Internationally praised for his clarity, depth of expression, virtuosity and versatility, Melbourne-born Stefan Cassomenos is regarded as one of Australia’s leading concert pianists. His concerto repertoire now exceeds forty works, and has led to performances with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, Opera Australia Orchestra, and Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. He has performed as a soloist at Tonhalle Zurich, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Beethoven Festival Bonn, Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre, and at concert halls across Germany, Netherlands, England, Italy, Malta, Greece, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Russia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia.

In 2013, Cassomenos was a grand finalist and recipient of both the Second Grand Prize and the Chamber Music Prize at the International Telekom Beethoven Piano
Competition Bonn. He studied on full scholarship at Melbourne University and the Australian National Academy of Music, mentored by Stephen McIntyre, Margarita Krupina, Ian Munro, and Michael Kieran Harvey.

Cassomenos is a founding member of acclaimed ensemble PLEXUS, which since
launching in 2014 has commissioned and premiered over 110 new works.
Cassomenos began composing at an early age, giving the premiere of his own Piano Concerto No 1 with Adelaide Symphony Orchestra at age 16. He has composed for Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Victorian Opera, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Choir, and for the Festival Neue Musik Rockenhausen.

Cassomenos is currently co-Artistic Director, together with violinist Monica Curro, of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival.

Cassomenos is generously supported by Kawai Australia.

Simone van der Giessen viola

Simone van der Giessen was born in Amsterdam and left in 2002 to study violin and viola in Manchester at the Royal Northern College of Music. It was there, that as a founding member of the Navarra String Quartet, chamber music became the centre of her musical life. 

After graduating in June 2006 with First Class Honours she won the RNCM’s Cecil Aronowitz Prize for viola and performed Walton’s concerto for viola with the RNCM Symphony Orchestra.

After 16 inspiring and fantastic years with the Navarra quartet Simone is now a member of the Elias quartet which also formed at the RNCM. They are ensemble in residence at the RNCM and regularly go back there to teach and perform. This season they are touring the US and performing the complete Beethoven cycle in Tokyo. 

Outside of the quartet, Simone is in much demand as a chamber musician and is frequently invited to perform with chamber orchestras and ensembles such as the Aronowitz Ensemble, Britten Sinfonia, and Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Simone’s biggest influences came from her professors Jan Repko, Predrag Katanic and Chris Rowland at the RNCM and David Takeno at the GSMD. Other very inspiring musical influences came from Gabor Takacs-Nagy, Thomas Riebl, Gyorgy Kurtag, Eberhard Feltz and Ferenc Rados. Simone was grateful for the generous support of both the Prince Bernard Cultural Foundation of Holland and the Martin Music Scholarship Fund throughout her studies.

Aleksandar Madžar piano

Aleksandar Madžar was born in Belgrade in 1968. He started playing the piano with Gordana Malinovic at the age of six, and later studied with Arbo Valdma, Elisso Virsaladze and Daniel Blumenthal in Novi Sad, Belgrade, Moscow and Brussels. He won prizes at the Geneva, Leeds, Ferrucio Busoni and Umberto Micheli International Piano competitions, and gave his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic and Iván Fischer in 1990. Since then he has performed regularly throughout Europe, enjoying a rich and varied career giving solo and chamber music recitals, as well as performing concertos with conductors André Previn, Marcello Viotti, Paavo Järvi and Andris Nelsons. He also occasionally tours to North and South America, South Africa, the Far East and Australia.

Aleksandar Madžar is a frequent guest of Wigmore Hall, the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, the Palais des Beaux-Arts Brussels and Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and his regular chamber music partners include the Takács Quartet, Anthony Marwood, Vilde Frang and the soprano Juliane Banse. He teaches at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire in Brussels and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg.

Samuel West actor

Samuel West is an actor and sometimes a director. He’s played Hamlet and Richard II for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Jeffrey Skilling in Enron in the West End and the voice of Pongo in Disney’s 101 Dalmations II.  Television work includes Slow Horses, The Crown, Small Axe, Mr Selfridge and W1A; films include Darkest Hour, Suffragette, Van Helsing and Howards End.  He plays Siegfried Farnon in the new TV adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small. As narrator, he has appeared with all the major British orchestras and at the Last Night of the Proms. Sam is an Associate Artist of the RSC. In his spare time he grows chillies and goes birdwatching.

Kleio Quartet

Yume Fujise, violin
Katherine Yoon, violin
Jenny Lewisohn, viola
Eliza Millett, cello

First Prize and Commission Prize winners at the Carl Nielsen International Chamber Music Competition 2023, the Kleio Quartet are quickly establishing themselves as an internationally-recognised quartet.

