About this Event
MONDAY 10 JULY, 7:30pm
Concert 20 – Summer Chamber Music: Pianist Annie Yim & Friends
Our final concert of the season features three celebrated works from 19th C German Romanticism to 20th C French Impressionism, in varying combinations of piano, violin, and cello. The evening culminates in the tour de force of Ravel's unparalleled masterpiece, the Trio in A minor.
Pianist Annie Yim (co-director of CCKoncerts) will be joined by two of her close collaborators and highly esteemed musicians – violinist Sadie Fields, and cellist Richard Birchall.
Don’t miss this intimate summer evening music including a post-concert reception in the adjoining GrowingSpace organic garden.
PROGRAMME:
R Schumann Fantasiestücke Op. 73 for cello and piano
Debussy Sonata in G minor for violin and piano
Ravel Piano Trio in A minor
Annie Yim, piano; Sadie Fields, violin; Richard Birchall, cello
Doors open at 7:15pm for general seating. All ticket holders will enjoy a post-concert reception GrowingSpace organic garden.
Annie Yim is a Hong Kong-born Canadian concert pianist, creative collaborator, and founder of MusicArt based in London. Her performance has been described by The Times as "the most beautiful sounds, radiantly coloured, thoughtfully articulated”. Known for her wide-ranging solo and chamber music repertoire that encompasses canonic works and new music, Annie has broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM, and national radios in Canada and Portugal, and made her UK concerto debut at LSO St Luke’s, London.
Passionate about collaborations and commissioning new works across art forms, Annie founded MusicArt in 2015 in London, an initiative to create original artist-led performance projects. From London to Berlin and Salzburg, her performances with artists and art spaces were featured in New York T Magazine, Artnet, and Gramophone. She is a recipient of Art Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice award in 2021 for her current work in making connections between music and nature, and Help Musicians UK’s Do It Differently award in 2022.
Annie has worked closely with contemporary artists including painter Sir Christopher Le Brun PRA, composers Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Raymond Yiu, and poets Zaffar Kunial and Kayo Chingonyi; and with leading art galleries and national organisations including The Poetry Society (UK) and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (US). Her most recent collaboration has brought together the piano etudes of Philip Glass and the drawings of artist Richard Serra. Her book chapter 'MusicArt: Creating Dialogue Across the Arts' was published by Palgrave Macmillan in the edited volume ‘Researching and Writing on Contemporary Art and Artists’ in 2020.
Annie is founding member of the Minerva Piano Trio, who made their London debut at the Southbank Centre in 2014. She was St John’s Smith Square Young Artist in Residence in 2016/17. Her trio album ‘Dance!’ was released on the SOMM label in 2022 to critical acclaim, which includes her arrangement of a work by Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Caroline Shaw.
Raised in Vancouver, Annie’s teachers include Robert Silverman at the University of British Columbia and Joan Havill at the Guildhall School of Music. She was awarded a Doctor of Musical Arts for her performance-based research on Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms at the Guildhall School of Music and City, University of London. She enjoys teaching and mentoring fellow young musicians, and has given lectures, educational workshops and masterclasses at conservatoires and universities.
Annie co-directs a concert series at Christ Church Kensington. Her upcoming performances include Swaledale Festival and Presteigne Festival.
Canadian/British (and Brussels based) violinist Sadie Fields enjoys a diverse career as soloist, chamber musician, collaborator, and researcher. Sadie discovered the violin at the age of seven when her primary school went to see the famous Axelrod collection of Stradivarius violins. After she heard these Strads being played, she was hooked, and she started performing at an early age. Sadie performs regularly throughout Europe and North America, and her concerts also bring her to the Middle East, Asia, and New Zealand. Sadie has long been passionate about chamber music, and was the founding leader of the Castalian Quartet and violinist of Trio Khnopff. She is also the founding violinist of the Festival Trio (Canada) and the Belgium-based Flash Ensemble, a flexible chamber ensemble with a string trio as its core. Sadie plays in recital with a number of fine pianists, and has recently formed a duo with Italian accordionist Luca Piovesan. Sadie was a member of the Swedish ensemble Camerata Nordica for ten years, and she currently performs regularly with the New European Ensemble (Netherlands) and many other ensembles in Europe.
