ADJUDICATORS

ADJUDICATORS

Our 3 adjudicators are David Campbell, Emily Dickens and Steven Wray

David Campbell

David Campbell has enjoyed an exciting and varied schedule as a clarinet soloist for four decades.

After winning the Thurston Clarinet Prize at the RCM, David Campbell was invited to join Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s ‘Fires of London’. He also worked regularly with the London Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, London Mozart Players and Nash Ensemble.

Over recent years David has developed the solo and chamber music strands of his career, performing in over forty countries with leading ensembles and as soloist with orchestras such as the BBC Scottish, BBC NOW, BBC Concert, English Chamber, Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, as well as foreign orchestras in countries including the USA, Estonia, Malta, France, China and most recently a third trip to Puebla, Mexico as both concerto soloist and conductor.

David has made radio and television broadcasts both as a player and presenter and as a recording artist, David has played on many recordings as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. His recordings of the Finzi Concerto and Charles Camilleri’s Concertino are often played on Classic FM. David has also played on many Hollywood movie scores and often plays in the Covent Garden Sinfonia, which often plays ‘live’ with silent films.

He was Visiting Professor at Canterbury Christ Church University from 1989 to 2013 and is currently Head of Woodwind at Westminster School and a visiting lecturer at City University in London and is a member of the University’s group, the ‘City Pierrot Players’.

David has been Artistic Director of Musicfest in Aberystwyth since 2001 and has also given masterclasses at Dartington International Summer School and Domaine Forget in Quebec. He also gives regular classes for the Benslow Music Trust and Jackdaws in Somerset as well as clarinet days for the Household Division of the British Army.

David Campbell was the UK Chair of the International Clarinet Association for twenty years and was Chair of the Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain from 2011 to 2016.

Since 2016, David has been a Yamaha and a D’Addario Artist, but the Covid-19 pandemic has developed his skills as a cook and dog walker

Emily Dickens

An internationally established soprano and choral director, Emily Dickens read music at Trinity College, Cambridge, where she held a choral scholarship.A full-time member of the critically-acclaimed British vocal ensemble VOCES8 for eight years, Emily has performed opera, a cappella, pop and contemporary commissions all over the world.She has performed in many of the world’s leading concert halls including The Wigmore Hall, The NCPA Beijing, The Royal Albert Hall, Tokyo Opera City, Tel Aviv Opera House, Mariinsky Theatre, Melbourne Recital Centre and Wiener Konzerthaus. Regularly heard on international TV and radio, Emily is a Decca Classics Recording Artist and has had four records top the classical charts. She performs with The Gabrieli Consort, BBC Singers, Tenebrae, La Nuova Musica, The OAE and features regularly on film and video game soundtracks. Recent solo and opera performances include King Arthur in Australia with the Gabrieli Consort, a recital of American song for the Ealing Festival, Aricie (Hippolyte et Aricie), Bach Christmas Oratorio for the Royal Leamington Spa Bach Choir, Carmina Burana for the Winchester Festival, Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music for the Festival Chorus and ‘What do you do with an Idea?’ live with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican.

Emily is the Choral Conducting Fellow at St Martin-in-the-Fields where she has directed choral and orchestral projects and twice conducted for BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship. She is Associate Choral Director at the Royal College of Music Junior Department, an Assistant Conductor for the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and regularly directs the London Symphony Orchestra Choirs. In demand as a workshop leader in the UK and internationally, Emily recently presented at The UK Choir Festival and collaborates regularly with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, The Voices Foundation, The Bach Choir, VOCES8, The London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia. In 2018 she studied on the first National Opera Studio/Royal Opera House Women Conducting Opera Course.

Steven Wray

Steven Wray read music at the University of Oxford. Later he participated in masterclasses at the Salzburg Mozarteum with the aid of Austrian government bursaries, and also enrolled in advanced chamber music classes at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

He has performed throughout the United Kingdom and Europe in solo recitals, concerto performances and also as a pianist in chamber music, song recitals and contemporary music. In the 1980s he participated in Yehudi Menuhin’s Live Music Now! and in the Park Lane Group’s annual contemporary music concerts, appearing at London’s Barbican and South Bank Centre.

Particular highlights of the 1990s included several tours of central Europe: performing solo works, Lieder and chamber music at the invitation of the Czech Schubert Society; concerto performances of Beethoven with the South Bohemian Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra; festival performances in Prague bringing to modern audiences the music of composers silenced in the dark years of political oppression in the 1930s and 1940s (including an illustrated broadcast talk for Radio Free Berlin). In Vienna he performed contemporary music with Ensemble 9.

In 2004-2005 a series of six solo piano recitals entitled ‘Romantic Generations’ at the Warehouse, Waterloo in London surveyed a number of substantial works from the core repertoire, featuring Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert at one end of the spectrum and post romantics Busoni, Skryabin and Debussy at the other — including Schumann, Brahms, Chopin and Liszt along the way. It was described as a “highly enterprising and imaginative” series by Jeremy Siepmann, editor of PIANO magazine. It was also given particular recommendation in Time Out London’s classical music listings.

In the field of contemporary music, following a very successful London début at the Purcell Room at London’s South Bank Centre in 1988, Steven Wray has collaborated with several composers resulting in a number of first performances and various premiere recordings to his credit. Composer Andrew Keeling’s recently issued album ‘Spiritus’, features the renowned Hilliard Ensemble, and concludes with Wray’s recording of a cycle of six pieces for piano entitled ‘Blue Dawn’.

Steven Wray is Head of Piano at Westminster School in the heart of London, where he has taught and coached quite a number of advanced pianists since the early 1990s. Additionally, he has taught at Westminster Abbey Choir School, many of his chorister pupils going on to receive significant scholarships and musical awards. As an ABRSM examiner he has travelled widely, particularly in South East Asia.