Described by Alina Ibragimova as “a wonderfully dedicated group of musicians who bring assuredness and freshness to everything they play”, the Kleio Quartet was formed at the Seiji Ozawa International Chamber Academy in 2019. They consist of individually acclaimed musicians Yume Fujise, Katherine Yoon, Jenny Lewisohn and Eliza Millett.

They have performed in major international venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Victoria Hall, Cadogan Hall, Royal Festival Hall, the DR Koncerthuset and many others.

The Kleio Quartet is particularly grateful to have received support and mentorship from Alina Ibragimova, as well as from John Myerscough thanks to ChamberStudio’s Mentorship Scheme. They have also received coaching from world-renowned chamber musicians Sadao Harada, Nobuko Imai, Pamela Frank, Oliver Wille, Pinchas Zukerman and Eckart Runge.

This season they have held a Residency at Snape Maltings’ Britten-Pears Festival in Aldeburgh and look forward to a series of residencies hosted by the Strijkkwartet Biënnale Amsterdam from 2023-25. They are delighted to have been selected both for the Tunnell Trust’s Music Club Awards Scheme 2022/23 and as Kirkman Concert Society Young Artists for 2023/24. They have also been selected to join the MERITA platform from 2023-25.

The Kleio Quartet are City Music Foundation Artists and are grateful for the ongoing support of Le Dimore del Quartetto.

Valo Quartet

Maria Włoszczowska, violin
Tim Crawford, violin
Lilli Maijala, viola
Amy Norrington, cello

Britten Sinfonia 

c Tom Lovatt

For 30 years Britten Sinfonia has been pushing the boundaries of what a chamber orchestra can do. It is rooted in the East of England, where it is the only professional orchestra working throughout the region, while it also has national and international reputation as one of the best
ensembles playing today.

“One of our most innovative and vital ensembles” (The Guardian), Britten Sinfonia is known for its adventurous programming and stunningly high-quality performances, but also for its
acclaimed nurturing of new talent and work with schools, hospital patients and communities across its home region.

Britten Sinfonia is defined not by the traditional figurehead of a principal conductor, but by the dynamic meeting of outstanding individual players and the broad range of their collaborators – from Steve Reich, Thomas Adès and Alison Balsom to Pagrav Dance Company, Father John Misty, Rufus Wainwright, and Anoushka Shankar.

Today Britten Sinfonia is heralded as one of the world’s leading ensembles and its philosophy of adventure and reinvention has inspired a new movement of emerging chamber groups. It is an Associate Ensemble at London’s Barbican, Resident Orchestra at Saffron Hall in Essex and has residencies in Norwich and Cambridge. It performs an annual chamber music series at London’s Wigmore Hall and appears regularly at major UK festivals including the Aldeburgh, Brighton, Norfolk & Norwich Festivals and the BBC Proms. The orchestra has performed a live broadcast to more than a million people worldwide from the Sistine Chapel, and toured to the US, Asia and much of Europe. It is a BBC Radio 3 Broadcast Partner and has award-winning recordings on the Hyperion and Harmonia Mundi labels.

Outside the concert hall, Britten Sinfonia musicians work on creative and therapeutic projects with pre-school children, teenagers, young carers, people living with dementia, life-time prisoners and older people at risk of isolation. The orchestra has new music in its DNA and has commissioned almost 250 works to date from some of the world’s most famous figures and from composers whose successful careers it has helped launch. Britten Sinfonia runs two talent
development schemes for composers: Opus 1 for those aspiring to become professionals, and Magnum Opus for composers who have achieved some success and are looking for more support to take the next step in their careers.

Sam Glazer animateur

Sam Glazer is a composer, cellist and creative leader. He is co-creator of Spitalfields Music’s RPS-shortlisted Musical Rumpus, making operas for babies and toddlers, touring London, nationally and internationally (2012-2017). His choral score for circa’s Depart (LIFT/ Spitalfields Music/ Hull UK City of Culture 2017/ LeftCoast/ Brighton Festival) premiered in an East London Victorian woodland cemetery, and toured the UK in 2017. In 2018 he was commissioned by the Peasmarsh Chamber Music Festival to compose a new song cycle for children’s voices and string quartet, inspired by the commedia dell’arte. His latest commission, for Den Jyske Oper, was Hjerte Lyd, a new opera for babies and toddlers, which toured Denmark in 2019.