Zoë Beyers, English Symphony Orchestra & Kenneth Woods
Biography Zoë Beyers, English Symphony Orchestra & Kenneth Woods
Zoë Beyers
South-African born Zoë Beyers has established a reputation as one of the finest violinists based in the UK, and performs as soloist, chamber musician, director and orchestral leader across the world. Zoë’s remarkable versatility was nurtured by Gabrielle Lester and Felix Andrievsky at the Royal College of Music, where she was an ABRSM international scholarship holder, Yehudi Menuhin Scholar, winner of the Tagore Gold Medal, and winner of the UNISA String Competition in South Africa. Since her solo debut aged eleven with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under Paavo Järvi, she has performed with many distinguished conductors worldwide. She currently features prominently as soloist with the English Symphony Orchestra on the ESO Digital platform, performing amongst others Weinberg’s Concertino and Milhaud’s Le boeuf sur le toit. She also performs as a soloist with the BBC Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In 2020, Zoë took up the position of Leader of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom she appears regularly as a soloist and chamber musician.
Zoë is a member of the internationally renowned Hebrides Ensemble and also performs, broadcasts and records with the Nash Ensemble, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the Scottish Ensemble, and I Musicanti. In 2019 she joined the Dante Quartet as their first violinist. She has collaborated with Francois Leleux, Stephen Osborne, Lars Vogt, Elisabeth Leonskaja and Alexander Janiczek, and composers Helen Grime, Huw Watkins, Oliver Knussen, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sir James Macmillan. Hebrides Ensemble’s 2017 recording of Maxwell Davies’s late chamber works (‘The Last Island’/Delphian), featured on BBC Radio 3 and attracted top ranking reviews in The Times, The Guardian and BBC Music Magazine.
Zoë performs regularly with the English Symphony Orchestra as a soloist and director, as well as in her role as their concertmaster. Zoë relishes the challenge of directing from the violin: her recording of early Mendelssohn concerti with the University of Stellenbosch Camerata was nominated for a SAMA award in 2011; her 2013 recording of Wassenaer concerti armonici (directing the Innovation Chamber Ensemble for Somm Records) was Classic FM’s CD of the week, and their 2014 disc of rare Elgar works was received with critical acclaim.
As a guest leader, Zoë appears with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony and Scottish Symphony Orchestras, the Philharmonia, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Aurora Orchestra. For the past two years she regularly guest lead the Orquesta Nacional de España at the invitation of maestro Juanjo Mena. She features as leader on many highly regarded recordings by Andris Nelsons, Juanjo Mena and John Storgards, most recently on discs of de Falla and Ginastera with Mena and the BBC Philharmonic for Chandos.
Zoë is dedicated to performing the music of contemporary composers and is involved in the commissioning and premiering of several new works. She also has a passionate interest in education, teaching at the Birmingham Conservatoire and coaching violinists and ensembles at the start of their careers. She is proud to be involved in ARCO, a distance learning collaboration between Birmingham Conservatoire and students in deprived areas of South Africa.
Kenneth Woods
As Artistic Director of the English Symphony Orchestra since 2015 (and Principal Conductor since 2013), Kenneth and the ESO have built a reputation for ground-breaking commissions, major musical rediscoveries and unique, immersive and revelatory programmes. Kenneth and the ESO were awarded Classical Music Magazine’s “Premiere of the Year” accolade in consecutive years in 2015-16. Under Kenneth’s leadership the ESO has also become recognised as a world leader in promoting the music of composers whose work was suppressed by the Nazis, including first recordings of major works by Hans Gál, Erwin Schulhoff, Ernst Krenek and Walter Arlen, among others. Also during his tenure, the ESO won the Association of British Orchestra’s Sirens Award in recognition of their support of neglected music by historical female composers.
In 2015, Kenneth was appointed the second Artistic Director of the Colorado MahlerFest, one of only two North American organisations to have been the Gold Medal of the International Gustav Mahler Society in Vienna. Under Kenneth’s leadership, the festival has grown enormously in scope and ambition, expanded its repertoire and embraced performances of opera, Lieder, chamber music, jazz and rock. Colorado MahlerFest also features interdisciplinary events highlighting Mahler’s connections with visual artists, philosophers, directors and writers.
In 2017, Kenneth Woods was invited to be the founding Artistic Director of The Elgar Festival in Worcester, the official annual celebration of the life and music of Britain’s greatest composer in the city of his birth. The inaugural Elgar Festival in 2018 was a “Critic’s Pick” in The Guardian, and since then the Elgar Festival has been routinely been singled out as one of the country’s most important festivals in the Telegraph and The Times. In 2022, the Guardian listed the Elgar Festival as one of the top 15 celebrations nationwide for the Royal Platinum Jubilee. The Festival combines world-class performances of the Elgarian canon with performances of lesser known composers, Elgar’s contemporaries, and leading composers of the day. Under Woods’ leadership, the Festival espouses an ethos of “Elgar for Everyone” with a busy calendar of free events, family events, concerts for people living with dementia and non-classical concerts.
Kenneth Woods’ approach to programming brings together his long experience as one of today’s busiest and most admired conductors with his many ‘off the podium’ interests and areas of expertise. As a busy chamber musician and cellist, Kenneth’s knowledge of chamber and recital repertoire is just as vast as that of the symphonic literature. As a guitarist, he carries with him a life-time’s love of, and engagement with, a broad spectrum of musical traditions including jazz, folk music, world music, rock n roll, funk and roots music. And his programming over the years shows the rich creative possibility of multi-disciplinary approaches.
