Alumni updates
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From international awards to dazzling performances and recordings, RCM alumni continue to make an impact worldwide.
Awards, accolades and appointments
Percussionist Toril Azzalini-Machecler has scooped this year’s Coro Nuovo Sussex Young Musician of the Year Award.
Pianist Alim Beisembayev has been awarded the Critics’ Circle Music Award for Young Talent (Piano). The award was presented to Alim at his recent Wigmore Hall recital.
Composer Tomás Brantmayer has been awarded Best Classical Artist of the Year at the Pulsar Awards, one of the most important music prizes in his home country of Chile.
Sinfonia Cymru has announced the appointment of violinist Haim Choi as its new orchestral leader.
Composition for Screen alumna Leah Clarke has won the Best Soundtrack Award at the London South Bank University Film Awards.
Horn player Amadea Dazeley-Gaist performed in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at their BBC Prom in Bristol, among other professional engagements.
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Composer Marcos Fernandez-Barrero recently won the 2024 Manhattan International Music Competition in the Composition Category. His piano work FugaCity received its American premiere at Carnegie Hall in October. The work was commissioned by the Maria Canals International Piano Competition in 2022 and has been played by the past winners in their touring concerts around Japan and Spain. In the same month, his Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra was premiered at the Palau de la Música (Barcelona) by the Kebyart Quartet and the Orquestra Simfònica del Vallés.
Flautist Xinping Gao has been offered a position with the Zhejiang Province Symphony Orchestra.
Flautist Hannah Gillingham achieved a place on the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme and performed in Curlew River under the direction of RCM vocal professor Audrey Hyland. The production was broadcast on BBC Four.
Amy Huang was recently appointed to the first violin section of the BBC Philharmonic.
Tenor Dafydd Jones, currently at the Bayerische Staatsoper Opera Studio, has been announced as joining the Askonas Holt Fellowship Scheme. Dafydd was also the winner of the Royal Over-Seas League Annual Music Competition Gold Medal, with pianist Francesca Lauri winning the Collaborative Piano Award at the section finals.
Mezzo soprano Annabel Kennedy won Second Prize in the IVC Opera & Oratorio Competition, singing with the PhilZuid under David Parry in the Netherlands. Annabel has also been working with the Opernstudio of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, Germany.
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The Northern Aldborough Festival New Voices Singing Competition unveiled its 2024 winner as mezzo soprano Judith Le Breuilly, who was given the opportunity to enter the competition at just 24 hours’ notice.
Mezzo soprano Ellen Pearson was recently awarded First Prize and the Audience Prize at the Hurn Court Opera Singer of the Year Competition in collaboration with the Grange Festival.
Composer Jorge Ramos was awarded a position on the LPO Young Composers scheme 2024/25.
Huge congratulations to RCM alumnus @jorgefpramos who has won a place on the prestigious @LPOrchestra Young Composers 2024/25 programme! https://t.co/gM36QUE031
— Royal College of Music (@RCMLondon) September 16, 2024
Mezzo soprano Emily Sierra recently received the Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation.
Harpsichordist Sara Stowe’s groups Sirinu and Galliarda were both awarded Continuo Foundation Awards to tour programmes of early music. Sirinu was also awarded Vaughan Williams Foundation funding to commission and record new music for early instruments. As solo harpsichordist, Sara also received Vaughan Williams Foundation funding to record new works for harpsichord on the Tremula label.
Baritone Julien Van Mellaerts (main picture) has been named as the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation Laureate.
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Oboist Poppy Webb-Taylor has been offered a place in the Southbank Sinfonia, following fellow alumni Francis Bushell and Amy Thompson last year.
Conductor John Wilson has joined Help Musicians as the charity’s newest ambassador, and continues to draw rave reviews for concerts with the Sinfonia of London, including an acclaimed BBC Proms performance of American repertoire.
Viola player Kinga Wojdalska won an honourable second place and received a special prize for her performance of a transcription of Grażyna Bacewicz’s Polish Capriccio at the Primrose International Viola Competition in Los Angeles, becoming the first Pole to be awarded a distinction at this competition.
Performances and recordings
Composition for Screen graduate Daniel Chant-Burgess has written additional music for the CNN nature documentary series Patagonia: Life on the Edge of the World, followed by working on Netflix’s Emmy-Award winning show Big Mouth, where he assisted Patrick Doyle. He worked in the orchestration team on the feature film Home Education, recorded his music for release with publisher London Sync, and has had his music used in TV shows such as Countryfile, Doctors, Rick Stein’s Food Stories and Celebrity Race Across The World.
