Arnaldo Cohen

Susan Tomes

Monday 10 September at 6.45pm

Royal College of Music, London

Noriko Ogawa

Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Moscow

Martina Jatkauskaite

Martina Jatkauskaite was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1984. She started piano at the age of 5 with Birute Kumpikiene. While still in her teens, she won the International Cherni Competition in Prague, “Konzerteum 98” in Greece, “La Muse” and “Roma 2000” in Italy and the International S.Vainiunas Piano Competition in Vilnius. From 2003 she studied at the Lithuanian Academy of Music under Veronika Vitaite and in 2005 she entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama under Joan Havill. In her first year at the Guildhall she has won the Robert Alexander Wise Award, the Romantic Music Prize, the Oxford Music Festival Professional Recital Prize and the Tunbridge Wells Young Artists Competition. She will give a recital at the Royal Festival Hall in November 2007.

Omri Epstein

Omri Epstein, began his training at the Israeli Conservatory with Sarah Tal, winning an America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship to the Purcell School with Ronald Smith. He has taken part in international solo and chamber music courses in Belgium, in Boston and Prussia Cove and attended master classes with Hamish Milne, Else Kolodin, Alexander Satz, Cecile Ousset, Murray Perahia and Yitzhak Perlman. In March 2004, he performed Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Damian Iorio after winning the Purcell School concerto competition. He has performed for Israeli radio and in Chateau de Versailles, the Wigmore and Queen Elizabeth Halls. On a full scholarship, Omri started at the RCM in 2004 under Ruth Nye. He has just completed an exchange programme to the Universität der Künste in Berlin with Rainer Becker and is currently a student of Gordon Fergus-Thompson.

Stewart Young & Alice Hart

Piano Duo Stewart Young & Alice Hart have played together as a piano duo for almost two years. They won First Prize in the Peter Lindsay Miller Prize Competition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama earlier this year and received a High Commendation in the Mozart Prize in 2006. As well as appearing in recital, the duo recently performed Mozart’s Double Concerto with Strathclyde University Symphony Orchestra, and recorded for the soundtrack of the David McKenzie film ‘Hallam Foe’. Stewart and Alice both graduated from the RSAMD this summer with Masters Degrees in Performance, studying with Fali Pavri and Graeme McNaught respectively.

Isobel Waller-Bridge

Isobel Waller-Bridge is 22. Born in London, she recently completed her BMus Hons. Degree at Edinburgh University, where she studied composition with Nigel Osborne and Peter Nelson, and performance with Peter Evans and John Kitchen. Recent concert performances include recitals at the Reid Concert Hall and St John’s, Edinburgh and at The Bush Hall, Shepherd’s Bush in London. In recent months she has worked on contemporary piano music with Nicholas Hodges at Dartington International Summer School. Having previously studied with the Pacific N.W. Film Scoring Programme, Isobel has recently completed her first film score and has a more in line for the future.

Meng Yang Pan

Meng Yang Pan was born in China; her early training was at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. In 1998 she won First Prize in the ‘MIDO’ Piano Competition in Paris and Second Prize in Ettlingen, the following year. From1999 to 2003, she studied at the Purcell School, and gave recitals at St. John’s Smith Square, the Wigmore Hall, the Royal Festival Hall and in Paris. In 2003 Meng Yang won a scholarship to the RCM under Gordon Fergus Thompson. Last year she won the Florence and Amy Brant Piano Competition and she begins postgraduate studies at the RCM later this month. Meng Yang is an Elsa & Leonard Cross Scholar supported by the Hilda Anderson Deane Prize.

Sophie Cashell

Sophie Cashell, aged 18 has just completed her first year of study with Hamish Milne at the Royal Academy of Music. Previously she studied with Marcel Baudet at the Yehudi Menuhin School. In Ireland she studied with Audrey Chisholm at the RIAM, winning numerous prizes in National Competitions such as Feis Ceoil, where this year she won the Morris Grant Bursary and Mabel Swainson award. Sophie has played in many venues throughout Ireland and in the UK, where she has performed in venues such as The Royal Festival Hall and The Wigmore Hall. As a recitalist, she has given performances in Germany, Holland, France, Scotland, Wales and Tunisia.

Konstantin Alekseev

Konstantin Alekseev has just completed his first year at Moscow State Conservatory, where he is a pupil of the famous Russian professor Alexei Nasedkin. He began music studies at the age of 5 and was a prizewinner in many youth competitions from an early age, including First Prize in Athens International Musicalia at the age of eleven. He has been a recipient of many scholarships, including the Russian presidential programme for gifted children and he has performed in all the main concert halls in Moscow, and in The Ukraine and Poland. At 18, Konstantin is already a laureate and Special Prize winner at the Moscow Chopin Festival and in the 4th Moscow International Chopin Competition.
He not only plays but is also interested in composing for piano.

David Gray

David Gray was born in Glasgow in 1990. He began piano lessons at the age of five, studying with Anne Crawford. At the age of eleven he gained a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Junior Academy, where he continued his studies of piano with Anne Crawford. In 2003, David began specialist music school training at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh where he now studies piano with Richard Beauchamp. He was the winner of the Cathedral Class of the Moray Piano Festival in 2005, and has just become the winner of the St Mary’s Music School’ prestigious “Director’s Recital Prize” in 2007.