Staff A-Z

What do the critics think of Rivka Golani? James North of America’s Fanfare Magazine, in a glowing appraisal of her work, wrote that she is “… carving out a place of her own that no other performer on the instrument can reach.”  The Financial Times of London clearly agrees: “Rivka Golani (is)… a supreme viola virtuoso – white-hot in delivery, kaleidoscopic in tone colours, electrifying in rhythmic attack.” For an even more effusive testimony, we might try the Boston Herald: “… riveting, intensely physical stage presence… hurtling momentum, constant risk-taking, complete technical assurance… one can only be grateful that she dedicated herself to art rather than warfare, for she would be an awesome adversary.” Finally, a tribute from Geoffrey Crankshaw of Musical Opinion, following a recital at Wigmore Hall: “No nobler music-making could be imagined than this eloquent performance… the grand tradition brought to the service of inspired musical insight.”

Rivka has recorded countless albums with many distinguished orchestras, including Royal Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, Berne Symphony, Budapest Radio Orchestra, BBC Sinfonietta, and others. A landmark among her many albums is her world premiere recording of Elgar’s Violin Concerto on viola, with the Royal Philharmonic – the complete Bach Cello Suites, including performances of Bach’s Chaconne and Chromatic Fantasy.

As the artistic director of Fort MacLeod Music Festival, Alberta, Canada, for seven years, she developed a special collaborative relationship with the Canadian First Nation Blackfoot. She is currently the artistic director of SOWECA Music Festival in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.

Born in Israel, Rivka trained at the Music Academy of Tel Aviv with the great violist and composer Oedoen Partos. At the age of 23, she became a member of the Israel Philharmonic. Rivka moved to Canada in the mid-1970s, where she began her solo career. Her present home is in London, England. She is also an inspiring teacher who draws students from all over the world to her classes at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

Rivka plays a viola made by the renowned maker Otto Erdesz.

Rivka is also a painter and her works have been exhibited in Israel, Austria, Germany, the UK, USA and Canada.

Stephanie is leader of the English Chamber Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and has both directed and appeared as soloist with them throughout the world. She has directed numerous other chamber orchestras and in 2018 will perform with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in that capacity.
Stephanie has appeared as soloist with most of the leading British orchestras as well as many abroad. Solo recordings include the Sibelius Concerto on BMG and the Dvořák Romance with the ECO and Sir Charles Mackerras.

Stephanie was leader of the Vellinger String Quartet, winners of the 1994 London International String Quartet Competition.

Qualifications / Educational Background

• BA Dance Theatre from Laban
• MFA in Dance from Florida State University
• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Creative Outputs

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Performing:

1992-4: Florida State University graduate shows, including; Jeff Slayton “ Don’t Fear the Fire”, Doris Humphrey “Brandenburg Concerto no 4” , Martha Graham “Steps in the Street”

1997: Rafferty & Gough “Sonnet: The Better Angel” The Place, Jackson’s Lane, Roehampton, Laban

2001: Clare Baker, “Flock”  Bloomsbury

Mothers of Invention – “My Mother, My Daughter, Myself”, Roehampton, Chichester, lilian Baylis, Laban

2002: Amanda Gough “12 Steps”, Laban

2003: Erica Stanton  “The Gravity of the Situation”, Bedford, Laban

2004: Erica Stanton “ Undercurrents”, installation by Rosie Leventon, Fabrica  Gallery, Brighton

Erica Stanton “Matters of Gravity” , The Place

Installation by Rosie Leventon

Choreography:

1992: Hop

1993: Recipe

Shoot the Breeze chosen to represent FSU at the American College Dance Festival (South East Region)

1994: MFA Concert – The Rhythm Method
The Rhythm Method, Hop, Trudge

1995: Chance Encounters for Gloucestershire Youth Dance Group

1996: Paradigm, Paradox, Parallax, Paradiddle for Much Ado
Resolution at The Place
The Edge  for Hextable Youth Dance

1997-present: Co-director of Double Vision Dance Company with Sonia Rafferty. “After Images”  site specific piece for 50 local children and the Company at Lacock Abbey, commissioned by National Trust/Lacock Education 2003. “Sowing the seeds” site-specific piece for local children and the Company at the Courts Garden, commissioned by National Trust/Lacock Education 2002. “In:site” for Double Vision  https://vimeo.com/73867731 and “In:sense” for local community dancers, Millenium Project commissioned by the Derngate Theatre, Northhampton 2000. “Double Vision, Second Sight” full length A4E lottery funded work which also commissioned choreographer Fiona Edwards 1998. “Sonnet” choreographed and performed with Amanda Gough 1997.

