Presented by the Royal College of Music
Violinist Carolina Blaskovic was born into a musical family in Zagreb and graduated from the Royal College of Music, London. She is currently studying for Master of Music course at the same institution with Mark Messenger and is generously sponsored by the Frankopan Fund and Albert Cooper Music Charitable Trust.
Carolina has performed as a soloist at venues throughout the UK including V&A Museum, Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, St. Clement Danes Church, Church of St. Olave, St. Mary’s Church, Battersea, Waltham Abbey, St. Stephen's Church, St. Mary Abbots Church, All Saints Parish Church, High Wycombe, United Reformed Church, Purley.
Carolina has also performed as soloist at international prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, The Mimara Museum (Croatia), Crystal Hall (Slovenia). In 2016, she was invited to perform Elgar’s Violin Sonata at the Rector’s Palace (Dubrovnik). In 2015 she appeared with internationally recognised ensemble ‘Zagreb Soloists’ performing Winter from Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi. At the age of four she gave her first public performance and at the age of eight she made her concerto debut in the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall in Zagreb. Since then, she has continued to perform regularly as a solo artist and her future engagements include several international competitions and solo performances across the UK and Croatia.
As an active chamber musician, she was a member of piano trio performing works by Beethoven and Rachmaninov in recognised venues such as Croatian Music Institute and the National Library. She has performed Schumann’s piano quartet in St. Mary Abbots Church in 2017 and Mozart’s g-minor string quintet during the ‘Thinking Musician’ summer course in Italy (2018). She is a passionate performer of music for duo violin and piano and regularly performs with her duo partner, pianist Will Fielding. Their future engagements include performances of sonatas by Schubert, Schumann, Ravel and Fauré across the UK.
From an early age, Carolina has won numerous awards in national and international competitions. In 2017, she won a first prize at American Protégé International Piano and String Competition. In 2013, she was awarded a special prize as the youngest Croatian competitor on the ‘International Vaclav Huml Competition”, which established her as one of the most promising young Croatian violinists. She won her first prize at the age of nine in the Violinisti Giovanni Violin Competition (Italy). Since then, she has been a prize winner in numerous competitions, including Young Paganini International Violin Competition, Flame Competition, Concours Bravo, Petar Konjovich International Competition and the Stockholm International Music Competition.
Carolina has been interviewed and performed on Croatian Radio Television, with features in various programmes including Day by Day, Good Morning Croatia, News of Culture, Good Morning: The Culture.
Carolina plays on a Collin - Mezin violin kindly loaned by the Harrison - Frank Family Foundation.
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 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. In 2009 he graduated from the Royal College of Music with First Class Honours, where he studied with John Barstow, and 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; he graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama 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, Krakow's Florianka Hall, Prague's Martinu Hall, and Zurich'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.