Presented by the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe
Born in Utrecht in 1991 to a musical family Amarins Wierdsma studied with Coosje Wijzenbeek at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and with Vera Beths at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. In 2013 she moved to London to study with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama completing her Masters and Artist Diploma distinction and is currently completing a Fellowship.
During her studies Amarins has won numerous awards including the RPS Emily Anderson Prize, 3rd Prize at the 2013 Dutch National Violin Competition Oskar Back, the Young Music Talent of the Year Prize in the Netherlands (2007), 1st Prize at the Davina van Wely (2005), Iordens Viooldagen (2004) and Princess Christina Competitions. She was a finalist of YCAT 2017 at Wigmore hall. During 2017 Amarins has given a series of recitals at the Slovak Philharmonic Hall Bratislava, the Concertgebouw, and throughout the Netherlands as part of The International Holland Music Sessions Masters on Tour series. As a soloist she has performed Prokofiev’s Concerto No.2 at the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in London, Vaughan Williams’s Lark Ascending at Cadogan Hall with the Mozart Symphony Orchestra, Brahms’s Concerto with the Westbourne Symphony Orchestra and Bach’s Double Concerto with the Fancy Fiddlers in Utrecht. Further afield she has given concerts in the USA and Indonesia.
A committed chamber musician, Amarins is first violinist in the Barbican Quartet. Formed in 2014 at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Quartet has appeared at Wigmore Hall (Maisie Lewis Award), Barbican, Milton Court, Casa de Musica (Porto), the Harmos Festival (Portugal) and Ashmolean Museum Oxford. Over the last year they have taken part in ProQuartet’s training programme in Paris, and undertaken a residency in Snape Maltings. In the autumn the Quartet continue their studies at the Reina Sofia School in Madrid studying with Günther Pichler.
She plays on a Landolfi violin (1755) on loan from the National Music Instrument Foundation in Amsterdam.
Joon Yoon made his solo recital debut in Korea at the age of 12 and his concerto debut in the US a year later. He is an avid solo and chamber musician and performs a wide range of repertoire from Bach to Brahms to Carter.
Joon gained his Bachelor and Master of Music at the Juilliard School and the Yale School of Music with full tuition scholarships. His teachers there included Yong Hi Moon, Robert McDonald, Melvin Chen and Hung-Kuan Chen, and are his greatest musical influences. He is currently studying with Ronan O’Hora on the Artist Diploma course at the Guildhall School as an Eduard and Marianna Loeser Award Scholar.
In 2018, he was the unanimous winner of Guildhall School’s most prestigious award, the Gold Medal, previously won by artists such as Jacqueline du Pre and Bryn Terfel. He has won top prizes at competitions such as the Piano Texas Concerto Competition, the Liszt-Garrison Piano Competition and the Fite Family Young Artist Piano Competition, as well as winning awards at the Peabody Preparatory in Baltimore and the Campillos International Piano Competition in Spain. He was the 2017 winner of the Glass Sellers’ Beethoven Prize at the Guildhall School.
Joon has performed in prestigious venues across Japan, Korea, Spain and the U.S., including Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, Petit Palau of Palau de la Musica, Seoul Arts Center, and Sejong Center for the Performing Arts. He has made concerto appearances with the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra, Peabody Sinfonietta, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, and Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. He has been a fellow of prestigious music festivals such as the Music Academy of the West, the Bowdoin International Music Festival’s Kaplan Fellowship program, where he collaborated with Amir Eldan, Kurt Muroki, Ayano Ninoyama, the members of the Ying Quartet, and New York Philharmonic concertmaster Frank Huang. As a chamber musician, he has worked with Peter Wiley of the Guarneri Quartet, Joel Smirnoff of the Juilliard Quartet. Joon has also worked with Richard Goode, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Jerome Lowenthal, John O’Conor, Matti Raekallio, and Arie Vardi in masterclasses and festivals.
Aside from music, Joon is an avid cook and a film lover, especially those of Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino.