Guest Artist Profiles - 11/12 Season

Dublin-born Miriam Roycroft studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester with Ralph Kirshbaum and Don McCall where she was awarded numerous prizes for cello and chamber music. Upon graduation she won the Muriel Taylor Cello Competition in London, the Worthing Young Musician Concerto Prize and was a prize-winner in the Royal Overseas League which led to many appearances as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Britain. She was a founder member of the Music Group of Manchester. Further studies included a period in Banff, Canada, at the renowned Banff Centre for the Arts with Aldo Parisot.

Miriam has appeared in concerto with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland many times and has played most of the major concerti for cello with orchestras throughout the UK and Ireland. She has been a guest leader of the cello sections of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Sinfonia ViVa and the Northern Sinfonia. She has also guest co-lead the cello sections of the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Miriam is principal cello of Camerata Ireland with whom she has toured America, China and Europe. After many years playing with Opera North in Leeds, in September 2006 Miriam joined the String Faculty of the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin and is now pursuing a career as teacher/performer.

She has performed at the ‘Music in Great Irish Houses Festival’ with the American cellist, Steven Doane and at the National Gallery of Art in Dublin with renowned Irish pianist, John O’Conor. In March 2010, she performed with Réamonn Keary at the National Gallery of Ireland as part of the ‘Chopin 200’ bi-centenary celebration concert series. Film work has included ‘In America’, (featured artist) and ‘the Blue Tower’. Recent performances have included recitals at festivals and concert halls in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery, The University of Limerick, Hebden Bridge Arts Festival, Saltaire Festival, Leeds, Beverley, Lancashire and she will be performing throughout Ireland and the UK in the coming year. In July 2012 Miriam will perform a commission written for her by Nigel Morgan at the Wakefield Live Music Project at Nostell Priory.

Miriam plays on a modern American cello by Grubaugh and Seifert which she commissioned in 2004.

www.miriamroycroft.com

John McKernan comes from Lisburn and started playing the violin when he was eleven. He attended Rathmore Grammar School and entered the National Youth Orchestra at fourteen. He also played in the City of Belfast Youth Orchestra, where he was leader.  John continued his studies at the Guildhall School of Music under Pauline Scott, during which time he performed Mozart’s 5th Violin Concerto.  He joined the Ulster Orchestra in 1994 and has also performed with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Camerata Ireland, and the BBC Scottish Orchestras.  Previous local performances include the Kabalevsky Violin Concerto and Vaughan-Williams ‘The Lark Ascending’.  

John’s performance of Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy will be his debut with the SSO.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming soon.

 

 

 

 

“…Michael McHale… left a deep impression in his playing of Mozart's concerto no. 9 (the 'Jeunehomme') in the Hallé's Opus One programme… He can combine dramatic flair with faultless stylistic skill (as in the first movement cadenza), probe the depths of the writing (as in the slow movement), and mix fluency, bravura and suddenly surreal nostalgia - as in the finale. He's a player with a lot to give…”

Robert Beale, Manchester Evening News, November 2009

Belfast-born pianist Michael McHale was winner of the 2009 Terence Judd/Hallé Award and has established himself as one of the leading Irish pianists of his generation.

He enjoys a busy career as solo recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician and has performed throughout the UK and Ireland, Europe and the USA, including broadcast performances for BBC TV, Radio 3, RTE, WNYC Radio, PBS television and Deutschlandradio Kultur.

Michael graduated from Cambridge University with a double first-class honours degree in Music before completing postgraduate studies with distinction at the Royal Academy of Music. His teachers and mentors include John O’Conor, Reamonn Keary, Christopher Elton, Barry Douglas and Ronan O’Hora.

He won the 2004 Camerata Ireland Musician of the Year and the Brennan and Field Prizes at the 2006 AXA Dublin International Piano Competition prior to winning first prize and the audience prize at the Terence Judd/Hallé Award finals in 2009.

He has given concerto performances with the Hallé, Ulster, Bournemouth Symphony, RTE National Symphony and Concert Orchestras and the London Mozart Players in repertoire ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to Schumann, Franck, Gershwin and Rachmaninov, as well as critically-acclaimed début solo recitals in Washington DC, Dublin’s National Concert Hall, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester and the Wigmore Hall, London.

Regular chamber music partners include Michael Collins, Sir James Galway, Barry Douglas, Patricia Rozario, Ensemble Avalon and the Cappa Ensemble.

Recent CD releases include an album of clarinet and piano works with Michael Collins for Chandos, solo piano music by Philip Hammond for Lorelt, two discs for LCMS (featuring solo works by John Cage and Arvo Pärt as well as chamber works by Silvestrov, Knaifel and Tavener) and an album of piano trios with Ensemble Avalon for RTE Lyric FM.

Michael is grateful to Camerata Ireland / Accenture, EMI Music Sound Foundation, the Musicians Benevolent Fund and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for supporting his performing career.

For further information visit www.michaelmchale.com