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Tenor Glen Cunningham recently finished two years as a member of Opéra Studio at Opéra national du Rhin 2022/24, having been a Scottish Opera Emerging Artist 2021/22. Glen was featured on the world premiere recording of Jonathan Sheffer’s Four Ten-Minute Operas with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and recently recorded his debut song album accompanied by Anna Tilbrook, scheduled for release in January 2025 on Delphian Records. In the 2024/25 season he will perform the title role of Albert Herring with Scottish Opera.
In July, Rob Eckland conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra for a BBC Radio 2 concert in Malta to 15,000 people, celebrating the music of Tina Turner, Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin, for which he had completed all the arranging and orchestrating.
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Conductor Howard Griffiths MBE has been recording the complete Mozart and Saint-Saëns concertos with talented soloists, on Alpha Classic and Berlin Classics respectively. As Artistic Director of the Swiss Orpheum Foundation, Howard initiated the project to conduct and record more than 50 Mozart concertos, all with up-and-coming soloists including RCM student Jeneba Kanneh-Mason accompanied by the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, ORF Symphony Orchestra Vienna and Camerata Schweiz.
A new NMC Recordings album of music by alumna Imogen Holst, Discovering Imogen, was released in September, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Singers.
Pianist Joanna Kacperek’s debut solo album Variations was released in September with the Rubicon Classics label. Joanna has also been performing extensively, promoting the album in the UK and abroad.
Clarinettist Méline Le Calvez has been performing in Japan with the Royal Ballet and Opera.
Kelly Mathieson performed at Let's Face The Music with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall earlier in November, singing much-loved songs and duets from the musicals.
Austrian label Kairos has released a new monographic CD, called Distant Fragments, of works by composer Camilo Mendez, performed by the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and Roberto Alonso.
Composer Lara Poe’s work Laulut maaseudulta (‘Songs from the Countryside’) was given its world premiere performance at the BBC Proms by Anu Komsi and the combined RCM Symphony Orchestra and Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo, to critical acclaim.
Gothic Opera’s Hallowe’en production of Maria de Rudenz featured among its cast alumni baritones Kieran Rayner and Theo Perry.
Pianist Nathan Tinker has recently released an album performing his own works.
Trombonist Jamie Tweed has released a recording on NMC Recordings with his trombone quartet, Slide Action.
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Violinist Merel Vercammen has released a new album on her own label, All Ears Records, in a recording made with pianist Dina Ivanova.
Singer-songwriter Paul Vialard recently performed his new album of original French songs Au naturel at The Crazy Coqs in London accompanied by musicians including fellow alumnus Romain Malan on the cello. Paul also won the Second Prize and Radio Alpa Prize at the Mans Pop Festival and Music Competition earlier this year.
Pianist Yang Wang continues to perform and speak widely including at the Lugano Music Festival, and was invited to be on the jury of the 2024 GOCAA International Piano Competition.
Composition for Screen graduate Ka Youn Yoo composed a piece, Beyond the Planet, to accompany a short film that was screened in September at a Kew Gardens trustees dinner, performed live by a chamber octet made up of RCM students and alumni: June Lee (violin), Zea Hunt (violin), Sofía Gómez Alberto (viola), Clare Juan (cello), Imogen Ridge (harp), Milligan Power (percussion), Issy Haley-Porteous (flute) and Hannah Shimwell (clarinet).
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Publications
Michael Allis has co-edited (with Paul Watt) a new volume with Clemson University Press: The Reminiscences and Selected Music Criticism of Herbert Thompson.
Trumpet player Russell Gilmour, who also performed at the BBC Proms this season, recently published a book entitled ‘Just’ Natural Trumpet in which he guides the reader through the acoustics, playing techniques and repertoire of the instrument.
Barbara Gentili’s first monograph based on her doctoral thesis (which she completed at the RCM under the supervision of research professor Richard Wistreich) has now been published: Italian Opera Singing at the Time of Verismo – The Invention of the Modern Voice. Other recent publications include ‘A Project of Her Own: Emma Carelli’s Enactment of Femininity in Early Twentieth-Century Italy’, Cambridge Opera Journal.
Birthdays and family ties
Eleanor Carter (née Mosley) was an ABRSM scholar at the RCM from 1991–94. She and her sister, Kathryn Mosley, were the first siblings ever to be awarded ABRSM scholarships in the same year. Eleanor’s son Benjamin Carter has just taken up an ABRSM scholarship to study piano with Head of Keyboard Vanessa Latarche at the RCM, carrying on the family tradition.
Happy 100th birthday to alumna Moira Whitty, and to Leslie Baker Falkner Drucker who, over 80 years ago as Miss Leslie Marjorie Smerdon Baker-Falkner, was a violin and piano student at the RCM during the Second World War.
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Send your updates for the Spring 2025 digital edition of Upbeat to news@rcm.ac.uk by Friday 17 January 2025.
