FRANÇOIS KIEFFER

Cello

François Kieffer has been fascinated by chamber music and the world of the string quartet from an early age and is the founding cellist of the Quatuor Modigliani.

Trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in the class of Philippe Muller and Daria Hovora, he was unanimously awarded his first prize in chamber music as well as his cello prize.

In 2003 he won an audition as solo cellist of the Orchestre Français des Jeunes and founded the Quatuor Modigliani with three friends. The group went on to win three First Prizes at the International Competitions in Eindhoven (2004), Vittorio Rimbotti in Florence (2005) and the prestigious Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York (2006). Since then, the quartet has embarked on an international career in Japan, the United States, Australia, and Europe. It has made some twenty recordings, including the complete set of Schubert's 15 quartets, and won prestigious awards in France and abroad.

After studying with the Ysaÿe Quartet and attending masterclasses with Walter Levin and Gyorgy Kurtag, the Modigliani Quartet was invited to work with the Artemis Quartet at the Berlin University of the Arts. The Quatuor Modigliani has also performed and commissioned numerous contemporary works by Marc-Antony Turnage, Philippe Hersant, Pēteris Vasks, Kaija Saariaho, Evgeny Kissin, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, Bruno Mantovani, and Elise Bertrand.

In 2014, together with the Quatuor Modigliani, he relaunched the Rencontres Musicales d’Evian after a thirteen-year hiatus, and in 2016 created the Atelier des Rencontres musicales d’Evian. The quartet is currently artistic director of the Saint-Paul de Vence Festival and the Arcachon Chamber Music Festival. In 2020, the quartet was also entrusted with the artistic direction of the International Quartet Competition in Bordeaux, Vibre!

François Kieffer's chamber music partners include Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Gérard Caussé, Nicholas Angelich, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Sabine Meyer, Sayaka Shoji, Gary Hofmann, Julian Rachlin, Franck Braley, Michel Dalberto, Clemens and Veronika Hagen, and the Ysaÿe and Emerson Quartets.

After almost 20 years of experience, he is a regular guest for the juries of international competitions and gives masterclasses throughout the world (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, Menuhin School, Yonsei University, Rice University, Norges musikkhøgskole Oslo, Aix en Provence Festival). In 2023 he set up a quartet class at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and taught the Novo, Elmire and Magenta quartets.

François Kieffer plays a 1706 cello by Matteo Goffriller "ex-Warburg", and a bow by Dominique Pecatte from 1850.

HÉLÈNE CLÉMENT

Viola

Born in France in 1988, Hélène Clément has learned to combine her proud love for french wine with the cheese delicacies found in England when she moved to London in 2013. Her ferocious enthusiasm and thirst for the chamber music and viola repertoire leads her to constantly expand her musical horizons by performing with a wide range of different collaborations, playing in the most prestigious concert halls in Europe and around the World.

Following her passion as a chamber musician, she has performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Cité de la Musique in Paris. Her chamber music partners have included Mitsuko Uchida, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Nicolas Altstaedt, Benjamin Grosvenor, Alexander Melnikov and Peter Wispelwey, as well as the Brentano String Quartet and the Nash Ensemble.

Since September 2013, she is the viola player of the Doric String Quartet, with which she fulfils her appetite for deep explorations of the repertoire, from Haydn String Quartets to newly commissioned pieces. Recent highlights include recitals at the Amsterdam Muziekgebouw, Vienna Musikverein, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Hamburg Laeiszhalle and De Singel, and regular performances at the Wigmore Hall. Further afield they have toured to Japan, Israel, Australia, America, Asia and New Zealand.

The Quartet has released a wide range of recordings, working exclusively with Chandos Records. Their most recent releases include works by Haydn, Britten, Mozart and Mendelssohn.

Ms Clément is a frequent guest at the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival in America and Prussia Cove in England.

She is Principal Viola Player of the innovative Aurora Orchestra based in London, taking part in exciting projects such as playing symphonies by memory and chamber music projects in the most prestigious concert halls.

She teaches viola and chamber music at the Royal Academy of Music of London.
Mentoring and coaching young talents is taking a growing place in her life, and she is with her String Quartet the Artistic Director of the Mendelssohn on Mull Festival, a position that sees her play a key role in providing young professionals in the field of chamber music with a week of intensive mentoring, coaching and development.

Ms Clement is currently playing on a 1843 Italian viola owned previously by Benjamin Britten and Frank Bridge. The viola is generously lent to her by Britten Pears Arts.

LORRAINE CAMPET

Double bass/violin

Lorraine discovered the double bass at the age of 5, and first learnt with Jean-Edmond Bacquet, before being accepted at the Paris CNSM in 2012, in Thierry Barbé's class. She received her Masters degree in 2016 and went on to study for one year with Petru Iuga at the University of Mannheim in Germany.

Alongside the double bass, Lorraine also studies the violin, firstly working with Suzanne Gessner at the Regional Conservatoire of Paris, before being accepted at the Paris CNSM where she received her Bachelor degree in Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabedian’s class in 2019.

