The Trio Mazzolini is a London based piano trio specialising in the commissioning and performance of contemporary music. Shortly after their formation in 2019, they were awarded a Chamber Music Fellowship at the Royal Academy of Music – a position they will retain for the 2021/22 academic year. The Trio Mazzolini enjoys performing music from all genres, but their greatest passion as an ensemble is to work with contemporary composers to create exciting new music. In 2021 they recorded six new works written by composition students from the Royal Academy of Music, and the trio looks forward to recitals at the Petworth Festival and the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival, as well as regular performances at the Royal Academy of Music.

Slide Action is a multi-award winning quartet, formed in 2018 with the simple aspiration of developing the standard trombone quartet into something different…

Within a year of its conception the quartet won 1st prize in the International Trombone Association Quartet competition at the 2019 International Trombone Festival in the USA. In 2020, they achieved 1st prize in the prestigious Royal Over-Seas League Mixed Ensemble competition, and were also awarded the Philip Jones Prize for Outstanding Brass Ensemble. Recent engagements include the opening concert of the 2020/21 Grange Festival season.

The members of Slide Action are all professional trombonists; working with orchestras, bands and shows all across the UK such as the RPO, LSO, LPO, Philharmonia, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, BBC Symphony, Hallé, & Opera North to name but a few.

Joanna is a composer, performer, and researcher from Newcastle upon Tyne. She is about to finish a Masters in Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Joanna is interested in experimenting with scores and with sound, and her practice ranges across genre and between media, usually in collaboration with other performers, artists and thinkers. Her approach is inherently political, considering how to think along with critical cultural theory in her creative practices. As a vocalist she is interested in contemporary and experimental repertoires as well as songwriting and improvisation, notably with her experimental duo project the mermaid café. Joanna’s research focus is radical liberatory futures of new music; her work on decolonising music higher educations has recently been published in TEMPO New Music Journal.

Robin Haigh writes music that channels the frivolity and opaque nostalgia of millennial life into a kind of hazy 21st century romanticism. His ‘completely refreshing’, ‘magical’ recorder quintet In Feyre Foreste earned him a British Composer Award in 2017 aged just 24, and his ‘quirky, playful, bold and original’ Britten Sinfonia commission Grin won an Ivor Novello Award in 2020.

Robin’s individual approach to music is informed by his early experiences writing for the progressive metal band he played in as a teenager growing up in Newham, East London. His pieces are often based on unusual concepts: Samoyeds (for the Ligeti Quartet) makes music out of the sounds of howling dogs: Aesop (an LSO commission) asks orchestral performers to play on recorders, and No One (commissioned by Presteigne Festival) reimagines the harp via Homeric memes.

Omri Kochavi (b. 1994) is an Israeli-Canadian composer and guitarist based in London. He is currently pursuing his Masters in Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, studying with Julian Anderson. His work is characterized by drawing its language from a broad range of influences, whilst focusing on the reality of acoustics, people, and the interaction between them. It is often dynamic in nature, inspired by the ever-changing landscapes and cities close to his heart. Recent or upcoming performances include collaborations with Exaudi Vocal Ensemble, Plus-Minus Ensemble, the Israeli Chamber Project, London Contemporary Dance School, Hagai Yodan, Meitar Ensemble, and Shiri Coneh, amongst others. Omri is generously supported by the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and the Jerusalem Institute of Contemporary music.

Emily is a composer studying on the Opera Makers programme at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in association with Royal Opera House Covent Garden and with generous support from the Thompson Educational Trust. Her approach is spacious and environmental, and she is especially interested in collaborative, interdisciplinary ways of making new work. Recent engagements include a new chamber opera ‘Paradise Garden’ created with librettist Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh and premiered at Milton Court (Barbican); and a guitar piece written for Tom McKinney on Psappha’s ‘Composing For…’ Scheme. Emily has previously worked with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, The Choir of Clare College Cambridge, Tim Gill, CHROMA, and Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra. She is also an active mezzo-soprano and experienced curator.

Maddie Ashman is a multi-instrumentalist and composer, based in London. Her compositional career kicked off in 2017, when Maddie became musical director of Slipshod Theatre, writing original music for sell-out production The Babushka. Her interdisciplinary work has since included writing for film, podcasts and art exhibitions. In April, Maddie released her debut EP ‘Don’t Come Back’. She has reached over 40k streams with her songs, her style blending silky vocals, warm cello melodies and intricate rhythmic guitar patterns. Recently, Maddie has taken an interest in microtonality, particularly Just Intonation. She aspires to bring overlooked tuning systems and their rich sound worlds into media composition and popular music, including in Piano Factory Films’ upcoming release Mudlark.

Jasmine Morris is studying Composition at the Royal College of Music on a full Scholarship under the tutelage of Simon Holt. In 2018 she joined The Purcell School of Music on the George Drexler Scholarship where her piece, Sirens for Harp and Orchestra was performed by the Purcell Symphony Orchestra and was one of the winning entries for the BBC Young Composer Competition 2020. She is currently working with the BBC Concert Orchestra on her orchestral piece, Crystalline for a performance and broadcast opportunity for BBC Radio 3. In 2019, she was composer in residence of the National Youth Orchestra where she had her pieces premiered at the Barbican centre. In March 2021, Jasmine received a commission from the Solem Quartet for their nationwide six part concert series: Beethoven Bartok Now, where her piece, Hitogata for Quartet and Electronics will be performed from December 2021 to March 2023. She is currently working on a commission for a contemporary production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest for the Multi-Award Winning Theatre Company Wildcard.

