St Dunstan’s Classical Music Series - October

CHIHIRO ONO Born in Japan, Chihiro Ono started her musical journey when she was four years old, on the piano,  picking up the violin two years later. She went on to study with Kenji Kobayashi at the Toho School of Music in Tokyo.

It was on the viola that she played in her first string quartet opening opportunities to play with such Seiji Ozawa and the Juilliard String Quartet. In 2000 she moved to London to study with Yfrah Neaman at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and since with Simon Fischer, Susie Meszaros, Susanne Stanzeleit, Krysia Osostowicz, Levon Chilingirian and Itzhak Rashkovsky.

She obtained her Master's degree from the Royal College of Music with distinction in 2007. She has played in many prestigious British venues and festivals, such as Wigmore Hall, St Martin's in the Fields, St John's Smith Square, St James' Piccadilly, London Contemporary Music Festival, BMIC music series, Lake District Summer Music, as well as appearing on BBC Radio 3 and worked with many established groups and musicians. She also regularly attends the Open Chamber Music at IMS Prussia Cove.

BELLS QUARTET

Ryoko Harada (violin)
Cristina Prats (violin)
Josh Stilwell (viola)
Maarit Kangron (Cello)

Ryoko Harada: Ryoko was born in Tokyo and started her musical studies with the violin at the age of four under the teachings of Kaoru Yamada and Kyoko Suzuki. She attended the Toho Gakuen Junior Academy and the Toho Music High School for six years before she entered the Toho Gakuen School of Music in 2003, where she studied with Professor Tomoko Kato.

Ryoko has been awarded with many prizes such as the gold prize of the International Music and Art Festival in Asia in 2005 and the first prize of the AJAA Music Society Violin Competition in 2007. She held a solo recital at the Wien-Hall in Tokyo in 2008. She is also a keen chamber and an orchestra musician, having performed as the Amico Quartet at the 4th Project Q. She is a member of the renowned Seiji Ozawa Music Academy Orchestra and the Saito Kinen Chamber Music Study Group for Young People since 2006.

Ryoko is a recipient of a scholarship from Rohm Music Foundation in Japan and the Elizabeth Willmore Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied with Professor Tomotada Soh. She is currently in her second year of the Masters in Performance at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and is learning with Professor Detlef Hahn.

Michiko Hisamatsu(MS) and YOMO NO KAI

Was born at Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan and began her Koto career at 6 years old and organized her own Koto group “ YOMO NO KAI” in 1965.

Now the YOMO NO KAI has about 30 members. “YOMO NO KAI” means “group from all directions “ in Japanese and it represents Ms. Hisamatsu’s principle to enjoy Koto music altogether.Ms. Hisamatsu and YOMO NO KAI give an annual concert once a year in springtime and also play at the local cultural festival every autumn. Apart from those two main concerts, they visit the old citizen’s houses and the home for the handicapped to play Koto throughout the year.

Ms. Hisamatsu travels abroad for concert tours with her pupils and friends many times. That is to say England in 2002, Finland in 2003, Germany in 2004, Russia in 2005, Portugal in 2006, and Romania in 2007.

In 2008, she played at 50th anniversary event of the Dutch-Japanese Association at Leiden in Netherlands and received a good reception.

Kazue Yanagida is a Japanese violinist born in Tokyo. She began her studies with Noriko Miki at the age of five and soon went on to take part in masterclasses by Dr Shin-ichi Suzuki (the founder of the Suzuki Method) and William Primrose who praised her talent and to study with a prominent violinist Toshiya Eto of the Toho Gakuen College of Music.

She came to England in 1988 to study at the Royal Academy of Music where she graduated with First Class Distinction for the violin performance having won two first prizes of violin competitions at the RAM, Alfred J Waley Violin Prize and Winifred Small Solo Violin Prize. During her time at the RAM she was under the guidance of Howard Davis and Zakher Bron and the Amadeus Quartet for chamber music. She has participated in many masterclasses including by Ruggiero Ricci, Ida Haendel and Anne-Sophie Mutter and was also a prizewinner of the Anglo-Czechoslovak Music Trust. She was given the honour of a loan of a
prestigious Grancino violin from the RAM.

Having studied further for four years with Yfrah Neaman at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she gained a Diploma of Advanced Instrumental Studies, she has given many concerts in the UK and abroad and made several concerto appearances. She has played as sub-principal in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and worked with Sir Colin Davis, Tadaaki Otaka, Mark Wigglesworth, Alfred Brendel, Stephen Kovacevich and Freddy Kempf at venues such as the Barbican Hall and the Queen Elizabeth Hall. She has also lead the Cosmos Ensemble that gave a world premiere performance of Dai Fujikura’s “Shadow’s Light”.