Joanna ParkerJoanna is a member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) and the Academy of Ancient Music and also plays with other period-instrument groups such as Les Arts Florissants, King’s Consort, The Gabrieli Consort and The Sixteen. She has performed in all the great European concert halls, toured extensively, and has recorded many discs for major record labels.

She is a member of L’Aventurra London, whose latest disc for Hyperion was highly acclaimed. She plays with 21st Century Baroque, a newly formed group with David Gordon, world-reknowned harpsichordist and Charlotte Barbour-Condini, BBC Young Musician Finalist. She is Principal 2nd violin in the Purcell Orchestra.

For many years she played with the hard hitting amplified band Icebreaker with whom she appeared in the Bang on a Can Festival in New York and recorded with Decca. More recently she toured with Colin Riley and Tim Whitehead in the Homemade Orchestra, an ensemble crossing the bridges between jazz and ‘classical’ players through improvisation.

She leads workshops for the education department of the OAE, mentors OAE Experience students and has coached at the Royal Academy of Music. She runs improvising bands in primary and secondary schools and works for Music for Life, a charity supported by the Wigmore Hall, which runs improvisation workshops for people living with dementia. She teaches the violin and baroque violin privately and is baroque violin tutor at Hull University.

A thread that increasingly runs through Joanna’s work is one of improvisation in music; facilitating others and her own self expression.