Richmond Piano Series: Joseph Shiner + Keval Shah

***World-class classical concerts in the historic heart of Richmond***

***Limited number of EARLYBIRD TICKETS***

Adult tickets £20 (£25 on the door)

Limited number of £10 tickets for U30s

U18s go FREE (must be accompanied by adult ticket holder)

Programme:

Reena Esmail Jhula Jhule

Reena Esmail Rang de Basant

Sergei Rachmaninoff:

A Dream, op.8 no. 5

Lilacs, op.21 no. 5

Twilight, op.21 no. 3

The Night is Mournful, op.26 no.12

Daisies, op.38 no.3

Vocalise, op.34 no.14

Dreams, op.38 no.5

Carl Maria von Weber Grand Duo Concertant op.48

Programme subject to change

Joseph Shiner is a multi-disciplinary classical musician based in the United Kingdom, cultivating a wide-ranging career as performer, scholar, and educator. After specialist study at Wells Cathedral School with Kevin Murphy and Timothy Orpen, Joseph graduated from both Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, London with highest honours, studying with David Campbell, Mark van de Wiel, Angela Malsbury, Andrew Marriner, and Patrick Messina. He currently holds a non-resident C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellowship at the Juilliard School in New York City, where, in addition to instrumental study with Anthony McGill, his research interests centre around LGBTQ+ musicology and the European fin de siècle with particular focus on the life and work of Clement Harris, advised by historical musicologist Dr. Elizabeth Weinfield. Joseph's pedagogical activities range from instrumental, chamber and orchestral coaching to the tuition of music history, theory, practical musicianship and writing at institutions including the Juilliard School, the Junior Department of the Royal Academy of Music and Merchant Taylors’ School. Joseph has also co-ordinated and led community and school projects for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Magnard Ensemble, the Royal Academy of Music Open Academy, Wigmore Hall Learning, and the Musicians' Company, receiving the Company’s Patricia Prindl Prize for excellence in educational outreach. In addition to teaching at the RCMJD, Joseph also teaches academic music and musicianship at the Purcell School.
As a clarinettist, Joseph has appeared at venues in the UK, Europe, USA and China, as well as festivals in the UK, Europe and the USA. A recipient of awards from Making Music, the City Music Foundation, the Hattori Foundation and the Musicians' Company, his performances and recordings have been broadcast on domestic and international radio, and featured in BBC Music and Gramophone magazines. Over the years, Joseph has enjoyed fruitful collaborations with the Allegri, Endellion and Barbican quartets, as well as with pianists Somi Kim, Keval Shah, Michael Dussek, Christopher Glynn, Sholto Kynoch and Joanne Chang. In 2019, Joseph released his debut recording on Orchid Classics, surveying Brahms' works for clarinet with piano and 'cello with Somi Kim and Yoanna Prodanova. The disc was a Classic FM ‘Album of the Week’, and hailed by Gramophone for its 'stormy grandiloquence' and 'twilit poetry'. From 2012 to 2022, Joseph was a founding member of the award-winning ‘Magnard Ensemble’, active in recital, education and interdisciplinary project work, as well as making acclaimed recordings of music by Paul Patterson, Martin Butler, and Stephen Dodgson for Orchid Classics and Toccata Classics. In addition to performing with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Aurora Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Joseph is active in contemporary music, premiering works by Misha Mullov-Abbado, Kate Whitley and Freya Waley-Cohen. Joseph has appeared as soloist with ensembles including the Mozart Festival Orchestra, the Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra of London, the City of Southampton Orchestra, the Wimbledon Symphony Orchestra, the Outcry Ensemble, the Orion Orchestra, the New Cambridge Sinfonia, the Young Musicians' Symphony Orchestra and the Cambridge University Sinfonia (formerly the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra).

Born into a Gujarati family from East Africa, Keval Shah grew up on the outskirts of London in a home filled with music. The soundtrack of his childhood was a mix of Bollywood film scores, ghazals, Hindustani classical music and the bhajans he sang with his grandmother. Aged 7, Keval started piano lessons, following in his sister’s footsteps, but it was the experience of singing Mozart in a school choir at the age of 12 that ignited his love for western classical music.

