Lorena Paz Nieto

Award winning Spanish soprano Lorena Paz Nieto is an alumna of the National Opera Studio, a previous winner of the Oxford Lieder Young Artist Platform, the Ludmilla Andrews Russian Song Prize, and ‘Vocalist of the year’ at the 2019 LUKAS awards.

Paula Sides

Paula was awarded the Tagor Gold Medal from the Royal College of Music, and was the winner of the Karavoitis Prize in the Les Azureal International Competition. She recently performed Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine for English Touring Opera’s socially distanced Autumn season, and has performed on stages and concert platforms across the UK, the United States and Europe.

Christopher Turner

Born in Birmingham, Christopher Turner read Music at the University of Hull, furthering his studies with Barbara Robotham at the Royal Northern College of Music and at the National Opera Studio, where he was sponsored by the Scottish Endowment Trust and The Friends of Covent Garden. He has received many prizes, including The Michael and Joyce Kennedy Prize for Singing Strauss, The Frederic Cox Prize, the Elizabeth Harwood Prize, and, most recently, a Countess of Munster ‘Young Star’ Award and the Sybil Tutton Award from the Musicians Benevolent Fund. He was also a major scholar of the Sir Peter Moores Foundation.

Anthony Negus

Anthony Negus studied clarinet and piano at the Royal College of Music London, and gained a music degree at Oxford University. He also joined the newly formed Else Mayer- Lismann Opera Workshop, where he was able to develop his passion for opera, both playing and conducting. He was for severa years a musical assistant in Wuppertal, and in Bayreuth working with Erich Leinsdorf, Heinrich Hollreiser (Tannhauser), Horst Stein (Ring), and Eugen Jochum (Parsifal).

Following a period with Hamburg State Opera, he joined the Welsh National Opera(WNO) music staff.  As a conductor there, he built up a wide repertoire of operas including Beethoven (both Leonore and Fidelio), Gluck, Mozart, Richard Strauss (Elektra, Ariadne, Die Frau ohne Schatten). It was his work with Music Director Sir Charles Mackerras in particular that led to his emergence as a vital and sensitive conductor of Mozart, all of whose major operas from Idomeneo to Tito and Die Zauberflote he has conducted.

Cristian Mandeal

A student of Herbert von Karajan in Berlin and Sergiu Celibidache in Munich, Cristian Mandeal is considered to be the most important Romanian conductor nowadays, his activity extending without interruption over a period of four decades.

Between 1987 and 2009 Cristian Mandeal acted as Principal Conductor and General Music Director of the Bucharest Philharmonic and oversaw its rise as an orchestra on the international scene and leaving behind him a benchmark institution. Alongside the positions he has occupied in Romania, Cristian Mandeal has been Artistic Director of the Northern Israeli Orchestra, Haifa (1999–2002) and the Euskadi Symphony – Basque National Orchestra, San Sebastian (2001–2008), Permanent Conductor of the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento (2000–2003), Principal Guest Conductor of the Hallé Orchestra, Manchester (2005–2010—the first to hold this title in the 150-year history of the orchestra), the Belgrade Philharmonic (the 2006–2007 season), and the Copenhagen Philharmonic (2006–2013).

Ian Fountain

In 1989 Ian Fountain became the youngest winner of the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Masters Competition in Tel Aviv at the age of 19.

He was educated as a chorister at New College, Oxford and later at Winchester College. He studied piano under Sulamita Aronovsky at the RNCM.

Since that time he has enjoyed a wide-ranging and varied career, performing extensively throughout Europe, the USA, the UK and the Far East, with orchestras such as the London Symphony and Sir Colin Davis, the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, and the Czech Philharmonic and Jiri Belohlavek. He has also performed with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Philharmonia, London Philharmonic, Halle, CBSO, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Singapore Symphony and Utah Symphony amongst many others. In Moscow he was invited to open the 1992/3 season of the Moscow Conservatoire and in Poland he marked the 150th anniversary of Chopin’s death by playing both Chopin Concertos in Krakow.