Jess Dandy – contralto
John Crockatt – violin
John Reid – piano

Three of the UKs foremost musicians gather together to present the chamber-music of Johannes Brahms. The program will include sonatas and songs from Brahms’ final years as well as the extraordinary Zwei Gesänge, Op.91, the composer’s haunting explorations of love and loss for voice, viola and piano.

Jess Dandy is the foremost British contralto of her generation. An alumna and fellow of Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Jess has performed with many of the world’s leading ensembles and orchestras: among them the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/Sir John Eliot Gardiner; Minnesota Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä; The English Concert/Harry Bicket & Kristian Bezuidenhout; BBC Symphony Orchestra/Dalia Stasevska & Douglas Boyd; BBC Philharmonic/Gemma New, and Dunedin Consort/John Butt & Sir Trevor Pinnock.   
Earmarked as “one to watch”, she opened the First Night of the BBC Proms 2021 and was shortlisted later that year for a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. 
She has appeared as a soloist at the world’s most prestigious venues & festivals: Carnegie Hall New York, Palau de la Música Catalana, Royal Albert Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, Wigmore Hall, and the Edinburgh International Festival, inter alia.   
This season 2022/23 sees Jess make her debuts at Salzburg Großes Festspielhaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Welsh National Opera & Opéra Grand Avignon in works by Bach, Handel, and a new opera by Josephine Stephenson. 

John Reid‘s career to date has shown him to be a pianist of notable versatility and range, with wide experience as an outstanding chamber musician, song accompanist, soloist and exponent of new music. Increasingly in demand as a teacher, he is a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
In November 2017, he made his concerto debut in Germany with the Deutsche Philharmonie Merck (Brahms No. 1) and he has extended his repertoire with orchestra in recent seasons to include Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie and Tippett’s Concerto. He continues his collaboration with Aurora Orchestra, both as principal pianist and as a soloist in a series of the complete Mozart concertos at Kings Place in London. He also plays regularly with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
Much in demand as a guest pianist with a number of other leading ensembles, he has performed recently with London Conchord Ensemble, Archangelo, Ensemble Court-circuit, London Haydn Project (Mozart concertos K.271, K.595 and K.453), Edington Ensemble and The Sixteen (a Schumann and Brahms series in London, Manchester and Bruges). He was invited to programme a concert series for the Britten centenary at Kings Place, which incorporated new works by Simon Holt, Jonathan Dove and Martin Suckling; and he has performed regularly  at The Sage Gateshead, both as a guest of the Royal Northern Sinfonia chamber music programme and as a Samling Artist.

One of the most in-demand musicians in London’s thriving early-music scene John Crockatt plays violin and viola with many of the world’s foremost period groups. 
He holds the position of principal viola with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Dunedin Consort and Arcangelo and has performed as guest principal on both violin and viola for such groups as Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and The Academy of Ancient Music. This year saw John joining Concerto Copenhagen as soloist for their Scandinavian tour of the Brandenburg concertos. He has performed and recorded with the English Baroque Soloists, the Orchestre Révolutionaire et Romantique, the Gabrieli Players and the Early Opera Company. 
As a chamber-musician he has performed widely on both violin and viola as a member of various baroque and classical ensembles and from early 2016 has been a member of the London Haydn Quartet, one of the world’s leading period chamber ensembles. This season sees the quartet recording the final disc of their ongoing, highly acclaimed project to record the complete string quartets of Joseph Haydn for the Hyperion label.  
John teaches viola and chamber music as a member of the faculty in the Historical Performance department at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
He plays on a violin and viola made by David Munro.