Widely in demand as a song pianist across London and the UK, Natalie won the accompaniment prize at the 2015 Maureen Lehane Awards, was a finalist alongside the 2nd Prize winner in the 2017 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and is a Britten-Pears, Leeds Lieder and Samling Artist. Performance highlights include Brahms’ Liebeslieder Walzer at Wigmore Hall, recitals with Helen Charlston and Oliver Johnston at the Oxford Lieder Festival a collaboration with Héloïse Werner focussing on Rimbaud and Verlaine. Natalie co-directs multi-voice ensemble, SongSpiel, a group of young singers and pianists energizing the song repertoire through rehearsal techniques drawn from theatre and extra-musical collaborations.

New Zealand Pianist Bradley Wood is a highly sought after soloist, chamber musician and collaborator specialising in vocal music. He graduated in 2019 with a Master of Performance with Distinction from the Royal College of Music and was was then one of only four pianists selected to become a 2019/2020 Young Artist Répétiteur at the National Opera Studio. Bradley is also extremely passionate about opera and was previously Head of Music for Bloomsbury Opera and was a participant in the Solti Academy Repetiteur course in Venice. He is currently the Lord and Lady Lurgan Collaborative Piano Fellow at the Royal College of Music.

Ana Manastireanu is currently the Constant & Kit Lambert Junior Fellow at the Royal College of Music in London, where she is studying towards an Artist Diploma in Collaborative Piano with Kathron Sturrock, Simon Lepper and Roger Vignoles. She is also a Henry Richardson Award Holder, supported by Help Musicians UK. Ana has recently won the Accompanist Prize in the 2020 AESS Patricia Routledge National English Song Competition and in the 2019 Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards held at the Wigmore Hall. In 2019 she won the Accompanist Prize in the AESS Courtney Kenny Award and was selected as a Leeds Lieder Young Artist. She also won the Alasdair Graham Pianist Prize in the 2020 RCM Lieder Competition and the First Prize for Pianists in the RCM Brooks-van der Pump English Song Competition.

Scottish Soprano Katy Thomson began singing as a chorister at St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, at the age of eight. She recently graduated from The Royal College of Music (RCM) Opera Studio, having been awarded the Worshipful Company of Musicians Silver Medal for her outstanding talent and contribution to life at the RCM. Katy was a Garsington Opera Young Artist in 2021, notably stepping-in for one performance, and making her debut, as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier (Strauss). Katy is Co-Chair of the St. Endellion Easter Festival, a trustee of the Sir George Dyson Trust and a Britten Pears Young Artist.

Spinto soprano Siân Dicker is in demand for her rich, full-bodied voice and dramatic flair. Recent roles include Countess Le nozze di Figaro (Opera Holland Park Young Artist), Amaranta La fedeltà premiata (Guildhall Opera), Venus Venus and Adonis (Guildhall Opera) and Erste Dame Die Zauberflöte (Hurn Court Opera). Siân was due to cover the role of Foreign Princess Rusalka (Garsington Opera 2020), however was instead delighted to sing solo chorus soprano in Garsington’s Fidelio. Siân is an Oxford Lieder Ambassador for Song and winner of the 2020 Royal Over-Seas League Singers Prize. Future plans include a recital at the International Lied Festival, Zeist.

Praised by The Guardian for her ‘irrepressible sense of drama and unmissable, urgent musicality’, Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean is a keen concert curator and her wide-ranging repertoire encompasses contemporary music, art song, chamber music, opera, early music and non-classical collaborations. She is a Young Artist with Oxford Lieder, City Music Foundation and Musicians Company, Associate Artist with Southbank Sinfonia and won the 2020 ROSL Overseas Prize and Audrey Strange Singer’s Prize. Performance highlights include Dean Hamlet (Adelaide Festival) Stravinsky Perséphone (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) Pierrot Lunaire (Manchester Collective) and recitals for several UK festivals including Buxton, Cheltenham, Barbican SoundUnbound, Oxford Lieder and St Magnus. Upcoming projects include Pirates of Penzance (Opera Holland Park) the world premiere of Dean Madame Ma Bonne Soeur (Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), and an Australian concert tour. Lotte trained at the Royal Academy of Music (MA) and Melbourne Conservatorium (BMus).

Madison Nonoa is a soprano from New Zealand. She graduated from the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2018 with a Masters in Music (Distinction), where she studied under the tutelage of Yvonne Kenny AM. Madison is a Lies Askonas Holt fellow and a 2020/2021 Jerwood Young Artist at Glyndebourne Festival Opera; she was also selected as a 2019/2020 Samling Artist and a 2020 Britten-Pears Young Artist for the Snape Maltings festival. This year, Madison was a selected performer for the Momentum scheme. She acknowledges the generous support from the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Dame Malvina Major Foundations.

Claire Barnett-Jones is an English National Opera Harewood Artist. Highlights of the 2020-21 season include being a Finalist and winning the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, her role and house debut as Madame Flora in the The Medium for Oper Frankfurt, and a recital at the Wigmore Hall. Recent highlights include Fricka in Das Rheingold, making her Concertgebouw debut under the baton of Sir John Eliot Gardiner and her ENO debut as Eurydice Myth in Birtwistle The Mask of Orpheus where she was awarded the Lilian Baylis Award for Outstanding Potential in the Field of Opera in recognition of her exceptional stage debut.

Since arriving in Britain, New Zealand baritone Kieran Rayner has sung leading roles with Garsington Opera, Longborough Festival Opera, English Touring Opera, VOPERA, and British Youth Opera, among others. A graduate of the Royal College of Music International Opera School, he has been a Young Artist with Garsington (winning the Sandbach Prize), Independent Opera, Verbier Festival, Samling Arts, Britten Pears Arts, and the Internationale Meistersinger Akademie, and is generously supported by the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation. He was a Wigmore Hall International Song Competition semi-finalist and Royal Overseas League prize winner. He has performed solo at the Royal Albert Hall and Buckingham Palace, as well as across Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.