The London Orion Orchestra feat. Alice Cooper
Biography The London Orion Orchestra feat. Alice Cooper
The London Orion Orchestra
Orion has rapidly built a reputation as one of the most dynamic orchestras on the UK's music scene. The orchestra exists to promote the best young musicians in the country, with its performances recognised for their vitality, energy, and imaginative programming.
With Orion's players selected from the most talented music college students and recent graduates, it gives its members the experience of working at all of London's leading concert venues, as well as a platform for especially talented young soloists. As orchestra in residence at the Aberystwyth International MusicFest, the orchestra provides unique experience to student conductors and composers. It awards annually both a Conductors Prize and a Young Conductors Bursary, supported by the Richard Carne Trust. Additionally, in 2012 it awarded its first Composers Prize, supported by the Royal Overseas League.
Since its formation in 2005 by artistic director Toby Purser, notable soloists have included Joanna MacGregor, Julian Lloyd Webber, Tasmin Little, Susan Gritton, Anne Murray and Dennis O'Neill. Exceptional young soloists have included violinists Nicola Benedetti, Valeriy Sokolov, Jack Liebeck and Charlie Siem, pianists Teo Georghiu, Tom Poster and Panos Karan, percussionist Martin Grubinger, cellist Guy Johnston, tenor Jesus Leon and soprano Laura Mitchell.
Each year, Orion's repertoire embraces the wide range of genre, style and skills its musicians will need in later professional orchestras, with music from Austria to Azerbaijan and encompassing symphonic, opera, contemporary and even Middle-Eastern and Latin-American music. Alongside mainstream repertoire, neglected works they have championed include the premier of a rediscovered Stravinsky orchestration of The Song of the Volga Boatmen, excerpts from Veniamin Fleishman's little-known masterpiece, Rothschild's Violin, and the first performances in over seventy years of Dorothy Howell's Piano Concerto and of Cyril Scott's Harpsichord Concerto.
They have launched an acclaimed CD of Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.3, with the young virtuoso Panos Karan, while a recently recorded live performance of British music was released by Cameo Classics last year. A concert in November 2010 with Iranian composer Shardad Rohani was filmed and broadcast by BBC Persia, while their recent recording with Rick Wakeman of 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' reached the shops last Christmas.
Peter Scholes
was born in Auckland in 1957 and was educated at Auckland Grammar. He studied clarinet with the late George Hopkins, and then with Ken Wilson at the University of Auckland from 1976-9, graduating BMus in performance. He undertook further clarinet study from 1986-7 in Britain with Thea King and Alan Hacker. He is currently clarinet tutor at the Auckland University School of Music. He was Principal clarinetist for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra 1980 -1994, clarinetist in the early music group ‘Digorie’ from 1976-80, and the Auckland Chamber Music Players from 1981-85. Scholes became interested in composition through playing in groups such as ‘Red Mole’, ‘From Scratch’, ‘Playback Theatre’ and other improvisation ensembles. He was assistant Musical Director of ‘Avant Garage’ from 1980-81. In 1987 he won 3rd prize in the International Gaudeamus Interpreters’ Competition, Rotterdam, for a performance of his own work, “Wireless for Clarinet”. From 1988-89 he was artist in Residence at the University of Auckland School of Music, where he founded ‘The Clarinet Collective’ and ‘The Big I’ improvisation ensemble. As a clarinetist Scholes has toured for the Music Federation of NZ with pianist David Guerin and with the Auckland Wind Quintet. He has appeared as clarinet soloist with the Auckland Philharmonia in concerti by Mozart, Copland and Nielsen, and in 1992 as soloist with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra performing the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. He was a member of the Auckland Philharmonia Administrative Council 1991.
Since 1994 Scholes has been working as a free-lance conductor and composer. He composed music for the Royal New Zealand Ballet production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and his Symphonic Legends, a work introducing children to orchestral music, was performed at the 1998 NZ International Festival of the Arts. he has recently founded the Auckland Chamber Orchestra of which he is principal conductor.
