Onyx Brass & John Wilson
Biographie Onyx Brass & John Wilson
Viv McLean
Described by Le Monde as "possessing the genius one finds in those who know how to forget themselves", since winning First Prize at the Maria Canals Piano Competition in Barcelona, British pianist Viv McLean has performed in all the major venues in the UK as well as throughout Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA. Viv’s concerto work includes appearances with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Sinfonia Viva, Orchestra of the Swan, Orchestra of St John’s, Northern Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Concert Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of such conductors as Daniel Harding, John Wilson, Wayne Marshall, John Lubbock, Christopher Warren-Green, Anthony Inglis, Owain Arwell Hughes, Philip Hesketh, David Charles Abell, Stephen Bell, Carl Davis, Rebecca Miller, Chloe Van Soederstede and Marvin Hamlisch. Recent concerto highlights include Mozart K467 with the ECO at the Royal Festival Hall, Grieg with the LPO at the Barbican, Rachmaninov’s 3rd Concerto with the RPO in Cambridge, Gershwin, Bernstein, de Falla and Ravel with the Hallé at the Bridgewater Hall, The Sage Gateshead and other venues in the North of England, and Beethoven's 5th Concerto with the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall.
Viv plays regularly with the Adderbury Ensemble and has also performed with other leading chamber groups such as the Ysaye String Quartet, the Sacconi String Quartet, the London Mozart Players Chamber Ensemble, members of the Elias, Allegri, Tippett String Quartets and Leonore Piano Trio, Ensemble 360, the Galliard Wind Ensemble, Onyx Brass, the Bristol Ensemble, the Berkeley Ensemble and the Leopold String Trio. He has collaborated with musicians such as Natalie Clein, Marianne Thorsen, Daniel Hope, Lawrence Power, Adrian Brendel, Mary Bevan, David Le Page, Matthew Sharp, Guy Johnston, Alice Neary, Ruth Rogers, Fenella Humphreys, Jessica Duchen, Alasdair Beatson and many others.
He has performed at numerous festivals including the Cheltenham International Festival, Buxton Festival, Music in the Round Festival and Harrogate International Festival in the UK, the International Beethoven Festival, the Mecklenburg Festival and the Kultur Kreis Festival in Germany, the Festival International de Musique Classique d’Aigues-Mortes, the Melle Festival and Festival de Saintes in France, the Vinterfestspill i Bergstaden in Norway and the Musik vid Kattegatt Festival in Sweden. Since 2014, Viv has been pianist-in-residence at the Glossop Festival.
Viv studied from an early age with Ruth Nye and, after attending Chetham’s School of Music, he went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Hamish Milne and Maria Curcio. At the Academy he held the Hodgson Fellowship and was made an Associate of the Royal Academy in 2005. He made his Wigmore Hall recital debut through winning the Friends of the Royal Academy Wigmore Award. Whilst studying at the Academy, he was the winner of the piano competition at the Royal Overseas-League Music Competition and was selected as one of the winners of the National Federation of Music Societies' Young Artists Competition.
Viv made his BBC Radio 3 recital debut through the BBC Radio 3 Young Artists Forum scheme and has also recorded for Classic FM, WDR Radio in Germany, Radio France, ABC Radio in Australia, NRK Radio in Norway and for the Sky Arts television channel. His commercial releases include recordings for such labels as Sony, Chandos, Naxos, Nimbus, Lyrita, RPO Records, ICSM Records, Harmony & Imagination Records and his most recent releases are a Chopin recital and a selection of live recordings for Stone Records. Upcoming albums include the Florence Price Octet with Onyx Brass for Chandos, and the Piano Sonata and Chamber Music of Kenneth V. Jones with the LMP Chamber Players for Lyrita.
Onyx Brass
is one of the rare breed of chamber ensembles whose musical and technical virtuosity is matched by the accessibility and vitality of their presentation. Their mission is to have their extraordinary abilities at the disposal of the music at all times, and to play music of the requisite quality to reflect the status of the brass quintet as a serious medium for chamber music. The richness and warmth of their sound is remarked upon by all who hear them.
John Wilson
s in demand at the highest level across the globe, having conducted many of the world’s finest orchestras over the past 30 years. In 2018 he relaunched Sinfonia of London: described as ‘the most exciting thing currently happening on the British orchestral scene’ (The Arts Desk), Wilson and the Sinfonia’s much-anticipated BBC Proms debut in 2021 was praised as ‘truly outstanding’ (The Guardian) with its ‘revelatory music-making’ (The Times). They are now highly sought-after across the UK, regularly returning to the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh Festival and London’s Barbican Centre among other festivals.
Wilson’s large and varied discography with Sinfonia of London has received near-universal critical acclaim, and in the autumn of 2024 they released their twenty-fourth album since 2019. Their recordings have earned several awards, including numerous BBC Music Magazine Awards for recordings of Korngold’s Symphony in F sharp (2020), Respighi’s Roman Trilogy (2021), Dutilleux’s Le Loup (2022), Oklahoma! (2024) and a disc of works by Vaughan Williams, Howells, Delius and Elgar which won both the Orchestral Award and Recording of the Year. The Observer described the Respighi recording as “Massive, audacious and vividly played” and The Times declared it one of the three “truly outstanding accounts of this trilogy” of all time, after those by Toscanini (1949) and Muti (1984).
Born in Gateshead, Wilson studied composition and conducting at the Royal College of Music where, in 2011, he was made a Fellow. In March 2019, John Wilson was awarded the prestigious ISM Distinguished Musician Award for his services to music and in 2021 was appointed Henry Wood Chair of Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music.
