Guest Conductors
David Le Page
Born on the channel island of Guernsey, David Le Page began playing the violin at the age of seven. He was offered a place at the Yehudi Menuhin school aged twelve and has since forged a diverse career as a performer, composer, producer and arranger.
Le Page's violin playing has a natural, warm tone and an instinctive, improvisatory style, while his eclectic approach to writing, arranging and performing has been formed by an interest in many musical genres; from baroque and folk through to jazz, contemporary classical and experimental rock, pop and electronica. A passion for audience inclusion and a readiness to blur the edges of musical boundaries have contributed to his unique approach to programming. This combines a rare ability to present audiences with something new and challenging whilst allowing them to feel relaxed and engaged.
He appears regularly as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral leader and has formed his own groups, the Le Page Ensemble, The Harborough Collective, Subway Piranhas and Mysterious Barricades. He is leader of the Stratford-Upon-Avon based Orchestra of the Swan and is currently president of the European String Teachers Association (UK).
His involvement with new music has led to participation in numerous commissions and world premieres that have included working closely with composers such as John Woolrich, Thomas Adès, Douglas Cuomo, Paul Moravec, Tansy Davies, Gerald Barry, John McCabe, Huw Watkins, Joe Cutler, Joe Duddel and Errolyn Wallen.
Cross-genre collaborations have included projects with Keith Tippett, Partikel, Seckou Keita, James Schlefer, Benet McLean, Harvey Brough, Clara Sanabras, Billy Jenkins and Roger Eno. In 2017 he was invited to join Propellor, a ten piece ensemble featuring members of folk groups Mcneill & Heys and The Fair Rain, to create a sonic landscape installation as artists in residence at Snape Maltings Open Space.
He has regular duo partnerships with pianists Viv McLean and David Gordon. With Gordon, who is also a jazz pianist, composer and harpsichordist, he created Blurred Lines, an ongoing project which aims to transform the conventional recital into something unexpected and intriguing.
Le Page has curated programmes for Chroma Ensemble and Opera North including the Balkan-influenced Parklife which was also part of the Latitude festival in 2016. He was musical director for Opera North's Entranced in the Autumn and Winter Wonderland and in 2014 he performed Paganini Caprices for Hilary Mantel's Shaking Hands with Satan talk at the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds and at the Royal Opera House in London.
In 2013 he created Harmony & Imagination Recordings, a label through which he has released three albums of his own material (The Reinvention of Harmony and Imagination, As The Crow Flies and Glimpses of the Seagull), two albums of solo violin music (Between Heaven and Earth and Metamorphosis), Barcos, an album with Argentine composer and Bandoneon player Eduardo Garcia and a recording of works by Chopin performed by British pianist Viv McLean. A new album of his own pieces for violin and piano, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page was released in the autumn of 2017 as well as Samvaad a Balkan/Indian influenced collaboration with cellist Clare O'Connell and drummer Eric Ford.
He is artistic director of the successful Harborough Concerts and also of Le Page Ensemble Concerts in Southwell presenting around twenty performances a year. Concerts this season included a complete live performance of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album reworked by Le Page for its 50th anniversary.
In 2017 he created The Diving Bell with cellist Clare O'Connell, an experimental night of music that takes place in intimate venues across the UK. The Diving Bell brings together musicians from all genres and presents three contrasting sets, the last of which is an entirely new collaboration between all performers.
He plays on a violin made in 1874 by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume
Roger Coull
Roger Coull studied the violin at the Royal Academy of Music, where Chamber music was one of his great passions, and it was there that he formed the Coull Quartet under the guidance of Sidney Griller.
The Coull Quartet was appointed quartet-in-residence at the University of Warwick in 1977, where its members are still actively involved in its music making, and soon established itself as one of Britain’s leading string quartets. The Quartet performs regularly in concerts and radio broadcasts in Britain, Western Europe and the USA and has also toured India, the Far East, Middle East, South America and Australia. 2009 saw their first tour of mainland China, and more recently they have toured Brazil, Berlin and Poland. They were awarded a prestigious New Music 20×12 commission, with composer Joe Cutler, to celebrate the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
Roger’s route into conducting has come very much from the eyes and ears of a performer. As a string quartet leader of international standing he has always been used to interpreting music and every aspect of the process of turning a vision into performance.
His years of experience as an orchestral trainer and conductor gained through his work at the University of Warwick, the Tees Valley Youth Chamber Orchestra, and the String Orchestra course at the Canford Summer School of Music have led to many conducting invitations.
Principal conductor of the Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra, he is also a regular guest conductor of the Guernsey Symphony Orchestra, Associate Conductor of the Beauchamp Sinfonietta, conductor of the University of Warwick String Orchestra, and a regular director of the Helix Ensemble. He has also conducted the Academy of St Thomas, and the Crendon Chamber Orchestra, amongst others.
