Performers


	Conductor and Soloists Guy Woolfenden - Conductor With more than 150 scores for the Royal Shakespeare Company and an impressive list of credits with major European theatre companies, including the Comédie-Française, Paris, and the Burgtheater, Vienna, Guy Woolfenden’s theatre music is highly regarded throughout the world. During his thirty-seven years as Head of Music to the RSC, he collaborated with some of the world’s finest directors, designers and choreographers in many award-winning productions. In collaboration with choreographer André Prokovsky, Guy has arranged the music for four full length ballets, which he has subsequently conducted in productions with The Australian Ballet, The Royal Ballet of Flanders, Hong Kong Ballet Company, Asami Maki Ballet, Tokyo, and Scottish Ballet. Guy conducted the acclaimed Russian première of his Anna Karenina with the Kirov Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. Guy's recent commission, Sounds and Sweet Airs - A Shakespeare Journey, for Saint James' Singers and Players, received its first performance at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon on 21 October at the 2006 Stratford on Avon Festival. He is currently working on a new piece for wind orchestra which will receive its first performance at the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles Conference in Killarney in July 2007. Guy’s compositions for wind orchestra are performed all over the world and much has been recorded on CD. He has received several commissions from the USA and conducts concerts and workshops of his music both there and in Europe. Guy is conductor of the Birmingham Conservatoire Wind Orchestra. Guy is a Fellow of the Birmingham Schools of Music, an Honorary Member of the London College of Music and an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Year's Honours list, the award being made for services to music

	Jeremy Ballard - Leader

	Jeremy is the orchestra's long-serving leader. He started playing the violin when he was seven years of age. At fourteen his distinguished musical career started as a band boy in the Royal Marines, playing cornet and violin. In 1957, he won the prestigious Cassels Prize for musician of the year with his performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. During his years as a Royal Marine he served on the Royal Yacht Britannia, playing many solos for HM The Queen and the Royal Family. In 1962 Jeremy joined the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra whilst still studying with Sascha Lasserson (a pupil of Leopold Auer) in London. He was leader of the second violins for twenty-five years and has travelled the world with many great soloists and conductors. In 1991 he left the CBSO to concentrate on his other interests and is currently a member of the Midland Chamber Players giving regular lunchtime concerts in Birmingham Cathedral. Jeremy also enjoys working with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon. The other string to his bow is drawing, for which he has had many fine opportunities at the theatre.


	Philip Martin

The celebrated Irish pianist and composer, Philip Martin, has a distinguished concerto repertoire of over 60 concertos, including his own compositions. He has used these in his many concerto appearances in Ireland, the United Kingdom and abroad, with all the BBC orchestras, the Halle, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and those in London such as the London Sinfonietta, the LSO and the RPO. Late in 2005, he toured Mexico and played recitals of Debussy, Liszt, Philip Martin and Louis Moreau Gottschalk in the Palace of Fine Arts. He has recorded an eight-volume set of CDs for Hyperion Records of the music of the colourful 19th century American composer, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, as well as a critically acclaimed recording called The Maidens Prayer which is heard repeatedly on Classic FM. He gave the premiere of

Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto in Ireland and subsequently played it on Radio 3 with three separate BBC orchestras and also toured in Germany, France and Turkey with the same work. His concert tours have taken him to countries as varied as Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Canada and he has toured extensively in the United States where besides holding a UK-US Bi-centennial Arts Fellowship, he has also held residencies in various Universities and has been a guest of Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals. His BBC and foreign broadcasts are many and he has also been a frequent visitor to the BBC Promenade concerts.