This eventually led him to study Music at Cambridge University as both pianist and choral singer, and it was here that he first encountered the world of art-song and Lieder, a genre in which he found a synthesis of all his passions: the piano, singing, languages and poetry. This discovery proved to be all-consuming, driving him first to the Royal Academy of Music as a collaborative pianist, where his teachers included Michael Dussek, Audrey Hyland, and Malcolm Martineau, before propelling him into a career as both performer and teacher. After a short period in London as a freelancer, Keval’s trajectory was irrevocably transformed when he was appointed to a teaching position at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki aged 25, making him the youngest professor in the institution’s history.Keval’s career began to grow rapidly from his new base in Finland: performances in Europe’s most prominent concert halls and festivals, collaborations with renowned singers including Karita Mattila and Roderick Williams, invitations to teach at major European conservatoires and, with his regular duo partner Theodore Platt, success in one of the most significant Lied competitions in the world, organised by the Hugo Wolf Akademie in Stuttgart. These were all important milestones in a journey which, to this point, had been characterised by a determined and committed dedication to the tradition of the classical art-song.Nevertheless, Keval’s early years in Finland would prove to be more than simply a professional springboard. Rather, they would come to symbolise distance: not only as a measure of how far he had come professionally, but also how far away he had moved from the music and culture of his home over a much longer period of time.Coming to this understanding, and subsequently reconnecting with his Indian heritage, precipitated a fundamental and irreversible shift in Keval’s creative outlook, from which a renewed artistic vision has emerged. This is a vision characterised by cross-cultural musical dialogue, achieved as much through innovative curation as through the exploration and creation of music which itself transcends barriers of culture and genre, resisting neat categorisation, and which carries in it the blueprints of multiple peoples and places.Today Keval is an artist who moves freely across the musical landscape, seeking out collaborators who share his values of curiosity, experimentation, and a desire to look beyond classifications of genre and style. Working regularly with singers including Fleur Barron, Anna El-Khashem, Aphrodite Patoulidou and Theodore Platt, Keval builds concerts which draw out new connections between classical song and music from other traditions, taking these programmes to leading festivals and concert halls across Europe. In 2024 he gave the European premiere of a song cycle by Shawn Okpebholo that blends gospel and jazz within a contemporary classical idiom, setting this alongside cycles by Schumann and Poulenc in a commentary on the vulnerability of children in conflict zones. In the same year, together with Jess Dandy, he created *Eternity in an Hour*, a project which brings together a newly commissioned cycle of Sanskrit songs by Reena Esmail setting portions of the *Bhagavad Gita* with songs from the western canon, in an exploration of the relationship between eastern and western philosophies. Praised by *The Times* as “profound in its spiritual depth and intellectual curiosity,” this project is typical of Keval’s curatorial approach.In 2025 he collaborated again with Reena Esmail on his first solo piano show, devising an hour-long set of piano music which blends elements of Hindustani classical, Gujarati folk and Hindu devotional music with forms and textures from the western classical tradition. This solo project premiered at Flow Festival, as part of an eclectic line-up including Charli XCX, Hermeto Pascoal and Ganavya, a testament to the strength of Keval’s artistry in reaching broad and diverse audiences.The creative freedom that Keval cultivates continues to shape his work in the classical scene too, where his expertise as a pianist is reflected not only in recent recordings with Theodore Platt for the Deutsche Grammophon label and an international schedule of concerts, but also in teaching engagements at institutions including the Juilliard School, New York and the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo, as well as invitations to join competition juries including for the International Mirjam Helin Singing Competition, alongside artists including Dawn Upshaw and Soile Isokoski. Keval is on the artistic team of Helsinki Seriös, Finland’s foremost international chamber music series, and he is also a public speaker and broadcaster, hosting the interview series *Siba Talks*, radio programmes for the BBC, and featuring regularly in national and international newspapers and magazines. His life and career is the subject of a documentary film by Antti Vuori, set for release in 2026.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

St Mary Magdalene Church, Richmond, United Kingdom

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