2010: Movement direction for finale of Sound Moves, Festival Hall

2011: “The Stone Diaries” (with Sonia Rafferty), TrinityLaban BA3 Commissioned Work. https://vimeo.com/73867731

2011: ’Grace Notes’ , Dance Film screened at Merge Festival, Exeter (March 2011) and New Gallery, London  (April 2011), V Sao Carlos Videodance Festival, Sao Paula, Brazil (1-3 October 2011),   Third Coast Dance Film Festival USA (September 16th/17th 2011), Festival Internacional de Videodanza del Uruguay (24th-30th October 2011) Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania (26th April 2012) GLOW Dance Festival  Castle Green  Hereford (30th June 2012) FiELD  UK Dance Film Festival, Stratford Circus (10th August 2014)  https://vimeo.com/38087646

2012: Movement Director for Youth Music Voices, Choir performing at WOMAD, Houses of Parliament, Royal Opera House, Velodrome (Olympic Park), Trafalgar Square, Hyde park and Battersea Park

2013: “The 5ecret lives of Numbers”, Trinity Laban BA1 Performance Project https://vimeo.com/73951696

2014: Commission from Brighton and Hove Arts – director/choreographer for a collaborative  project music and dance  (Feb 2014), working with 6 young dancers  aged 16-18 and a  string orchestra of 15 young musicians. Performed at Trinity Laban as part of Colab

2014: “Instructions for Folding” Trinity Laban BA1 Performance Project https://vimeo.com/99542948

2015: “Spheres of Influence”  (with Sonia Rafferty)Trinity Laban Centre for Advanced Training

2017: choreography/movement direction for Trinity Laban Sinfonia Strings at Laban Theatre 

2022: “Precipice” (with Sonia Rafferty) Trinity Laban BA3 Commissioned Work

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Publications

Articles published in Dance UK magazine (2002 – “A Fairy Tale Career?”  & 2004  – “Choreographic Observerships – a reflection”) and Dance Matters (2004 – “A Site-Specific Exploration”  & 2008 “Dance Captures”)

Presented at Wellcome Trust conference – University of Manchester School of Music and Drama (2004) “Left  – choreographic research project”

Redding, E., Baker, C., Clements, L., Gough, A. & Lefebvre Sell, N. (2017). Collaborative research in dance science and creative practice. Labanarium Symposium: Thinking in terms of Movement: Teaching and Researching Movement and Dance in University and Conservatoire Settings, University of Surrey.

As a sideman, he has performed with many leading jazz musicians from across the UK, and the world. Gourlay has held the acoustic bass chair with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, under the direction of Tommy Smith, since 2006. He has also featured prominently with Tommy Smith’s own quartet.

Since 2018 Calum has been a professor of Jazz Bass at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance. He has also taught one to one at the Royal Academy of Music and presented his own big band music with The Guildhall Big Band.

His debut album ‘Live at The Ridgeway’ (2015) received rave reviews from the UK jazz press, not least because of its confident format – a solo, live recording in front of an intimate audience.

In 2019 Calum released his first quartet album ‘New Ears’ on Ubuntu records. In 2020 the album was nominated for both a Scottish Jazz Award and an Ivor Novello Composer Award.

Yolanda has been teaching singing for many years and balances her teaching and performing with her family life as a wife and mum. Gaining a PGCE, her teaching has extended from the classroom to colleges. Yolanda was Head of Singing for Redbridge Music Service for several years until performing opportunities took her back to the operatic stage. Yolanda has been invited regularly by Mary King on the teaching team of Vocal Workshops at the Royal Academy of Music and more recently on the audition panel and teaching team for Glyndebourne Academy.

Yolanda continues to enjoy balancing her performing and teaching commitments.

