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Violist Ami-Louise Johnsson from Stockholm is currently studying at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with David Takeno, where she has been supported by the Anglo-Swedish Society since 2019. Ami-Louise won the 2020 Max and Peggy Morgan Viola Award at the Guildhall, was Second Prize and Special Award winner of the 2021 Oskar Nedbal International Viola Competition in Prague. She has also received a Junior award from the Hattori Foundation in London. Ami-Louise has attended chamber music festivals at Yellow Barn, IMS Prussia Cove, Festival Jong Talent Schiermonnikoog, and Valdres Sommersymfoni. Ami is a 2023 Drake Calleja Trust Scholar as well as being a recipient of the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. She was also awarded the Sigrid Paskell Scholarship 2023 in Performing Arts from SWEA International.
Héloïse Houzé is currently pursuing an artist diploma at CNSMDP in Paris under the guidance of Jean Sulem, and also studying at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel with Miguel Da Silva. In 2022, she received her Master’s degree from the Paris Conservatory with the highest honours and unanimous praise from the jury. Héloïse has achieved success in various international competitions, including winning the Second Prize and Audience Prize at the Oskar Nedbal International Viola Competition 2023 in Prague, the Förderpreis at the Anton Rubinstein Competition in Düsseldorf (2018), and the Ravel Academy Prize in 2022. She performs on a 1766 Michele Deconet viola generously loaned to her by the Boubo Music Foundation.
Timothy Ridout, a BBC New Generation Artist and Borletti-Buitoni Trust fellow, is one of the most sought-after violists of his generation. This season he appears as soloist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Odense, San Jose symphony orchestras and Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, amongst others. In 2020, Ridout won Hamburger Symphoniker’s inaugural Sir Jeffrey Tate Prize and joined the Bowers Program of the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center in 2021.
Other highlights this season include recitals and chamber concerts at Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Philharmonie Köln. Further afield, Ridout embarks on a South American tour with the Chamber Society of the Lincoln Centre, returns to Taipei for a series of concerts, and tours Australia with Musica Viva.
In recent seasons, Ridout has made his debut with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Hamburger Symphoniker, Orchestre National de Lille, Camerata Salzburg, Graz Philharmonic, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Hallé, BBC Symphony, Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestra, and performed the Walton Concerto at the BBCProms/Sakari Oramo and with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich/David Zinman. He has also worked with conductors including Christoph Eschenbach, Lionel Bringuier, Gabor Takács-Nagy, Sylvain Cambreling, Nicholas Collon and Sir Andras Schiff.
Sought after as a chamber musician, Ridout has taken part in numerous festivals across Europe, including Rheingau, Bergen, Rosendal, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Sion and Lockenhaus, and regularly collaborates with leading international artists including Janine Jansen, Steven Isserlis, Joshua Bell, Isabelle Faust, Kian Soltani, Benjamin Grosvenor, Nicolas Altstaedt and Christian Tetzlaff, among many others.
Ridout records for the Harmonia Mundi label. His latest album – ‘A Poet’s Love’ –was recorded with pianist Frank Dupree and features selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and their own transcription of Schumann’s Dichterliebe. New releases include, amongst others, Berlioz Harold en Italie with Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg/John Nelson on Warner/Erato, and Bloch Suite for Viola and Orchestra and Elgar Concerto with BBC Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins.
Born in London in 1995, Ridout studied at the Royal Academy of Music, graduating with the Queen’s Commendation for Excellence. He completed his Masters at the Kronberg Academy with Nobuko Imai in 2019 and, in 2018, took part in Kronberg Academy’s Chamber Music Connects the World.
He plays on a viola by Peregrino di Zanetto c.1565 – 75 on loan from a generous patron of Beare’s International Violin Society.
Máté Szűcs is a Hungarian violist. He was born to a musical family and started his education at the age of five, playing the violin. He studied with Ferenc Szecsődi in Szeged, then switched to the viola and worked with Erwin Schiffer. Szűcs attended the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth in Waterloo, and the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp, where he studied with Leo de Neve. In 1998, he was a finalist in the Jean Françaix Competition in Paris, and a laureate in the International Tenuto Competition in Brussels. Szűcs became an orchestral musician, and performed as a solo violist with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and the Royal Flemish Orchestra, eventually becoming the principal violist of the Berlin Philharmonic. Szűcs performs mostly in Europe as a soloist and chamber musician, and has recorded for TYX Art, Profil, and Phaedra.
Ian Anderson plays in many different ensembles, including Scottish Ballet (where he holds the position of Principal Viola), yllwshrk (alternative rock band ‘yellow shark’, where he plays a variety of instruments and writes music), and Berlin-based contemporary string quartet Sonar Quartett. He is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London (undergraduate viola), and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow (postgraduate composition).
