CollectIvists

Julia Black

Leader and Founder

Julia Black studied violin and viola at the Royal College of Music, and the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag. She has performed and made recordings with a variety of ensembles, including the Gabrieli Consort and Players, Early Opera Co., La Nuova Musica, The Hanover Band, and the Academy of Ancient Music. She is a principal player for the Hanover Band, Musica Donum Dei and other small chamber music groups and regularly performs as a soloist on violin, viola and viola d’amour. She also gives masterclasses and lecture recitals on various subjects ranging from historically informed performance practice to the electric violin…

Hazel Brooks

Violin, Viola, Vielle, Viola d’Amore

Hazel studied at Clare College, Cambridge, the Hochschule für Musik in Leipzig, and the Guildhall School of Music in London, where she specialised in early music winning the Christopher Kite Memorial Prize and the Bankers Trust Pyramid Award. Hazel now works regularly in chamber ensembles and as a recitalist giving solo recitals in most major venues throughout the UK as well as in Germany, Italy, Russia and Spain. Hazel has released a number of solo CDs with harpsichordist David Pollock, the latest being ‘A Bohemian in London: Violin Sonatas by Gottfried Finger’, on the Chandos label. Hazel has an interest in unusual instruments, especially the viola d’amore and is in demand as a medieval-fiddle specialist throughout Europe and America. Hazel also enjoys turning dusty ancient manuscripts from archives into live music. She is a researcher at the University of Leeds, investigating violin music from seventeenth-century England, sponsored by WRoCAH and the AHRC.

Eva Caballero

Flute

Originally from Barcelona, Eva Caballero was awarded a scholarship to study at Trinity College of Music, London, with Daniel Pailthorpe. Towards the end of her BMus (Hons) degree, she discovered the baroque flute with Stephen Preston and continued her studies on historical flutes with Lisa Beznosiuk at the Royal Academy of Music. She performs in London-based ensembles and orchestras, including Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, English Baroque Soloists, The Sixteen, Solomon’s Knot, Classical Opera and Armonico Consort. She has also given recitals at the Handel House Museum, Raynham Hall, the Wallace Collection and St. Martin-in-the-Fields amongst others. Collaborating with dance and theatre companies, she has worked on improvisation and modern techniques performing in the ‘Tête à Tête’ Opera Festival and ‘IV Festiwal Atelier’ in Poznań, Poland. Eva has won numerous awards as a chamber music performer in the UK and Spain including XIII Paper de Música de Capellades, Premi Ciutat Manresa, IX Pòdiums de St. Joan de Vilatorrada and the Anglo-Czech Trust Competition. Eva is also an enthusiastic educator and works as a flute teacher in North London.

Charlotte Fairbairn

Violin, Viola

Charlotte enjoys a diverse existence playing violin and viola on both ‘modern’ and period instruments. After formative years at Junior Dept. Royal Academy Of Music, she studied at King’s College London (Music) and Trinity Laban Conservatoire (Violin). Charlotte loves chamber and orchestral playing with ensembles including The Hanover Band, Academy of Ancient Music and Orchestra of the Swan. She leads St. Albans Symphony Orchestra, and is a member of MishMash Productions which brings theatrical chamber music shows to young audiences. Charlotte is fascinated by the process of learning, and loves to teach and coach; she engages with music education and therapeutic music sessions in hospitals.

Dominika Fehér

Violin, Viola

Dominika completed her Masters degree at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest, and, as a recipient of the Weingarten Scholarship, she went on to specialise in historically informed performance practice at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. She is second violinist of the Revolutionary Drawing Room, a member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and regularly appears with The English Baroque Soloists, Early Opera Company, The Kings Consort and The Hanover Band. She has appeared at the BBC Proms as co-leader of the Academy of Ancient Music and the OAE, and has performed at all the major concert halls of the world, including the Wigmore, Royal Opera House, Carnegie, La Scala, Concertgebouw and Vienna Konzerthaus, and National Centre For the Performing Arts in Beijing. She was a finalist of the Premio Bonporti 2019 international baroque violin competition and has been broadcast live as soloist on BBC Radio 3. Dominika plays a Rogeri violin kindly loaned to her through the Beare’s International Violin Society.

Stefanie Heichelheim

Violas

Stefanie Heichelheim studied the violin at the Royal Academy of Music with David Martin and Emmanuel Hurwitz before taking up the viola. She now performs regularly on violas and bows of varying shapes and sizes, from pre baroque through to modern – but not all at the same time! She is a member of the Gabrieli Consort & Players, The Sixteen and The English Concert and also performs with other leading period instrument ensembles, in this country and abroad. She and her husband run a small concert series called On Your Doorstep local to their home in North West London, with concerts ranging from baroque ensembles and more conventional chamber music to solo recitals and plans for the odd jazz gig. Playing chamber music with friends just for fun has always been a passion and a joy for Stefanie and other than in lockdown, she tries to do this regularly. In addition to performing she teaches, both children and adults. She also sings and has recently started learning to play the ukulele, to accompany herself. Stefanie loves cooking and gardening and in her spare time she can usually be found on her allotment.

