Davina Clarke & Tom Foster
Biography Davina Clarke & Tom Foster
Davina Clarke
performs around the globe with the world’s most highly regarded period ensembles – The English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, The English Concert, Academy of Ancient Music, Dunedin Consort, Arcangelo, The Sixteen and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Davina read music at The University of Manchester where she held a McMynn Scholarship. She graduated with a First Class Honours and went on to pursue a Masters at the Royal Academy of Music where she studied under Simon Standage and Rachel Podger. During her time there, she won the Roy Burcher and Tebbutt Exhibition Awards, and was awarded a First Class Distinction and a DipRAM for an outstanding Final Recital.
She performs regularly at Carnegie Hall and The Lincoln Center (New York), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Philharmonie (Paris), La Scala (Italy), Palau de la Musica (Barcelona), The Royal Opera House, Wigmore Hall and Royal Albert Hall in London.
Her most recent engagements have included the BBC Proms, recording her first solo album (‘Sweet Stillness’), and also extensive tours of Europe, the USA and the Far East performing Beethoven, Handel and Berlioz. Last year, Davina was made an Associate of The Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) for her outstanding contribution to the music industry and she has recently been sworn in as a Freeman at The Worshipful Company of Musicians.
The start of 2024 has started with the recording of Davina's second solo album, ‘The Art of Obligato’, which is due to be released later this year on Voces8 Records.
Off the platform, Davina is founder and host of ‘The Classical Corner’, a podcast which takes listeners behind the scenes of the classical music world today, through discussions with some of the world’s most highly regarded musicians. She has recently appeared on BBC Radio 3 as a presenter on ‘Inside Music’. Davina also hosts, ‘Musical Mixology’, an online cocktail series, exploring the relationship between classical music and cocktails. Her most recent collaboration has been a campaign with Fever-Tree.
Davina plays on both a 1659 Francesco Ruggieri violin and also a 1699 Giovanni Baptista Rogeri violin and is very grateful to Sebastian Lyon, The VEC Acorn Trust and The Stradivari Trust for their generous support.
“I was immediately struck by Davina’s innate musicianship, her violinistic prowess, her passionate engagement and seriousness of purpose, and her rare but surefooted sense of style. Added to that was the most priceless attribute of all - a manifest willingness to learn, to imbibe and to assimilate [She plays] with authority, charm and conviction - and a beguiling beauty of tone.” — Sir John Eliot Gardiner CBE
”Davina plays with a freshness and beauty of tone that, combined with her eloquent musical voice, brings the music of the baroque era to life and inspires every audience member”. — Laurence Cummings
