Fiona Cross (clarinet) and Nigel Clayton (piano)

Introducing the performers…

Fiona Cross (clarinet)

Fiona Cross is one of the leading clarinet players of her generation. She combines chamber music with a solo career and playing guest principal clarinet with all the leading British orchestras. She is principal clarinet of the Manchester Camerata and joint principal clarinet of the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra. She has performed concertos with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Manchester Camerata and the English Sinfonia. She has performed chamber music with various ensembles including the Vanbrugh and Alberni string quartets, Kegelstatt Trio, New Music Players, LPO Ensemble and Adderbury Ensemble. She was also invited to perform chamber music with Andreas Schiff at his festival in Weimar.

Fiona has recorded the Lefanu Concertino for Naxos, the Horovitz concerto for Dutton, the Simpson clarinet quintet for Hyperion and a virtuoso CD of clarinet and harp music for the Dinmore label. She takes a keen interest in promoting new music, and has commissioned many new works for clarinet and piano and clarinet and harp. She has given many recitals in all the major venues in Britain, including London’s South Bank Centre, as well as performing in many of the established music clubs and festivals. She is a professor of clarinet at Trinity College of Music, London.

Nigel Clayton (piano)

Nigel Clayton studied with Stephen Savage and Angus Morrison at the Royal College of Music, London, where he won prizes in every category of piano performance and was awarded the college’s yearly prize for his Bachelor of Music degree. While there, Nigel developed a particular interest in chamber music and accompanying and was further encouraged by international prizes from competitions in London, New York (Concert Artists Guild) and from the English Speaking Union. Since then his worldwide travel has included four major tours of India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan with the Indian cellist Anup Kumar Biswas; tours of the Middle East and America with Wissam Boustany; of Scandinavia with Gerard LeFeuvre; and throughout every European country.

Nigel performs more than eighty concerts every season and has also played at most of the music clubs and festivals in his native Great Britain, appearing regularly on the BBC’s radio network, at the Wigmore Hall and at the South Bank Centre, where he has already performed over fifty recitals. He has also played recently in Taiwan and Japan, his first time touring in the Far East. Nigel continues to perform as a soloist and has given more than one hundred solo recitals on board the British cruise liners SS Canberra, Oriana, Victoria and Arcadia. He has performed concertos by Beethoven, Shostakovich, Ravel, Rachmaninov, Mozart and Liszt, and was a soloist in Poulenc’s two piano concertos in the Royal Albert Hall while still a junior student at the Royal College of Music.

Apart from several long-standing partnerships, Nigel has appeared alongside such artists as Michael Collins, Sylvia Marcovici, Ofra Harnoy, Tasmin Little and Bryan Rayner Cook, the Chilingirian, Sorrel and Bingham Quartets and with instrumentalists from Japan, Korea, Canada, Spain, America, Poland and Iceland. He is engaged as official accompanist each year for the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition in Switzerland, and has recorded six commercial CDs. He teaches at a specialist school for young pianists in Surrey, is visiting professor of piano at the North East of Scotland Music School, and was recently appointed Professor of Piano at the Royal College of Music.

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