Hesperides Quartet

After decades of music making together in different professional groups, these four musicians formed the Hesperides Quartet to explore repertoire for string quartet from the Romantic period to the present day. Rooted in their extensive experience as period instrument players, their approach combines close attention to the composer’s wishes with musical creativity. As well as playing professionally, the members of the quartet are all committed teachers with a belief in holistic music education. Friendship and humour are at the heart of their music making.

Website: hesperidesquartet.co.uk

Home Brass

Home Brass is a proudly Home County based ensemble that regularly performs in London and Hertfordshire. The group was formed in 2017 during their studies at the Royal College of Music, Royal Academy of Music and Trinity Laban Conservatoire. Their repertoire reflects the varied freelance engagements of its individual members, as they enjoy performing brass quintet classics, musical theatre favourites and jazz numbers, as well as their own arrangements. This versatility is even reflected in their choice of venue; from recital performances at St. James’ Piccadilly, to outreach work in schools, and even playing at Inferno’s nightclub in Clapham as part of the 2018 World Cup festivities!

Website: Home Brass on Facebook

Katharine May

Harpsichord, Piano

Once described by a critic from The Times as ‘the evening’s feisty and urbane harpsichordist’, Katharine studied at the Royal College of Music and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, where she was awarded the Diploma of Honour for her solo playing. Today she enjoys a varied career as a performer, teacher, baroque chamber music coach and writer for ‘Early Music Today’, ‘Music Teacher’ and the British Clavichord Society. She has performed widely for music clubs, universities and festivals throughout the UK, Europe and Canada.

Website: edenvalleymusic.co.uk

Pamela Moutoussi (Cresswell)

Viola, Viola d’Amore

Daughter of the luthier, John Cresswell, Pamela was an Eliza Avins scholar at Birmingham School of Music Junior department, then studied at the Royal College of Music where she first met met Julia Black. She studied viola with Roger Best, piano with Yonty Solomon, harpsichord with Robert Wolley and baroque string playing with Catherine Mackintosh. She spent many years playing viola for John Elliot Gardiner’s ‘English Baroque Soloists’ and many other period instrument ensembles, touring the world and recording extensively, including participating in Gardiner’s “Bach Pilgrimage”. She moved with her family to Greece, where she worked as acting principal viola with The Orchestra of Colours which specializes in Contemporary music. Highlights include the first performance of Britten’s Turn of the Screw in Greece in the Megaron Musikis, and concerts in the ancient Odeon of Athens. She also played with the Athens Kamerata under Sir Neville Mariner. https://vimeo.com/10669434 She is a founder member of the viol consort “The English Fantasy” who have recorded CDs of Lupo and Dowland, is a piano accompanist and also loves to play the viola d’amore. She now freelances and teaches for Hertfordshire Music Service and she co-founded Potters Bar Community Music school in 2018, directing beginner string players to advanced chamber groups.

Peter Moutoussis

Horn, Historical Horns

Peter is a horn player currently completing his MMus at the Royal College of Music having graduated from the Royal Academy of Music with First Class Honours in 2018. At Music College he studied with Simon Rayner, Jeffery Bryant, Kira Doherty, Michael Thompson and Richard Watkins. His performance and research on historical horns has been supervised by Roger Montgomery and Anneke Scott. A busy baroque and hand horn player, Peter is principal horn on the Ann and Peter Law Experience Scheme with the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment and has participated in the Ton Koopman Academy and Festival du Périgord Noir. He performed as part of the Jeune Orchestre Européen Hector Berlioz alongside Les Siècles and Stour Festival with Florilegium. Peter loves to engage with audiences as much as possible on and off stage, so feel free to chat to him after a concert!

Henrik Persson

Cello, Viola da Gamba

Henrik was born in Stockholm. After his undergraduate degree in modern cello at the Birmingham Conservatoire, he undertook a postgraduate performance course at the Historical Performance Department of the Royal Academy of Music where he studied baroque and classical cello with Jennifer Ward Clarke and viola da gamba with Richard Campbell. He performs regularly with groups such as the Academy of Ancient Music, the Gabrieli Consort, The Hanover Band, the crossover ensemble Eclipse, Xiacona and Animae Corpo in Spain and the Musical and Amicable Society, with whom he has also appeared as a soloist in Vivaldi cello concerti.

Josh Salter

Cello

Josh studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, where he held a scholarship and was awarded prizes for cello and chamber music, and as a postgraduate at the Royal Academy of Music, receiving the Sylvia Simpson Fellowship and graduating MA with Distinction in 2016.  Josh freelances with the Hallé Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, City of London Sinfonia, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music and the Hanover Band.

Recent solo engagements include a recital at the Barnes Music Festival and Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations with the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra. He performed Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the London Medical Orchestra In 2019.