JOHN BESWICK was Organ Scholar of Hertford College, Oxford, before postgraduate studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (repetiteur) and the Royal College of Music (as Postgraduate Conducting Scholar).
On leaving the R.C.M., John studied at the 1996 Dartington International Summer School and made his opera conducting debut with Rigoletto. Since then he has conducted opera throughout the UK, the USA and France for companies including London City Opera/Columbia Artists Inc., Crystal Clear Opera, Pimlico Opera, Opera Box, Swansea City Opera and British Youth Opera. He has also worked on the music staff for Grange Park Opera, UCL Opera and Icelandic National Opera. Concert engagements have included dates with Redhill Sinfonia, Oxford University Orchestra, Oxford Chamber Orchestra, Colne Philharmonic, Slough Philharmonic and the Orchestra and Chorus of University College, London. Recently John has specialised in conducting concerts of film music (perhaps inspired by his appearance as an extra in the Oscar winning film Shine) and, in 2009, gave the UK concert premier of Dan Jones’ music for the film Shadow of the Vampire.
John has also conducted many shows, principally Les Miserables (West End), Miss Saigon (UK Tour), Avenue Q (West End) and Damon Albarn’s ‘pop’ opera Monkey: Journey to the West (‘Monkey’s World’ at the O2); he has also played keyboards on several others including Jersey Boys (West End), Legally Blonde (West End), The Full Monty (UK Tour) and Phantom Of The Opera (UK Tour). He has clocked up almost six months ‘inside’, having thrice worked as MD for Pimlico Opera’s famous prison projects, where the cast are largely made of prison inmates: Sondheim’s Assassins (HMP Coldingley), Chicago (HMP Bronzefield) and Les Miserables (HMP Wandsworth).
BBC Young Musician of the Year 2010
LARA MELDA was awarded the coveted title of BBC Young Musician 2010 at the age of sixteen, performing Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No.2 with Vasily Petrenko and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. She was immediately invited to record the same work with the BBC Concert Orchestra for broadcast on Radio 2.
Other performances in the 2010/11 season have included an appearance in the Royal College of Music’s Lisztomania piano festival (broadcast live on the internet) and the Schumann 200 Festival at King’s Place, Istanbul Recitals series in Turkey, Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad in Switzerland, and many other concerts for music societies throughout the UK.
Prior to her BBC Young Musician success Lara was a finalist in the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Weimar, Germany in 2009 and, as winner of the Purcell School’s Concerto Competition, performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor K466 with the Purcell Sinfonia in 2008. She also performed at London’s Wigmore Hall and, at the Royal Northern College of Music’s Scarlatti Festival, her performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. At the Royal College of Music she has performed in the Lisztomania, Mozart Sonatathon and Poles Apart piano festivals and has taken part in a filmed masterclass with Lang Lang. Lara is a pupil at the Purcell School and the Royal College of Music Junior Department and studies piano with Ian Jones. She began piano lessons with Emily Jeffrey at the age of six. Lara is also an accomplished viola player and enjoys playing chamber music on both piano and viola. She is in the viola section of the RCMJD Symphony Orchestra.
