Royal Forest of Dean Orchestra

Alex started learning the piano at the age of five. From 2003 he has been attending the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama under the Junior Music and Access Studies course, and at the age of fourteen, passed grade VIII with distinction.  This pass was acknowledged by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music for gaining the highest mark in the region. In May 2010, Alex was awarded the Margaret Rose Bursary by Drybrook Ladies Choir in memory of their founder musical director Margaret Burford. Earlier this year he gained The Herbert Howells Bursary , was a finalist in the Gloucestershire Young Musician and won the Cheltenham festival’s Keith Nutland award  for best young musician. As an accompanist, he plays for the Forest of Dean Male Voice Choir and the Springfield Singers and is quickly becoming well known as a talented classical pianist, performing in venues such as Cheltenham Town Hall and Bath’s Guildhall. Alex was successful in auditioning for a place at the Royal College of Music in London where he will start in September.

Simon Smith is active as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher.

As a soloist he has performed with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields throughout the USA, with the Philharmonia, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Orchestra of St. John’s Smith Square, and the City of London Chamber Orchestra. He has given recitals in the Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room, as well as for Music Clubs and festivals throughout the UK.

Contemporary Music is a speciality and in 2007 – 9 he performed the complete Kurtag “Signs Games and Messages” alongside works by Paganini, and all the unaccompanied works by Bach. Future plans include further Bach series, and performances of the 10 Beethoven sonatas with pianist Mark Fielding.

As a chamber musician Simon has performed with the Fielding piano trio and Fourte string quartet. He directs the COA Ensemble, and in 2004 directed a chamber music festival in Hertfordshire, the Mundens Festival. For 8 years he was a member of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Octet, performing in concert halls and broadcasts throughout the USA, Canada, Australia, Taiwan and Germany.

He is much in demand as guest leader, performing with orchestras such as the Bournemouth Symphony and Sinfonietta, Britten Sinfonia, English Sinfonia, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Halle and Salzburg Camerata. He is leader of the Norwich based Chamber Orchestra Anglia.

Simon Smith is a visiting lecturer at the Birmingham Conservatoire. He has given numerous masterclasses, schools concerts and composers workshops. He will be running two summer courses in 2010. His research interests include the development and teaching of violin technique in the context of contemporary music.

Simon studied with David Martin, Frederick Grinke and with Yfrah Neaman at the Guildhall School of Music, where he was awarded the Gold Medal. He  received a DAAD scholarship to continue his studies in Germany with Wanda Wilkomirska.

He plays on the ex-Hirsch Rogeri violin, made in 1706.

Simon is married to the violinist Clare Hayes, (a member of the Emperor String Quartet) and has three children. Outside of music he is a school governor, has completed courses in Philosophy with the Open University, and collects LPs and vintage Hifi.

Artem Kotov was born in Ekaterinburg in 1983 and started to play the violin at the age of six at the Ekaterinburg Academy of Music.  At the age of nine, he performed the Bach E major violin concerto with the academy orchestra.  Following several successful performances at the Ekaterinburg Philharmonic Hall, the Opera Theater and at the music festival organized by UNESCO, Artem was awarded the Scholarship of Russian Ministry of Culture.

Artem won the first prize at the Jeunesses Musicales competition in Bucharest at the age of ten, and the first prize at the “Citta di Stressa” International Competition in Italy in 1996. His other awards include prizes at the “Premio Rodolfo Lipizer” competition in Italy and at the International Competition of Markneukirchen, Germany. In 2007, Artem became laureate of the 5th Uralsk International Violin Competition in Kazakhstan and won the Bach Competition for Strings in London.

Artem’s concert tours include Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Italy.

During a 2006 tour of the South and Central America, he was invited to give a masterclass at the Cuban Institute of Music in Havana.

Artem Kotov’s repertoire includes the Six Sonatas and Partitas by Bach, Six Sonatas by Ysaye, and ten violin sonatas by Beethoven. Since 2005, Artem has been artistic director of the “Primavera Classica” international music festival, which has had big success at Moscow’s best concert halls, featuring some of the finest artists of the younger generation. Artem Kotov has studied with Igor Frolov at the Moscow State Conservatory and is currently studying at Trinity College of Music in London with Pieter Shoeman. Artem is a Golubovich Scholar, and has a full scholarship for three years. He is playing on an astonishing violin by Ceruti, 1820, which was kindly loaned to him from Trinity College of Music.

Nicholas was born in 1988, and began his musical career as a treble in the Choir of the Queens Chapel of the Savoy, London, where he was Head Chorister. After this, he began to play the Bassoon, and was eventually rewarded in 2006, with an entrance scholarship to study at Birmingham Conservatoire. He studied there with Meyrick Alexander and Nicholas Hunka. In 2008 he was awarded an ERASMUS Scholarship, and a place in the bassoon class of the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. There he studied with Professors Jiří Seidl and František Herman, who were both previously Principals in the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. He regularly participates in masterclasses and music Festivals, both in England and Europe. He has also studied in Switzerland with David Schnebeli, Lyndon Watts and Marc Trénel, Germany with Klaus Thunemann, and in France with Carlo Colombo.  Nicholas is currently studying for a masters at the Royal Academy of Music, London, with an scholarship, studies with Gareth Newman, John Orford and David Chatterton.

Contemporary Music makes up a crucial component of his creative output.  Regularly playing in contemporary and avant garde music ensembles, he recently appeared as soloist with the Interrobang ensemble. This year he has premièred works by Dolden, Peate, Liu and Dewey. He has also studied in masterclasses with contemporary music experts Pascal Gallois and John Orford, and will continue to study with John at the Royal Academy.

Nicholas regularly plays with orchestras, and as well as his work with the college orchestras and ensembles, he has been invited to play with most of the amateur and semi professional orchestras and ensembles in the West Midlands (Sinfonia of Birmingham, Regency Sinfonia, Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra). Additionally he has been invited to play with the Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra, London. As well as having a teaching privately, Nicholas was this summer invited to work with the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, as bassoon tutor  Away from music Nick enjoys following Cricket and Football, and sampling real ale!