taken her all over the world including: performing at the Hollywood Bowl, LA; a Recital in Reykjavik, Iceland for the Nordic Watercolour Society; playing for the then HRH Prince Charles in Spain and tours to Japan, Hong Kong and USA. She regularly works with the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic and Opera North. More eclectic engagements include: recordings with the Black Dyke Brass Band and the heavy metal band Venom; accompanying Aled Jones on Songs of Praise and solo tours; directing massed harps under Dippy the Dinosaur at the Natural History Museum, London and appearing as harpist Lucinda Jane Gray in two episodes of Coronation Street. CD releases include two solo albums … from within and Forgotten Dreams which received critical acclaim. “I love the album … a diversity of music, a very accomplished technique and your heart shining through” Alan Stivell

Fragments, with flautist Anna Rosa Mari, featured on Apple Music
Classical AM Top 50 playlist. Most recently, she has recorded new works
by Martin Ellerby: Three Choral Psalms, with the Kantos Chamber
Choir, and his Concerto for Clarinet, Harp and Strings, with the Royal
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Eira is widely recognised as one of the UK’s leading harp teachers and was Head of Harp at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester for nearly 30 years. Highlights include: harp ensemble concerts at the Huddersfield International Contemporary Music Festival, broadcast on Radio 3; Artistic Director of the RNCM International Harp Weeks and leading the RNCM Young Harps Project. She has given workshops in
South Africa, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Greece and now gives private
lessons to harpists worldwide: from Newark to New Zealand!

As a composer, she is inspired by the stories around her, from medieval
tales to contemporary events. She was selected as composer for Illumine
Theatre’s audio drama Tremolo, now available on major podcast
channels. In March she collaborated with the multi-award winning dance
company, DanceSyndrome, whose members have Down’s Syndrome.
They performed her work The Sunken Forest: a retelling of the Welsh
legend, Cantre’r Gwaelod and the rising sea levels today.
www.eiralynnjones.com

PROGRAMME

MOSAICS

Au Jardin ~ Venise ~ Ping-Pong from Pour les Enfants by Alexandre Tansman

La fille aux chevaux de lin by Claude Debussy (tr. Eira Lynn Jones)

Li ndsey Dances – Steep Hill – Bolingbroke – Gibralter Point – Tattershall = The Stump by Martin Ellerby

Interlude from a Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten

Time Spinner by Esther Swift

INTERVAL

Glenlivet – trad. Scottish

Cruit Gun Cheis, Ceall Gun Aba by Mary Ann Kennedy

Epitaph XVIII: Crio! (Aberfan) for clarsach by Martin Ellerby (World Premiere)

Crepuscule by William Alwyn

Knocking by Anne Appleby

Swan LK243 by Catriona McKay

Harpicide at Midnight by Pearl Chertok

The Heartwood String Quartet appear by kind permission of the Royal Northern College of Music.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Audrey Doyle violin
Bruno Robalo violin
Michaela Jones viola
Jasmine Blackshaw-Britton cello

Winners of the 2024 RNCM Hirsch Prize and 2024-2025 Chamber Studio UK Hans Keller Forum artists, the Heartwood Quartet are a Manchester-based string quartet founded in 2020 at the Royal Northern College of Music.

The quartet has been mentored by members of renowned quartets including the Elias Quartet, the Chilingirian Quartet and the Talich Quartet as well as receiving tuition as part of the European Chamber Music Academy in 2023.

Since their formation, the Heartwood Quartet have performed extensively across the UK in recitals with established concert series such as the Yorke Trust, Bury Concert Series and Buxton Opera House Concert Series as well as in chamber music festivals such as Didsbury Arts Festival and Enys Chamber Music Festival. In 2022 they enjoyed a residency with the Lake District Summer Music Festival and were pleased to be invited back for a recital in their 2024 concert series.

The quartet’s many upcoming projects for 2025 include recitals in concert series such as Solway Arts Society, Boston Concert Club and William Aston Hall Concert Series and a performance at the Royal Over-Seas League in January 2025.

PROGRAMME

Mozart: String Quartet No.15 K421

Jesse Montgomery: ‘Strum’

Interval

Beethoven: String Quartet Op59 No.1

Danish String Quartet: ‘Halling’

EMMA JOHNSON – Clarinet

Emma Johnson is one of the few clarinettists to have established a career as a solo performer which has taken her to venues all over the world. Emma grew up in London and her career was launched when at the age of 17 she won BBC Young Musicians in front of a TV audience of 12 million, followed by the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York.

Johnson has made 30 recordings to date; her album English Fantasy has been streamed 5 million times on Spotify whilst Voyage and The Mozart Album both reached the top of the classical charts. She recently released a recording with Gloucester Cathedral choir of her own composition, Songs of Celebration. A passionate advocate of the clarinet as a solo instrument, Emma has commissioned new works from composers such as Sir John Dankworth, Sir Michael Berkeley and Jonathan Dove. She also enjoys giving concerts with her own group, Emma Johnson and Friends and is known for her eclectic programming which has ranged from Mozart with Sir Yehudi Menuhin to Klezmer at the Jazz Café and Jazz with Dame Cleo Laine.

