London Orchestra 2017

londoncelloorchestra.com Soloists

Amy Manford Amy has appeared as soloist with the London Handel Orchestra, West Australian Symphony Orchestra and Perth Symphony Orchestra. Most recently she performed the Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music at Buckingham Palace for the Prince of Wales under the baton of John Wilson, and the role of Clotilde in Handel’s conducted by . Amy has sung Gretel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. She has been soprano soloist in Duruflé’s , Rutter’s , Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Rossini’s Stabat Mater. Australian-born, Amy studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, receiving a Bachelor of Music in Classical Voice and Post-Graduate Diploma in Music under the tutelage of Patricia Price. While at WAAPA she won the Barbara MacLeod Scholarship and the Michelle Robinson Award. In 2014 Amy won the Aria First Prize and Music Theatre First Prize at the prestigious Fremantle Eisteddfod in Perth, and the Radzyminski Family Prize at the International Australian Singing Competition in Sydney. In 2015 Amy entered the Royal College of Music in London as a Basil Coleman Scholar, studying under Janis Kelly and Caroline Dowdle and completing a Master of Performing Arts with High Distinction in 2017. Scenes performed at the Royal College include Tytania in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Aminta in Mozart’s Il Re Pastore, in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Niece 1 in Britten’s . Amy is supported by the Josephine Baker Trust and is an artist of the Arts Global Foundation.

Ashlyn Tymms mezzo-soprano Ashlyn has been praised for her “wonderful tone and creamy quality.” Limelight Magazine, London, 2016 She has appeared as Euridice in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Pitti-Sing in The Mikado, Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Eurydice in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, in Rossini’s L’occasione fa il ladro and most recently Rosimonda in Handel’s Faramondo, with the . Ashlyn has performed as alto soloist in Handel’s , Dvořák’s Stabat Mater, Handel’s , the Bach Magnificat and Charpentier’s Te Deum. In February 2017 she sang the Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music at Buckingham Palace for the Prince of Wales. She will be the mezzo-soprano soloist in the Verdi Requiem in Sydney in November 2017. Australian-born, Ashlyn graduated from the University of , then was invited to attend the Royal College of Music as an “HF Music Scholar”, studying under Patricia Bardon. In 2017 she graduated as a Master of Vocal Performance with High Distinction. While at the Royal College she performed in scenes from Britten directed by John Copley, including Nancy in , Bianca in and Mrs Grose in The Turn of the Screw, and the role of Judith in a new opera by composer Algirdas Kraunaitis, The Two Sisters, produced by the Royal College in association with Tête à Tête opera company. Ashlyn is a winner of the Basil Coleman Award, Sylvia Harris Award, Award and the Josephine Baker Trust Award. She was a recent finalist at the Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition in London and has held scholarships from the Ian Potter Cultural Trust and the PPCA Performers Trust. Ashlyn is an artist of the Arts Global Foundation.

Peter Tregear Musician, author and teacher, Peter is a graduate of the Universities of Melbourne and Cambridge. Subsequently appointed Director Music and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, he has performed regularly in Australia and Europe as a singer and conductor, specialising in historic revivals and premieres of neglected operatic repertoire. Most recently he was Professor and Head of the School of Music at the Australian National University in Canberra, during which time he performed with Melbourne Opera, Victorian Opera, Kronos Quartet, The Rolling Stones, Australian Chamber Orchestra and Australian Youth Orchestra, among others.

Geoffrey Simon conductor Australian-born, Geoffrey is resident in London and has appeared there with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players and English Chamber Orchestra. Internationally, he has appeared with the Adelaide, Atlanta, Bournemouth, Canberra, City of Birmingham, Fort Worth, Melbourne, Milwaukee, Queensland, Sapporo, Shanghai, St Louis, Sydney, Tasmanian, Vermont and West Australian Symphony Orchestras, the Israel, Moscow, Munich and New Japan Philharmonic Orchestras, the American Symphony, the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and the Australian Opera. His music directorships have included the Albany Symphony Orchestra (New York), the Australian Sinfonia (London), the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra (Indiana), the Orquestra Simfònica de Balears “Ciutat de Palma” (Majorca) and the Sacramento Symphony (California). With the Palma Orchestra he conducted Paul Patterson’s Te Deum for the King and Queen of Spain, and with the Sacramento Symphony he created the World View series of concerts, attracting audiences from twenty non-European cultures. Geoffrey is Music Director Emeritus of the Northwest Mahler Orchestra in Seattle, with which he has conducted the Mahler symphonic cycle and Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony. He is Consultant for Classical Special Projects for Arts Global (a foundation for emerging artists, London, Montreux and New York) and has served as a jury member for Young Concert Artists, PianoTexas, Australian Cello Awards and Royal Over-Seas League. Geoffrey was a student of Herbert von Karajan, Rudolf Kempe, Hans Swarowsky and Igor Markevich, and a major prize-winner at the first John Player International Conductors’ Award. He has made forty five recordings for a number of labels, combining discoveries with familiar works by Tchaikovsky, Respighi, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Smetana, Bloch, Grainger, Debussy, Ravel, Saint- Saëns and Les Six. Amongst the contemporary composers he has recorded are Barry Conyngham, John Downey, Paul Patterson and Zhou Long. For his own label, Cala Records, Geoffrey has brought together large ensembles of single instruments—violins, violas, , double basses, horns, trumpets, trombones and harps—drawn from London’s leading solo, orchestral and chamber musicians. Known as The London Sound Series, the recordings have attracted interest amongst instrumentalists worldwide. Geoffrey’s virtuoso 20-cello ensemble, the London Cello Orchestra, has performed for H.M. The Queen and H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh, and appeared in London, New York, Geneva and South Korea.

“A born conductor, whose every gesture expresses music.” Die Presse Vienna