Orchestral success also followed and Siobhan became established as the foremost freelance player in London before eventually accepting a position with the London Symphony Orchestra as their Second Flute. As a member of the LSO, Siobhan toured the world, recorded extensively both live in concert and commercially for film soundtracks such as Harry Potter. She also appeared as a chamber musician, an adjudicator, worked as part of the LSO’s award winning education team and gave masterclasses and workshops at the music colleges in London.

Siobhan’s experience as a freelance orchestral musician and then as a member of the LSO has, unusually, seen her in demand as both a principal player as well as a section player and principal piccolo. Guest principal appearances include the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Chamber music has always played a large part of Siobhan’s musical life as a member of The Wakeford Ensemble she has performed the flute, harp, clarinet and string repertoire throughout the UK since 1992.

Siobhan left the LSO in 2013 and moved to Scotland, which has lengthened her commute to London only slightly as the flights are somewhat faster than South West trains! She is still in demand with her London colleagues and also now appears regularly in the commercial recording studios recording sound tracks such as How to Train your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda and Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Born in East Yorkshire, he studied the flute with David Butt and Kathryn Lukas whilst at Reading and City Universities and The National Centre for Orchestral Studies; and with Andreas Blau in Berlin on an Ian Fleming Trust scholarship. During this time, he was a member of the European Community Youth Orchestra.

At 23, he was appointed Principal Piccolo of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and was a founder member of The Contemporary Music Ensemble of Wales.

Christopher returned to London as Piccolo and Co-Principal Flute of the BBC Concert Orchestra for the next 11 years, before moving to the Royal Opera House. Throughout his career he has recorded extensively for radio, film, television and many of the major commercial labels and still continues to perform with orchestras across Britain.

A dedicated and passionate teacher, Christopher has held posts at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, the University of Exeter, the Royal College of Music, and recorded teaching videos for the “Principal Chairs” website.

‘Hearing Your Genes Evolve’ for string quartet featuring in a Filmtank Production, ‘The Dark Gene’ was nominated for a Berlinale Film Festival Documentary Prize. Other awards include the Chester Schirmer Fulbright Fellowship, UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers Award for my orchestral work ‘Empire States’, a Leverhulme Fellowship, a Sir Winston Churchill Fellowship, a Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, a PRS Women Make Music Award for ‘Reflected Glory’, a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and a PRS Composers’ Award in 2020. Her music has been recorded by Crash Ensemble and for a new film about genetics available on ‘constellations.world’

Her orchestral work was recorded for the lyric fm label ‘Irish Composers Series’ and her chamber music CD, ‘Island People’ was recorded for NMC. Richard Whitehouse in Gramophone wrote “the chamber domain seems ideally suited to her often inward and intimate manner of expression…it traverses a wide emotional range …a release that is cordially recommended to Gribbin admirers and newcomers alike.”

Informed by her solo performing, Sophie works extensively in music/voice education. She is vocal professor/coach at Trinity Laban; visiting director of devised voice-work for BMus/MA productions at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) and the Drama Centre (Central St. Martins College of Art and Design); and director/soloist for creative music education projects, here and abroad (including Spitalfields Festival, Glyndebourne, ENO Baylis, Norwich Theatre Royal, Oxford Lieder Festival, Sinfonia ViVa).

Sophie is presently funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) to research classical voice pedagogy at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Solo recordings include Complicite’s Out of a House Walked a Man, Brodsky Quartet’s Moodswings, Bernard Cavanna’s Messe, un jour ordinaire (Ensemble Ars Nova, France).

Solo broadcasts include Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea (ENO/BBC), Jonathan Harvey’s Song Offerings (Radio France), Sophocles’ Oedipus Plays (directed by Sir Peter Hall, music by Judith Weir/BBC), Bettina Skrzypczak’s Miroirs (Radio France), Lisa Gornick’s Do I love you? (Film/Channel 4).

Research outputs include several journal articles (voice pedagogy/performance) and a recent contribution to the publication Learning, Teaching and Musical Identity: Voices across Culture (May 2011, ed. Lucy Green, Indiana University Press).

His Scottish Opera debut was covering Don Ottavio Don Giovanni directed by Sir Thomas Allen and conducted by Speranza Scapucci and he performed the role in the unwrap performances throughout Scotland.