Lorraine is frequently invited to play as a soloist and to give master class in the whole world (China, USA, UK, Germany, Venezuela..). She regularly plays as a chamber musician in various festivals such as le Festival de Pâques in Aix-en-Provence, le Festival de Pâques in Deauville, les Rencontres Musicales d'Evian, La Folle Journée de Nantes, alongside artists such as Barbara Hannigan, Renaud Capuçon, Leonidas Kavakos, the Trio Wanderer, Lise Berthaud, Sarah Nemtanu, François Salque, the Modigliani Quartet, Christophe Morin…

As a soloist, she performs in France and abroad for recitals and solo concerts with orchestra.

She is currently invited to perform with MusicAeterna Orchestra and Utopia Orchestra conducted by Teodor Currentzis, as well as with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Sinfonia Grange au Lac in Evian.

She has been awarded the first prize for both the Leopold Bellan International Competition and the International Double Bass Competition in Amsterdam “Bass 2014”.

In 2017, she won both the Festival Prize and the Prize for best interpretation of a contemporary piece at the FMAJI. The same year she also won second prize at the International Giovanni Bottesini Competition.

From 2015 to 2022, she was co-principal bass for the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

She plays an exceptional double bass by Pietro-Antonio Testore on loan from Xavier and Joséphine Moreno through Emmanuel Jaeger and a modern double bass by the luthier Richard Gonon and is endorsed by Pirastro Strings.

As a violinist, Lorraine is a member of the Confluence Quartet, in residence at the Fondation Singer-Polignac, awarded the first prize for the Trondheim International String Quartet Competition. She is lucky enough to play a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini on loan from the Boubo-Music Foundation, and a bow by Edwin Clément.

TOM POSTER

Piano

Tom Poster is a musician whose skills and passions extend well beyond the conventional role of the concert pianist. He has been described as “a marvel, [who] can play anything in any style” (The Herald), “mercurially brilliant” (The Strad), and as having “a beautiful tone that you can sink into like a pile of cushions” (BBC Music).

During the 2020 lockdown, his #UriPosteJukebox series with Elena Urioste - featuring Tom as pianist, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, writer, backing dancer and snowman - brought a staggeringly diverse selection of music to audiences across the world through 88 daily online performances, for which the duo won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Inspiration Award. Their subsequent recording, The Jukebox Album, received glowing reviews and a BBC Music Magazine Award nomination.

Tom is co-founder and artistic director of Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, appointed Associate Ensemble at Wigmore Hall in 2020. With a flexible line-up featuring many of today’s most inspirational musicians, and an ardent commitment to diversity through its creative programming, Kaleidoscope broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3 and has recently enjoyed residencies at the Aldeburgh, Cheltenham and Ischia festivals. Its debut album for Chandos Records, American Quintets, was awarded Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, and immediately led to an invitation to record a series of albums for the label.

Tom has performed over forty concertos from Mozart to Ligeti with Aurora Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony, China National Symphony, Hallé, Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, collaborating with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Nicholas Collon, Robin Ticciati and Yan Pascal Tortelier, or sometimes directing from the piano. He has premiered solo, chamber and concertante works by many leading composers, made multiple appearances at the BBC Proms, and his exceptional versatility has put him in great demand at festivals internationally.

Tom has recorded albums for BIS, Champs Hill, Chandos, Decca, Orchid and Warner Classics, appearing as soloist and in collaboration with Elena Urioste, Alison Balsom, Guy Johnston, the Aronowitz Ensemble, Aurora Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia and London Symphony Orchestra. He regularly features as soloist on film soundtracks, including the Oscar-nominated score for The Theory of Everything. He studied with Joan Havill at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and at King’s College, Cambridge. He won First Prize at the Scottish International Piano Competition 2007 and the keyboard section of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition in 2000.

Tom’s compositions and arrangements have been commissioned, performed and recorded by Alison Balsom, Matthew Rose, Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott. His chamber opera for puppets, The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak, received an acclaimed three-week run at Wilton’s Music Hall in 2017.

JESSIE MONTGOMERY

Festival composer/violin

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post).

Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Shift, Change, Turn (2019) commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Coincident Dances (2018) for the Chicago Sinfonietta, and Banner (2014)—written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—for The Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation, which was presented in its UK premiere at the BBC Proms on 7 August 2021.

Summer 2021 brought a varied slate of premiere performances, including Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for Soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco and Kansas City Symphonies, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (7 August); a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape Festival and Pam Tanowitz Dance, I was waiting for the echo of a better day (8 July); and Passacaglia, a flute quartet for The National Flute Association’s 49th annual convention (13 August). 

Since 1999, Jessie has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string players and has served as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble.

A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Jessie holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a PhD Candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University. She is Professor of violin and composition at The New School. In May 2021, she began her three-year appointment as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Jessie Montgomery took home the 2024 GRAMMY® Award for Best Contemporary Composition honoring her "Rounds" for Piano and String Orchestra.