Emma Johnson’s compositions and arrangements have been published by Chesters and Faber Music. Her composition for clarinet and choir, Songs of Celebration, was recently performed in Dublin, London and Tokyo and her clarinet concerto, Tree of Life, a response to the climate emergency, is touring in 2024.

In 2020 she received the Cobbett Medal from the Musicians’ Company Guild in the City of London for distinguished services to chamber music. She was honoured by the Queen with an M.B.E. in 1996.

Emma Johnson plays a clarinet made by the English instrument maker, Peter Eaton.

In her spare time, Emma likes running and birdwatching – but not necessarily at the same time!

For more details please visit www.emmajohnson.co.uk

Follow Emma on Twitter: @ClarinetEmmaJ

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PROGRAMME

Emma Johnson – Three Perspectives (Echoes – Solace – Senegal Spirit)

Schumann – Fantasiestucke Op.73 (Zart und mit Ausdruck – Rasch und mit Feuer) 

Poulenc – Clarinet Sonata

Interval

Rebecca Clarke – Impetuoso

Mozart – Larghetto and Variations K581a

Bliss – Pastoral

Bechet – Petite Fleur

Ellington – Medley

PROGRAMME

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)

• Cinq Preludes
  • Prelude no.1
  • Prelude no.2
  • Prelude no.3
  • Prelude no.4
  • Prelude no.5

Cyril Scott (1879-1970)

• Sonatina for Guitar
  • I: Adagio, quasi introduzione – Molto Moderato
  • II: Allegretto Pensoso
  • III: Finale

Francisco Tarrega (1852-1909)

• Lagrima

Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909)

• Rumores de la Caleta

Interval

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)

• Sarabande

Peter Sculthorpe (1929-2014)

• From Kakadu
  • I: Grave
  • II: Comodo
  • III: Misterioso
  • IV: Cantando

Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982)

• Madronos

Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996)

• Folios
  • I
  • III

John Lennon (1940-1980) & Paul McCartney (1842-)

• Here, There and Everywhere (arr. Takemitsu)
• Michelle (arr. Takemitsu)
• Yesterday (arr. Takemitsu)

BIOGRAPHIES

Based in Melbourne, Australia, James Blackford is a Besson Sponsored Artist and one of Australia’s most eminent and versatile euphonium players. He is the solo euphonium player with the Royal Australian Air Force Band, teaches euphonium at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, and regularly travels around Australia and the world performing as a soloist.

He holds a Master of Music from the Royal Northern College of Music, in Manchester, where he studied under the guidance of David Thornton and Steven Mead. Whilst at the RNCM, James won the college’s concerto competition and received the highly commended award at their prestigious Gold Medal final. James’ studies were proudly supported by the Australian Music Foundation, through the AMF Overseas Study Award, and the Tait Memorial Trust, through the Tait White Loewenthal Award. He is the first euphonium player ever to receive an award from either foundation.

Whilst in the U.K., James won the Philip Jones Brass Prize at the Royal Over-Seas League’s Annual Music Competition. He was later invited to compete in the competitions ‘Overseas Final’, where he was awarded the ROSL trophy for the most Outstanding Musician from Overseas. In the same year, following a performance of the Martin Ellerby Euphonium Concerto at the prestigious RNCM Festival of Brass, James was invited to join The Cory Band to perform and compete with them at the 2023 European Championships, in Malmo, Sweden. James is a strong advocate for the virtuosic capabilities of the euphonium, and he looks forward to continuing to push the boundaries of euphonium performance in the years to come.

Ruth Hollick BMus(Hons) PGdip PPRNCM

Ruth studied Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music for six years, graduating in 2005 with postgraduate qualifications in Solo Performance , Piano Accompaniment and Chamber Music, in addition to her undergraduate degree. She was offered a job at the RNCM as a Staff Pianist soon after graduating and still works there, alongside a similar role at the University of Salford.

As part of her performing and teaching career, Ruth enjoys working with choirs; she is currently Principal Accompanist of Haydock Male Voice Choir and Bolton Choral Union.

In addition to the piano, Ruth has played various Brass instruments since a very young age and now enjoys it as a hobby, playing in a Championship section Brass Band. Ruth considers herself fortunate to be able to combine her career as an Accompanist with her passion for Brass Bands; she regularly performs with Brass soloists in recitals, for recordings and competitions.

PROGRAMME

Charles Villiers-Stanford

Caoine (arrangement of 2^nd movement)

Johann Nepomuk Hummel

Fantasy

Ernest Bloch

Prayer (the first of 3 movements from “a Jewish Life”

P Tchaikovsky

Variations on a Rococo Theme

INTERVAL

Anthony Brahe

Tour de Force (an Australian work written for James)

Astor Piazzola

Cafe 1930

Martin Ellerby

Euphonium Concerto movements 3 & 4

Philip Sparke

Harlequin