Joanna Lawrence is a violinist. She has played with most period ensembles of London including Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) and the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) and many new music ensembles such as Opus 20, Icebreaker, Club Inégales and newly formed, Gukami.

Jo devises and delivers workshops and outreach concerts for OAE and AAM. With ‘Music for Life’ run by Wigmore Hall, she takes improvisation workshops for people living with dementia. She enjoys teaching and coaching, most recently at Purcell School and the Centre for Young Musicians.

A thread that increasingly runs through Joanna’s work is one of improvisation in music; facilitating others and working collaboratively with colleagues, particularly with dancer/director, Clare Whistler and clarinetist, Katherine Spencer.

Katherine Spencer

Katherine Spencer is principal clarinet of The City of London Sinfonia, a member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, guest principal of the Irish Chamber Orchestra and a busy freelance player with Britain’s leading orchestras. Katherine made her concerto debut at the Royal Festival Hall aged just 14 and has since performed there as concerto soloist many times. She has appeared as soloist in most of Britain’s major concert venues with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. She has made live Radio 3 solo broadcasts, and performs regularly on Classic FM and European radio stations on both modern and period instruments. She has recorded the Brahms Sonatas and Beethoven Trio for the Oxford Classic label and a large number of her discs have had much critical acclaim. Her competition prizes include the Yamaha European Foundation Award, and she won the Concertina Praga competition, which led to tours throughout Europe. She continues to perform internationally with her piano duo partner Sam Haywood. Among Katherine’s notable performances are the first live concert broadcast in Buckingham Palace, and a private solo performance for the Emperor of Japan. Katherine gives regular master classes and tuition in many of Britain’s leading conservatoires and universities and is equally committed to bringing classical music to life to the wider community, in venues such as hospices, hospitals, day centres, schools and care homes.

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’. He embraces a wide spectrum of the piano repertoire and is equally at home as a soloist or chamber musician, using modern or period instruments. He has recorded two solo albums for Hyperion, one featuring the piano music of Julius Isserlis (grandfather of Steven Isserlis) and the other Charles Villiers Stanford’s preludes. His passion for period instruments led to a recording on Chopin’s own Pleyel piano, part of the Cobbe Collection. In 2013 Haywood co-founded Solent Music Festival in UK. The annual Lymington-based festival features highly varied programmes and projects in the local community. Guest artists have included the King’s Singers, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Steven Isserlis, Anthony Marwood, Michael Portillo, Mark Padmore and the Elias Quartet. He was mentored by David Hartigan, Paul Badura-Skoda and Maria Curcio. Following his early success in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, the Royal Philharmonic Society awarded him the Julius Isserlis Scholarship. He studied both at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna and at the Royal Academy of Music in London, of which he is an Associate (ARAM). As a composer Haywood has written several miniatures for piano. ‘The Other Side’ was recently premiered in the Konzerthaus in Vienna and the ‘Song of the Penguins’, dedicated to Roger Birnstingl, is published by Emerson Editions. His invention ‘memorystars®’ can significantly reduce the time needed to memorise a music score. His other passions include literature, physics, natural history, technology, magic, fountain pens and table tennis. Originally from the English Lake District, he now lives in Kent with his wife Sophia, their young son James and cockapoo Poppy.