Adrian Butterfield, Sarah McMahon, Silas Wollston
Biography Adrian Butterfield, Sarah McMahon, Silas Wollston
Adrian Butterfield
is a violinist, director, conductor and teacher who specialises in performing music from 1600-1900 on period instruments. He is Musical Director of the Tilford Bach Society and Associate Director of the London Handel Festival and regularly directs the London Handel Orchestra and Players as well as working as a guest soloist and director in Europe and North America with modern and period ensembles.
Born in London, he started playing the violin at the age of four, was a chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral and went on to read music at Trinity College, Cambridge and study as a postgraduate at the Royal College of Music. He has worked with most of the period-instrument ensembles in London.
He is a founder-member of the London Handel Players who perform regularly at Wigmore Hall and throughout Europe and North America and who made their debut at Carnegie Hall in 2014. He also leads the Revolutionary Drawing Room, an ensemble which specialises in performing Classical and Romantic repertoire on period instruments. A recording of quartets by Haydn, Mozart, Vanhal and Dittersdorf, 'A Viennese Quartet Party', was released by RDR to coincide with their 25th anniversary in 2015 and in 2017 they recorded flute quartets by Mozart and his contemporaries with the flautist, Rachel Brown. Recent other releases include Mozart's Clarinet Quintet with Colin Lawson on Clarinet Classics and Geminiani's complete Op.1 sonatas (SOMM) by LHP in 2012. He has taken part in numerous other recordings and his world premiere complete recordings of Leclair’s first two books of violin sonatas, which were released in 2009 and 2013, have been widely acclaimed.
He works annually with the Southbank Sinfonia, is Professor of Baroque Violin at the Royal College of Music, gives masterclasses in Europe and North America and has taught on a number of summer courses including Dartington, Aestas Musica (Croatia) and the Pro Corda Conservatoire Baroque Summer Course.
He has conducted all of the major choral works of Bach as well as Handel's Israel in Egypt at St. George's, Hanover Square and La Resurrezione, Esther, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo and Parnasso in Festa at Wigmore Hall and directed ensembles such as the Croatian Baroque Ensemble in Zagreb and the London Mozart Players in the UK.
Plans for the 20/21 season include a number of performances of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos with LHP including at Wigmore Hall and conducting and directing the London Handel Orchestra in Bach and Handel at the London Handel and Tilford Bach Festivals. RDR have been invited to perform Haydn's Seven Last Words at St. John's, Smith Square as well as programmes featuring Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' quartet and the Verdi quartet.
November 2018 saw the release of a ground-breaking new recording on the Onyx Classics label of Handel's Chandos Te Deum and Chandos Anthem No.8 with the LHO and soloists Grace Davidson, Charles Daniels, Nicholas Mulroy, Benedict Hymas and Edward Grint. This is the first time these works have been recorded in the venue for which Handel wrote them, the church of St. Lawrence, Whitchurch, and for the sort of forces Handel himself used.
2021 will feature the release of Jean-Marie Leclair's Troisième Livre of violin sonatas on the Naxos label with Sarah McMahon (cello) and Silas Wollston (harpsichord), a continuation of the project to record for the first time all four of this composer's complete sonatas.
Sarah McMahon
is a passionate chamber musician. As a founder member of the Callino String Quartet, Sarah spent many years studying with members of the Amadeus Quartet, Rainer Schmidt, Erich Höbarth and Gyorgy Kurtàg. The Quartet has toured widely, commissioning numerous compositions, and collaborating with diverse artists such as Ailish Tynan, Edgar Meyer, Arvo Pärt, Barry Guy, John Abercrombie and the Kronos Quartet. Their recent recording for Coro of The Seven Last Words by Haydn has met with critical acclaim. Their recent collaboration with Canadian filmmaker Kaveh Nabatian, performing a live score of this work, was premiered at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam in 2019 and will be touring internationally at festivals in Montreal, Buenos Aires, Bilbao, Kerala, Edinburgh and Moscow.
Aside from the Quartet, Sarah enjoys a busy career playing principal cello with the Academy of Ancient Music, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Marsyas and Camerata Kilkenny. She has often appeared as soloist with these ensembles, collaborating with Monica Huggett, Peter Whelan and Richard Egarr amongst others. She is also regularly invited to play as guest principal cello with Florilegium, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Arcangelo, The English Concert, Dunedin Consort, The Sixteen, Aurora Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Sarah is a dedicated teacher and is on the faculty of the Berwick Academy, teaching historical cello and chamber music at the Oregon Bach Festival. Sarah gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts Council of Ireland through their Capital Awards Scheme.
Clare Salaman
plays violin, baroque violin, hurdy gurdy, nyckelharpa, medieval vielle, rebec, hardanger fiddle and accordion and her work covers a broad spectrum of musical roles and styles. A music degree at Oxford University and three years as a postgraduate at The Royal College of Music and The Guildhall School of Music and Drama led to work with all the major period instrument ensembles in the UK. She has led and directed many ensembles including Barokkanerne and Florilegium. Her interest in non-Western music has led to collaborations with musicians from Norway, Tanzania, Iran, Spain, India and France, as well as traditional music players from the UK. She teaches at the Royal College of Music. This year she wrote and presented three broadcasts of the Early Music Show on BBC Radio 3. In 2010 she founded ‘The Society of Strange and Ancient Instruments’ which is now the focus of her work.
