Katherine Spencer

Clarinettist Katherine Spencer made her concerto debut at the age of fourteen at the Royal Festival Hall and has since performed there as concerto soloist a further three times. She has also appeared as soloist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, The Academy of St Martin in the Fields Orchestra at the Barbican Centre and at the Birmingham Symphony Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, made many live Radio 3 solo broadcasts, and performs regularly on Classic FM and European radio stations.

She has recorded the Brahms Sonata and Beethoven Trio for the Oxford Classic label with Sam Haywood and Martin Storey and many of her discs with the Galliard Ensemble, of which she is a founder member are highly acclaimed in the press and Gramophone magazine.

Katherine is passionate about trying to recreate the actual clarinet sound intended by composers and is thus an active member of the period performance scene in Europe particularly as a member of The Age of Enlightenment Orchestra. She is also a busy freelance modern clarinet player with the major orchestras in Britain.

As a chamber musician Katherine was invited to participate in the BBC Radio 3 Young Generation Artists Scheme. She has also had the honour to perform the Mozart Clarinet Quintet with the remaining members of the Amadeus Quartet in the presence of HRH the Emperor of Japan. She continues to perform internationally with her many chamber ensembles regularly in international Festivals such as the BBC Proms and the Barbican’s “Mostly Mozart Festival”.

Damien Ventula

Acclaimed for his great sensitivity and temperament, French cellist Damien Ventula, « Génération Spedidam 2010 », was nominated in 2005 for the « Victoires de la Musique » as a « Révélation soliste instrumental ». In 2003 he was chosen as the “Révélation Classique de l’Adami“ and has been the recipient of many other awards, including the Marcel Bleustein- Blanchet, Piatigorsky and Singer-Polignac prizes.

Coming from a family of musicians in the south of France, Damien Ventula studied from an early age with renowned masters: Lluis Claret in his native Toulouse, Bernard Greenhouse and Laurence Lesser in Boston and Boris Pergamenschikow in Berlin, where he still lives and works.

Damien Ventula appeared as a soloist in France with the Toulouse National Chamber Orchestra and in Germany with the Mannheim Kammerorchester and the Berliner Symphoniker. He also performed for international festivals, including the Saint Bertrand de Comminges Festival, the Pablo Casals de Prades Festival, the La Chaise-Dieu Festival (France), the Bad-Homburg Festival (Germany), the Holland Music Sessions, the Kuala Lumpur Chamber Music Festival (Malaisia) and the Bacau Festival (Romania).

As a chamber musician, Damien Ventula was a founding member of the Quartet Cuarteto Arriaga who played in 2010-2011 at the Wigmore Hall of London, at the Royal Palace of Madrid, the Gewandhaus Leipzig, the Musika – Música Festival and at the Lockenhaus Festival. He appears regularly with the pianist Sam Haywood and has collaborated with other distinguished artists including Barbara Hendricks, Christian Zacharias, Frans Helmerson, Hartmut Rohde, the Quatuor Talich, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Denis Pascal, Michel Lethiec, or Wolfgang Güttler.

Sam Haywood

Sam Haywood has performed to critical acclaim in many of the world’s major concert halls. The Washington Post hailed his ‘dazzling, evocative playing’ and ‘lyrical sensitivity’ and the New York Times his ‘’passionate flair and sparkling clarity’.

Next season will include solo and chamber music (with Joshua Bell) tours of USA and Europe, a solo recital at Kings Place, recitals with Mark Padmore (Schubert Winterreise), the Elias Quartet, Mariko Hara and Noboko Imai. He will also be recording his second solo album for Hyperion.

For Hyperion he has recorded the piano works of Russian pianist-composer Julius Isserlis, (grandfather of cellist Steven Isserlis) and is due to record Stanford Preludes.
His album ‘Composers in Love’ brings together both well-loved and lesser known music inspired by composers’ muses.

To celebrate Chopin’s bicentennial year, Haywood made the world première recording on Chopin’s own Pleyel piano, part of the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands. He is featured on two of Joshua Bell’s recordings for Sony Masterworks. He is also featured on a recording of the music of the child-prodigy Alma Deutscher.

Following Sam’s early success in BBC Young Musician of the Year, the Royal Philharmonic Society awarded him their prestigious Isserlis Award. Sam studied with Paul Badura-Skoda in Vienna, where he began his enduring love affair with opera. At the Royal Academy of Music in London, he was mentored by the great teacher Maria Curcio, pupil of Artur Schnabel.

Sam is co-founder and Artistic Director of the Solent Music Festival, which combines recitals by internationally-renowned artists with projects in the local community. Sam attaches great importance to his work with young people. He is an Ambassador to the West Lakes Academy, has written a children’s opera and is regularly involved in family concerts, workshops and master classes. His ‘Song of the Penguins’, for bassoon and piano, is published by Emerson Editions.

He is also the inventor of memorystars® which can dramatically reduce the time needed to memorise a music score, or indeed any printed text.

His many passions include physics, natural history, technology, magic, fountain pens, kick-scooting and table tennis.