In great demand as a recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician, John Paul Ekins has given performances throughout the UK and Northern Ireland, and overseas in Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Kuwait, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain and Switzerland. He has been broadcast on the BBC, on Romanian national television and radio, and on Polish television. Studying first with Judith Chapple, then with James Lisney at Royal College of Music Junior Department, in 2009 he graduated from the RCM Senior Department with First Class Honours, having studied with John Barstow. In the same year, he was awarded the James Anthony Horne Scholarship by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama to study with Charles Owen, graduating from there with Master’s of Performance (Distinction) in 2011. He was the recipient of a Music Education Award from the Musicians Benevolent Fund, and receives generous support from Making Music, The Concordia Foundation, The Razumovsky Trust and The Keyboard Charitable Trust.
He has performed as soloist at a number of prestigious venues in the UK and abroad, including London’s Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Fairfield Hall and Steinway Hall, Belfast’s Ulster Hall, Bergen’s Troldhaugen, Birmingham’s Symphony Hall, Bucharest’s Athenaeum, Kraków’s Florianka Hall, Prague’s Martinu Hall, and Zürich’s Tonhalle. His concerto highlight thus far has been his 2013 debut at The Royal Albert Hall, where he performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue alongside Southbank Sinfonia. He has also performed concertos by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Gershwin with orchestras throughout the UK.
International Competition successes include some 19 awards, scholarships and prizes. He was also accepted onto the prestigious Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme, and recently he was delighted to have been selected to appear in Making Music’s Concert Promoter’s Network Brochure 2013-14. He was also the only successful pianist in Making Music’s Young Concert Artists Competition 2012, and as such was a Recommended Artist under Making Music’s Philip and Dorothy Green Award scheme.
Educational and outreach work is enormously important to John Paul too, and he has given workshops and masterclass-recitals with great success in the UK. He was recently appointed as piano teacher at St. Paul’s School, London.
John Paul has been particularly honoured to be presented to Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Prince Philip at a Reception for Young Performers at Buckingham Palace.
Described in Music-Web-International as “masterly and lyrical”, British-Polish violinist Michal Cwizewicz has been broadcast in numerous international media outlets including BBC Radio and Television and Polish National Television and has performed across Europe, in the Middle-East and USA. He performs frequently in the violin duo Cwizewicz Brothers, the Minerva Piano Trio and is concertmaster and co-director of the Górecki Chamber Orchestra and director of the Ognisko Chamber Ensemble. Since 2012 he has been teaching at the Royal College of Music.
Free recital (retiring collection)