2006 Education Bursary Winners
The Fame Academy Education Bursary of £12,500 a year for 3 years (a total of £37,500), was awarded to four young musicians in 2006 who demonstrated a passion and commitment to their music. Two musicians were also given awards of £5,000 to help them commission new music.
Sam Sweeney - Fiddle
Sam has been playing the fiddle since the age of six and aims to make a career in the world of folk music, specifically English and Scandinavian music. He plays in the critically acclaimed band Kerfuffle and in alt-folk group 'Castlereagh'. He also plays the drum kit and fiddle in Leicestershire based band ‘Flowe', among other groups and collaborations.
Sam has won many awards, including the 'In The Tradition' award and the ‘WFA Young Folk Award', as well as being a finalist in the '2004 BBC Young Folk Awards' as part of Kerfuffle. He has also played and been interviewed live on BBC Radio 3 Late Junction, with Kerfuffle.
Read Sam's 2008 career developments here.
Graham Ross - Conductor / Composer
Graham's 2006 Education Bursary enabled him to launch a major project with The Dmitri Ensemble at Easter 2008: a Passiontide tour of contemporary works by Giles Swayne and James MacMillan, which included performances in Norwich Cathedral, St. John’s, Smith Square, and St. Paul’s Cathedral, culminating in the recording of a disc of works by MacMillan to be released on the NAXOS label in 2009.
Graham studied at the Royal College of Music Junior Department and at Clare College, Cambridge, and in 2008 will complete his postgraduate Masters degree in orchestral conducting at the RCM, generously supported by the HR Taylor Trust Award for Conducting.
In 2007 he made his opera debut conducting the Choir and Orchestra of London in The Magic Flute in Jerusalem, the first ever fully-staged operatic production on the West Bank. Forthcoming conducting engagements in 2008 include Sinfonia of Cambridge, RCM Symphony Orchestra and Aalborg Sinfoniorkester, Denmark, and continued work with the London Symphony Chorus as a recipient of their 2007 Conducting Scholarship.
Forthcoming commissions include works for Sonya Knussen and The Knack Singers as (part of the PRSF/Making Music/spnm Adopt-a-Composer scheme), Aurora Orchestra, Sounds Positive (The Warehouse, May 2008), a major new work for violinist Cerys Jones also a 2006 bursary winner.
Maria Marchant (formerly Redman) - Piano
A prize-winner in her final year of the BMus Performance Course at Trinity College of Music, Maria’s competition successes include winning the John Ireland Prize, the Manager’s Discretionary Prize in the Jaques Samuel Intercollegiate Piano Competition, the John Halford Contemporary Piano Prize and jointly winning the John Longmire Beethoven competition.
Maria’s musical activities include singing in the BBC Symphony Chorus for whom she has accompanied and arranged, playing orchestral piano, celeste and harpsichord, playing as rehearsal repetiteur and working with youth choirs in outreach projects. She also has a wide interest in chamber music.
A Fellow of Trinity College of Music, Maria plans to use the bursary to achieve her Masters in Performance, whilst entering national and international competitions and participating in young artist performance schemes. Her great passion is to research in depth the English female pianists of the 1950s and 1960s; to enlarge this material into a book for publication; to continue and uphold the great English pianistic tradition and to bring more works by English composers into the public domain through both live performances and recordings.
Maria enjoyed a very successful 2007 where she won the Trinity Alfred Kitchin Chopin Prize, was one of three Trinity performers selected for the final of the Trinity Soloist’s Competition and was awarded the Eric Falk Trust Award. She has also been awarded a Silver Medal for Performance at Trinity; the Cyril Jones Prize for Supporting Studies and the Alan J Kirby Conducting Prize.
Read Maria's 2008 Update
David Smith - Percussion
Dave Smith is one of the finest young drummers on the British jazz scene. Drawing on a wide range of influences, from West African percussion to classic jazz drumming, his explosive style and musical sensitivity allows him the versatility to play in many musical environments.
Since graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Dave has worked with musicians such as Peter King, Liam Noble, Stan Sultzmann and Eddie Henderson. He also works in some original creative music projects such as Arnie Somogyi’s ‘Ambulance’, the Jonathan Bratoeff Quintet (F-ire Collective) and ‘Outhouse’ (LOOP Collective).
Dave’s experiences with West African music began in 2002, in The Gambia, when he attended an ECCO International (Education through Communication and Culture Organisation) cultural course. Since then he has made three return trips to research the drumming tradition of ‘Wolof’. As well as setting up collaborative projects, with Gambian musicians and jazz musicians, he now leads a Wolof group which is giving workshops in schools, performing and playing for ceremonies within the Wolof community in London.
Read more about Dave's 2007
Two other musicians were also awarded a prize of £5,000 to help them commission new music.
Leslie Neish - Tuba
On completion of his studies at the RNCM, Les gained a First Class Honours degree, a Professional Performance Diploma, and a Postgraduate Diploma with Distinction. He became the first tuba player to be awarded the Worshipful Company of Dyers Award for Wind and Brass at the Royal Overseas League Competition. As the only British representative he competed in the International Performers Competition in the Czech Republic where he was awarded second prize, the title of Laureate of the competition and a special prize for the best interpretation of the set work from the semi-final.
Les has given UK and Norwegian premieres of a new tuba concerto by Pete Meechan and premiered a new arrangement for tuba and windband. Les also recorded the Tuba Concerto by Darrol Barry with the Fodens Richardson Band on the CD 'Sunburst'. He recently performed lunchtime recitals at St. James’, Piccadilly and St Martin in the Fields, London and is delighted to be performing at the Bridgewater Hall as part of the Manchester Midday Concerts Series. Leslie also had recital performances in Scotland and Northern Ireland in 2007.
Leslie's passion lies in chamber music - he is a Tutor in Chamber Music at the Royal Northern College of Music and plays in the brass quintet 'Polyphonic Brass', which works extensively throughout the Northwest as part of the Live Music Now! Scheme. Leslie has already achieved a great deal as a young tuba player and is dedicated to raising the profile of an instrument that is sometimes forgotten at the back of an orchestra. As the tuba is part of Youth Music's 'Endangered Species' initiative, Les intends to prove that the tuba has so much more to offer!
Read Leslie's update from the start of 2008
Cerys Jones - Violin
Cerys Jones is an award-winning violinist highly sought after as a soloist and chamber musician, performing extensively across the UK and Europe. She is a strong advocate of new music - her 2006 bursary allows her to commission today’s eminent composers to write new works for her. This project will now form part of a PhD that Cerys will complete over the next three years in the research department of the Royal Academy of Music, and with this Cerys will be undertaking a groundbreaking survey of contemporary national musical identity within the UK and Ireland.
After graduating from the Royal College of Music in 2004 then studying for two years at the Juilliard School in New York, Cerys returned to the Royal College of Music to gain a distinction in the Artist Diploma in 2007, studying with Gordan Nikolic and Madeleine Mitchell. During her studentship Cerys won numerous prizes including the ESU Norman-Butler Scholarship, the Philharmonia/Martin Musical Scholarship Award, The Kenneth Loveland Gift, solo violinist represented by the Countess of Munster from 2003-05, and the John Fussell Award for an outstanding UK Young Artist.
Forthcoming projects for 2008 include performances of Elgar, Sibelius and Johanna Doderer violin concertos, and a recording of music by James Macmillan for NAXOS with the Dmitri Ensemble.