His English National Opera debut was Guest John Cage Dinner Party for ENO MusiCircus, and he has returned to ENO many times since. ENO performances include Pliable/Superstition/Celestial Voice cover A Pilgrim’s Progress, Dantine cover The Perfect American, in preproduction workshops and showcases between ENO, The Barbican and the Young Vic as Gizmo 3 The Way Back Home and Security Guard Between Worlds, an ENO Late Shift Recital at the National Portrait Gallery, and he is core tenor for ENO Baylis Know the Show events as Tamino Magic Flute and Alfredo La Traviata, a member of ENO Opera Squad 2015, 2016 & 2017 singing Nanki-Poo The Mikado, Don Ottavio Don Giovanni and Don Basilio Le Nozze di Figaro in schools performances and has appeared as guest soloist with the ENO Community Choir.

Austin made his Portuguese debut in 2017 as Martin in the premiere staging of Hummus by Zad Moultaka and Manager in The Waiter’s Revenge by Stephen Oliver at the Musica Na Fabrica Festival, Lisbon directed by Max Hoehn and his Swiss debut in 2018 as the Spectre in Dvorak’s The Spectre’s Bride in Zürich conducted by Philipp Mestrinel.

Other operatic roles for comapnies including Longborough Festival Opera, Berwick Festival Opera, Tete a Tete Festival, Opera Anywhere, InterOpera,  include Don Jose Carmen, Nemorino L’elisir d’amore, Don Ottavio Don Giovanni, Beppe Rita, Aubrey Der Vampyr, Dormont La Scala di Seta,Bobby The Fisherman’s Brides,  Manager The Waiter’s Revenge, Frederick Pirates of Penzance, Nanki-Poo The Mikado, Ralph Rackstraw HMS Pinafore, Martin Hummus, Bardolfo Falstaff, Middle Son The Vanishing Bridegroom and Goffredo Rinaldo. 
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Austin appears regularly throughout the UK and in France, Sweden and Italy in concert in a vast array of repertoire. As a recitalist he has performed ‘Tennyson’s Lyricism and the Composer’s Response’ at the Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle, and ‘Languorous Ecstasy’, a selection of works by Libertine poets, at Hull University and a selection of Victorian and Edwardian medicinal song for the VIP relaunch of The Wellcome Collection in London.  He is currently preparing a recital of American art song and a recital of 21st Century music.
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Recording and film credits to date include Montague John Cage Dinner Party, Maxwell Davies Solstice of Light, 1st Tenor Soloist Curlew River, Zweite Lehrbube Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg all for BBC Radio 3, a recital of song for American television network PBS, and as the singing voice of a German soldier in the television series ‘Band of Brothers’ directed by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

SAHRA has a range of enviable career highlights including performing at; London Jazz Festival, Dimensions, WOMAD, We Out Here as well as receiving co-signs from the likes of; BBC Radio 1, 1Xtra, Worldwide and Rinse FM. After a brief hiatus throughout the lockdowns, SAHRA is back for good and her recent single ‘Sorry’ confirms why, gaining support from; COLORS, BBC Introducing, BBC 1’s Victoria Jane, Worldwide FM, The Line Of Best Fit, and Wonderland to name a few. Exuberating mysticism, she is able to express her individuality through stories, commanding attention with her rich and faultless voice.

She has also been a member of staff at the Royal College of Music London, The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Manchester University.

As a performer and director, she has enjoyed the privilege of working with several 20th Century composers including Gian-Carlo Menotti and Hans Werner Henze, and has also directed works, in consultation with the composers, by James MacMillan and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

She is also Artistic Director and Trustee for the Yorke Trust Opera Courses in Norfolk, UK for whom she has directed annual productions of Baroque opera over the last twenty five years.

For Trinity Laban, she has directed many opera scenes as well as full productions of Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, Thea Musgrave’s A Christmas Carol and Ana Sokolovic’s Svadba. Jennifer’s most recent production for Trinity Laban was Strozzi! – a theatrical piece she devised about the eventful life of composer Barbara Strozzi, incorporating Strozzi’s music with a script written by JH.