TL Viola professor, Stephen Upshaw, has been appointed as the Viola Faculty Teaching Artist at Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival Academy.

TL Viola professor and highly acclaimed violist Stephen Upshaw has recently joined the teaching faculty at the Lucerne Festival Academy. Regularly performing in a vibrant range of festivals worldwide – including the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh, Huddersfield, Aix-en-Provence, Wien Modern, Glastonbury, and Lucerne – Stephen’s performance has been described as “astonishingly powerful: full-on, self-assured, as well as searingly expressive”. A highly sought-after chamber musician, Stephen is a member of the award-winning Solem Quartet, praised for their “immaculate precision and spirit” (The Strad) and recognised as one of the most innovative and adventurous quartets of its generation. He has shared the stage with celebrated artists such as Tai Murray, Gary Hoffman, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Philippe Graffin, Jennifer Stumm and Garth Knox. Recent engagements have taken him to Boston’s Jordan Hall, London’s Barbican and Wigmore Halls, Tokyo Opera City, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and Vienna’s Konzerthaus.

A noted interpreter of contemporary music, Stephen is also a member of London’s Riot Ensemble, winners of the Ernst von Siemens Foundation Ensemble Prize, whose disc Speak Be Silent was selected as one of New Yorker Magazine’s ‘Best Recordings of 2019’. He has taken part in over 300 world premieres including chamber music of Georg Haas, Sally Beamish (alongside the composer), Edmund Finnis and solo works of Mark Simpson, Simon Holt, Michael Finnissy and Errollyn Wallen. Stephen has also toured regularly to the USA, Europe and Asia with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and its music director, Joshua Bell and works with the Chineke! Orchestra as principal viola and as a member of the chamber players.

One of Europe’s most prestigious summer academies, the Lucerne Festival Academy is a school for new music and a creative laboratory for the future. Every summer, 100 talented young musicians from all over the world are given the opportunity to concentrate on a repertoire that is still too often overlooked in the world of classical music: the music of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Through daily rehearsals and workshops over a three-week period, musicians immerse themselves in key selected works of Modernism; they work on and rehearse brand-new scores that are often written especially for the Academy and experiment with innovative forms of performance.

Conductors and composers also benefit from the Academy’s training through the Conducting Fellowship, where young conductors observe and follow along during the Academy’s rehearsal work, while gaining important experiences through masterclasses. The Composer Seminar gives young composers an opportunity to discuss their works with the celebrated Wolfgang Rihm and other composers. They can also test out these works with musicians from the ranks of the Lucerne Festival Academy. The Roche Young Commissions series gives young composers commissions to write new works.

Applications for the Lucerne Festival Academy are now open until 18 February 2024. Full details are available here.

We were delighted to welcome Anthony Davis to Trinity Laban last week on Thursday 30 November. His visit followed the EU premiere of his work You Have the Right to Remain Silent, performed by Anthony McGill and Britten Sinfonia at Milton Court. Discussing his musical experience with our Head of Composition, Dominic Murcott, the celebrated composer led an insightful seminar based on an extract from his opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.

Anthony Davis visited King Charles Court to speak to our music students about his compositions and experience in the music industry. An internationally recognised composer of operatic, symphonic, choral, and chambers works, he is also a virtuosic solo pianist and leader of the ensemble Episteme. He was a classical pianist up until he was 16, but then discovered jazz: a revelation which completely changed his musical direction. The records of Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, John Coltrane (among others) inspired him to improvise and begin composing in the style of jazz. Studying at Wesleyan and Yale universities, he was Yale’s first Lustman Fellow, teaching composition and Afro-American studies. Later appointed Senior Fellow with the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, he then returned to Yale as Visiting Professor of Music. He became Professor of Music in Afro-American Studies at Harvard University in the fall of 1992, and assumed a full-time professorship at the University of California at San Diego in January 1998.

Davis’s early university experience was marked by social unrest and the developments of the Civil Rights movement. He actively monitored the demonstrations of the Black Panthers, trying to ensure that no one was killed by the National Guard. The desire for social and political change was reflected in his music. “Music in the spirit of revolution greatly resonated with me”, he says – indeed, his early pieces focused on the injustice within the trial of Bobby Seale. His first opera X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X was the first of a new American genre: opera on a contemporary political subject. Selling out houses at its premiere at the New York City Opera in 1986, it made its debut at the Met this year to great critical acclaim.