Roger Coull also has much experience as a teacher, and has given many masterclasses internationally. He is a regular guest at Britain’s music colleges as teacher, examiner, and adjudicator and was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music for his services to professional music making.
Simon Walton
Simon Walton enjoys a highly successful and varied career as a conductor/director, performer, teacher, and coach.
He is perhaps unusual in having appeared as a conductor, singer and flautist on BBC Radio 3. He began conducting at an early age, and was selected to take part in a conducting masterclass with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, with whom he was principal flute. At university, he founded the Manchester University Mozart players and conducted the New Music Ensemble.
As well as the being the Musical Director for the Hampstead Chorus, he is currently the conductor and artistic director of the Amici Orchestra (London). Simon is committed to performing new music and is a founder member and regular conductor of the Vocal Constructivists, whose recent CD Walking Still has received outstanding reviews in the national press:
“This recording is fabulous… Everyone needs a disc of offbeat contemporary music on their shelves. Start with this one.” (theartsdesk.com)
“Walking Still tops my list of current releases” (International Record Review),
“Formed in 2011 the group has brought the exuberance and playfulness of experimental music to live audiences” (Independent on Sunday).
He has been invited as a guest artist, conductor and speaker by the English universities of Southampton, Christchurch Canterbury and King’s College London and internationally at Wesleyan University USA and the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Simon is a senior coach for the Grittleton summer residential adult chamber music courses, covering a wide repertoire from the western canon to contemporary music, specialising in music for mixed ensembles due to his experience as a multi-instrumentalist.
Simon is also active as a singer. He made his operatic debut in the role of Luigi (Il Tabarro) in 1996. Specialising in ‘lyrico spinto’ repertoire, other principal roles have included Turrido (Cavalleria Rusticana), Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor), Macduff (Macbeth), Loge (Das Rheingold), Samson (Samson et Dalilah) and Florestan (Fidelio). He has appeared and recorded with Kent Nagano and the Opéra de Lyon, Claudio Abbado and the Berliner Philharmoniker and the choirs of the London Oratory and Westminster Abbey.
Simon has been invited to premiere two new operas, creating the role of Frank Troy in Far from the Madding Crowd by Andrew Downes, commissioned by the Hardy Society in 2006, and the role of Pierre Joubert in The Raffle by Richard Springate in 2011. Oratorio performances include Verdi’s Requiem, Puccini’s Messa di Gloria and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. In a broader musical context Simon has worked as a professional accompanist on the piano, an instrument on which he has also recorded Saint-Saëns Septet and performed Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto. In 1993 Simon was invited to write Young Musician Plays Flute (Watts Aladdin Books, London) as part of their education series, a flute teaching book which has since been translated into several languages.
Simon appeared as tenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah in 2008, the first concert put on by the Hampstead Chorus.
Robert Salter
Robert Salter enjoys a varied and diverse performing career. After starting violin lessons aged eleven, he won full scholarships to study at Wells, and then with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he was a founding member of the Guildhall Strings. As Leader/Director of the Guildhall Strings throughout its 25 year existence, Robert has given concerts in the most prestigious concert halls throughout the world (Carnegie, Musikverein Vienna, Konzerthaus Berlin, Wigmore, Barbican etc ) often a soloist.
The ensemble recorded extensively with both RCA Red Seal and Hyperion Records, and broadcast numerous times on radio and television both in the UK and abroad. Robert Salter has appeared as a guest Leader with orchestras including the English Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Bournemouth Sinfonietta and City of London Sinfonia, and currently is the Leader of the Garsington Opera Orchestra.
As a chamber musician Robert has appeared with the Nash Ensemble and Hausmusik (with whom he recorded the Schubert octet) and continues to be invited as a guest principal by the Philharmonia and Royal Opera House orchestras, and by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, of which he is a member.
Alongside his work as a performer, Robert is passionately interested in teaching the violin. He taught for a number of years at the Junior Royal Academy of Music, teaches privately and has recently returned to Wells in the role of visiting violin teacher at the Cathedral School.
Paul Barritt
Paul Barritt is permanent Guest Leader of the Halle Orchestra and is also leader of the Divertimento Ensemble. He has been leader of both the English Chamber Orchestra and the Northern Sinfomia.
As a concerto soloist, Paul regularly appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra and the Northern Sinfonia. Notable tours to France, Germany, Norway, Italy, Spain and the Caribbean, as well as in London and across Britain and Ireland, have achieved outstanding success.
Paul's discography also includes CDs of the violin works of Herbert Howells, John Ireland, Stanford, Albert Sammons, Rheinberger (Hyperion), Rozsa (Cloud 9), Schoeck (Guild) as well as chamber works by Mendelssohn and Bargiel (Hyperion), Mozart (Collins Classics), and Colin Matthews.
He is artistic director of a burgeoning chamber music series in West Hertfordshire, Tring Chamber Music.