In October 2020 yllwshrk released their debut album I AM ALADDIN, produced by Grammy-winner David Donaldson, and featuring collaborations with the London Contemporary Orchestra, Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition winners the Maxwell String Quartet, Mercury-nominated jazz pianist Fergus McCreadie, Andi Toma from Mouse on Mars, saxophonist Nick Roth, and composer Linda Buckley. I AM ALADDIN received 4 stars from The Scotsman newspaper, with the description “audacious debut… ravishing vocals”, and was described by influential music blog Record of the Day as “the sonic soundscapes of Radiohead meet the creative genius of Bowie’s Blackstar album”. The music video of their single Pyramids — starring BBC’s inaugural The Greatest Dancer winner Ellie Fergusson — won Best Music Video at the 2020 Paris Short Film Awards.
Other recent highlights include playing on albums such as Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool, Frank Ocean’s Blonde, and Thom Yorke’s Anima, all as part of the London Contemporary Orchestra.
Ian is a former Principal Viola of the European Union Youth Orchestra, and plays on a 2003 John Dilworth viola, purchased with support from the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund.
In 2022 Jaren Ziegler won the BBC Young Musician Strings Final at age 16, becoming the first violist in the competition’s history to do so. In the Grand Final, he performed the Walton Viola Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Mark Wigglesworth. He has recently been awarded First Prize in the Junior Royal College Concerto Competition, Junior Academy Viola Prize and Bromsgrove Young Musicians’ Platform and was the youngest participant in the 2021 Cecil Aronowitz International Viola Competition. Jaren attends the Junior Royal College of Music (London). He began playing the viola at age six and studies with Jacky Woods. He has performed in The Royal Festival Hall, St John Smith Square, Brahms-Saal Musikverein and Victoria Hall Singapore. He is a member of LGT Young Soloists, having toured internationally and recorded with them at Abbey Road Studios. he plays a Stefano Scarampella viola, kindly loaned to him by the Beares International Violin Society.
Weiyi Zeng studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München with Roland Glassl. She began her studies at age 12 at the Affiliated High School of the Central Conservatory of Music (Beijing), where she studied with Shaowu Wang. In 2017, she was leader of the Four Seasons Chamber Orchestra at the Conservatory. After being invited to Japan for the Seiji Ozawa Music Festival in 2018, Weiyi was admitted to the Morningside Music Bridge programme in Poland under full scholarship for two years. She has had lessons with Alexander Zemtsov, Mattiha Buhholz, Paul Colletti, John Abram, Atar Arad and Ori Kam, among others.
American violist Matthew McDowell began music studies on the violin at age four. His teachers have included Ettore Causa, Gérard Caussé, and Ivan Vukčević. In 2021 he completed his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Music degrees in viola and violin at Columbus State University’s Schwob School of Music, graduating with the highest academic and artistic accolades. During this time, Matthew studied with Paul Coletti, Carol Rodland, Jeffrey Irvine, Csaba Erdelyi, Dr Susan Dubois, Sergiu Schwartz and Helen Callus. While studying at the International Menuhin Music Academy (Rolle), Matthew had the opportunity to play concerts across Europe. Matthew currently studies at the Yale School of Music.
Katie Liu is a Master of Musical Arts student at the Yale School of Music in the studio of Ettore Causa. She received her Master of Music degree at the Colburn School and her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, concentrating in Operations Research and Financial Engineering with minors in Musical Performance and Computer Science. Katie picked up the viola and made her solo debut in 2019 with the Princeton University Orchestra. Aside from her musical pursuits, Katie has had corporate working experiences in asset management and fintech consulting and wrote her senior thesis on the intersection of classical music pattern recognition, machine learning, and neural networks. She is currently a section violist at the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and was selected to compete in the Hindemith International Viola Competition (2021) and Tokyo International Viola Competition (2022).
Sumin Kim began playing the violin at age eight and made her solo debut at the Seoul Arts Center at age 11. Since then, she has performed many recitals and has won top prizes in several major national competitions including the Chunchu and Yewon Music Competitions (South Korea). She attended Yewon School and graduated with the highest honours in violin. She entered the Curtis Institute of Music as a Sandra G. and David G. Marshall Violin Fellow in 2017, where she studied with Aaron Rosand, Midori, Arnold Steinhardt and Shmuel Ashkenasi. As orchestral musicians, she has performed in the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra, Symphony in C, and the New York String Orchestra under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Osmo Vänska. Sumin is currently pursuing her master’s degree at the Juilliard School on the viola with Steven Tenenbom.