Davis won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for his most recent opera, The Central Park Five, based on the 1989 Central Park jogger case. Also of note are his instrumental compositions, particularly the recent EU premiere of his You Have the Right to Remain Silent. Inspired by the moment Davis was pulled over by an armed police officer during the 70s, the piece is defined by “the orchestra interrogating the clarinet”. It was favourably described by The Boston Globe as poignantly recasting “the traditional mythic narrative of the individual versus the collective” through “the modern prism of racial prejudice”. Bachtrack also paid credit to Davis’ versatile composition, reporting that it “seamlessly mixes modernist techniques with jazz, hip-hop, and other popular idioms”.

We are delighted to welcome Matt French, John Roberts, Matt Skelton, James Turnbull, and Matthew Lewis to TL’s roster of distinguished artists and educators as members of the music faculty professorial staff.

An accomplished percussionist, Matt French enjoys a varied career performing with world-renowned orchestras—including the Orchestra of The Royal Opera House, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and BBC Concert Orchestra—and playing in several musicals in the West End. While studying at the Royal College of Music, he won the Sabian Percussion Prize and received the prestigious Archer Scholarship, where he played with Bobby Lamb’s Trinity Big Band. He later went on to teach at the Royal College of Music Junior Department. As an educator, he has given classes to the Royal Marines. He actively participates in large-scale education projects, including the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama’s Big Bash.

John Roberts is the principal oboe of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Having studied with the Royal Opera House’s principal oboe, Christopher Cowie, John performed internationally and toured extensively with ASMF. He also worked with the London Winds, the Gaudier Ensemble, Zarek Chamber, and London Sinfonietta. His recent recordings include Poulenc’s Sonata, Trio and Sextuor with the pianist Mark Bebbington, and a solo number in John Rutter’s I Sing of a Maiden EP.

Matt Skelton enjoys an illustrious international career already spanning three decades. A drummer excelling in modern and vintage Jazz, he accompanied many leading Jazz luminaries and recorded with internationally acclaimed singers. Having been Sir Richard Rodney Bennett and John Wilson’s drummer of choice, he has most recently performed with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Stockholm Philharmonic, and The Hong Kong Philharmonic. He has also toured internationally with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra. His theatrical credits include the 2017 Broadway transfer of An American In Paris at the Dominion theatre and the 2021-2022 performances of Anything Goes at the Barbican. A sought-after educator, Matt was an interim Head of Jazz and teacher at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, while giving masterclasses at the Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

Hailed by the Independent as “a worthy champion” of contemporary oboe music, James Turnbull is a multi-talented and renowned oboist. He launched the New Oboe Music Project in 2015, promoting 21st century oboe repertoire worldwide. He is the founder of the Léon Goossens Prize for Emerging Composers (specific to the oboe). An accomplished chamber musician, he holds the position of Artistic Director of Ensemble Perpetuo while also performing with ensembles like the Berkeley Ensemble and the Allegri String Quartet. His solo recordings credits include Toccata Classics, Champs Hill Records, Quartz Music and the ABRSM, with Gramophone Magazine describing his debut recital disc, Fierce Tears, as a “notable debut” and the Classical Music Magazine selecting it as the Editor’s Choice Recording.

The Royal Academy of Music recently awarded him an ARAM for his outstanding contribution to the music profession. In his role as an educator, he has launched the website LearnToPlayTheOboe.com, making learning the instrument infinitely more accessible, while also teaching at the Royal College of Music Junior Department.

Matthew Lewis enjoys a vastly successful and diverse career as a trombonist and educator. Graduating from the Royal Academy of Music with a BMus(Hons) and MA, he performed with several British youth ensembles and as principal trombone of the European Union Youth Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. In 2020, Matthew became the principal trombone of the BBC Concert Orchestra, with whom he also performed as a soloist. Matthew has performed as guest principal trombone with other world-class orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, to name a few. As a freelance trombonist, his projects have ranged from touring Europe with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, to performing at large scale club nights with the Heritage Orchestra in arenas across the UK.

More recently, Matthew has been awarded an ARAM for his contributions as an educator. He has featured on the soundtrack of many films including Mission Impossible, Death on the Nile, and the latest Wonka film. A regular guest in the UK’s top music schools and conservatoires, Matthew is professor of trombone at St Paul’s School and Dulwich College.

To find out more about our teaching staff and programmes, visit the Wind, Brass and Percussion department page.