As a recording artist, Sadie's most recent disc, ‘Weinberg – 1945’, by Trio Khnopff (Pavane Records), has met with great critical acclaim in Europe and North America, and was chosen as BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Chamber Disc of the Month’ for January 2020. Flash Ensemble's pioneering recording of the complete string trios by Hungarian composer Laszlo Lajtha will be released in Spring 2023. Sadie has recorded extensively for BIS Records Camerata Nordica, and has released two discs with Champs Hill Records. The first, a disc of Mendelssohn chamber music, was chosen as BBC Music Magazine’s Editor’s Choice and ‘Chamber Disc of the Month’, and was also ‘Chamber Music Disc of the Quarter’ by the German Record Critics’ Award Association. Sadie’s second disc for Champs Hill is the complete Brahms Sonatas with pianist Jeremy Young, released to widespread critical acclaim. Sadie also broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio New Zealand, NDR (Germany), Swedish radio, Klara (Belgium), Musiq’3 (Belgium), and NPO Radio 4 (Netherlands), amongst others.
Sadie holds a PhD from the Royal Academy of Music, London. Her practice-led doctoral research addresses practical and philosophical ideas associated with the concepts of learning and ‘tradition’, focusing on her own engagement with Bartók’s violin works. Sadie has won awards from over twenty UK and international associations and competitions, and has been a Leverhulme Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music and the Edison Visiting Fellow at the British Library.
Principal teachers include György Pauk, Yair Kless, and Atis Bankas, and Sadie has also been guided and mentored by Ivry Gitlis, Ida Haendel, and Ferenc Rados. As a teacher herself, Sadie teaches violin and chamber music, she taught at King's College London, and she gives masterclasses at conservatoires and universities in China, Canada, and the UK.
Richard Birchall read Music at Cambridge University and studied as a postgraduate cellist at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, under Louise Hopkins.
Richard pursues a varied and colourful career as cellist, composer, arranger and orchestrator. As no. 3 cello in the Philharmonia Orchestra he performs regularly in the great concert halls of the world; he has also appeared as Guest Principal cello with the Phiharmonia, Royal Opera House, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, English National Opera, English Chamber Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia and Irish Chamber Orchestra, and as concertmaster of the London Cello Orchestra. Richard’s solo and chamber work has ranged from Wigmore Hall to the catwalk at London Fashion Week. He was a founder member of cello octet Cellophony and is cellist of the Minerva Piano Trio.
Richard's arrangements and compositions have been performed at the BBC Proms, Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, The Purcell Room, The Sage Gateshead and throughout the UK, and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM and French and German national radio. Recent works include a Clarinet Concerto for Michael Collins, released on the BIS label; The Wind in the Willows for narrator and orchestra; Five Pieces for viola and piano; Conundra for cello and harp; and Alice in Wonderland for eight cellos and narrator, recorded and released by Cellophony Cello Octet with Simon Callow. Current commissions include a Sonata for the Philharmonia’s Principal Oboe, Timothy Rundle. As an arranger and orchestrator Richard has been commissioned by the Philharmonia, the London Cello Orchestra, the Doric and Tippett quartets, Trio Klein, violist Lawrence Power and others.
Richard has served as Deputy Chairman of the Philharmonia and on the Artistic Committee of the Park Lane Group.
About Christ Church Koncerts
Music. Garden. Community.
Concerts at Christ Church Kensington is a new concert series which brings together stunning acoustics, diverse musical talents and an enchanting organic garden in a charming neighbourhood in London.
Co-directed by Sam Barber, Director of Music at Christ Church, and pianist Annie Yim, the 2023 series includes music ranging from the 12th century to the present. The monthly concerts feature award-winning soloists and ensembles, as well as student showcases from London music conservatoires.
As a non-profit community project, the concert series aims to pioneer a holistic approach to the concert experience. In partnership with Growing Space, a community organic garden at Christ Church, artists and audiences are invited to the enclosed garden for a post-concert reception.
In association with Markson Pianos.
More about Christ Church Kensington: www.christchurchkensington.com/cckoncerts
More about Growing Space:www.growingspace.london
More about Markson Pianos: www.marksonpianos.com
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Christ Church Kensington, Victoria Road, London, United Kingdom
GBP 11.00 to GBP 15.00
