£75k raised for our Birthday season
After launching an appeal to raise £100,000 for our birthday year, we’ve already hit the £75k mark. We’d like to say a massive thank you to all those who have donated so far – your generosity has made this season of exciting concerts and projects possible.
Our 2018/19 Birthday season started with a dramatic opening, as LMP members arrived on the number 70 Routemaster bus for a concert performance on the concourse at St Pancras Intl featuring Howard Shelley. Our lunchtime concert series Piano Explored at St John’s Smith Square is now well underway with one more performance before Christmas – the next Piano Explored concert (Wednesday 12th Dec) will feature a performance of Mozart’s ravishing Sinfonia Concertante by Leader Simon Blendis and Principal Viola Judith Busbridge. We’ve also performed at our resident venue St John the Evangelist with Radu Kis (teenage finalist of Hungary’s prestigious Virtuosos 2017 classical music competition) for our season launch, and film score aficionado & conductor Ben Palmer for Sounds of the Silver Screen. In December the orchestra will be performing twice at St John the Evangelist: Four Cellos – a free coffee concert on Saturday 1st December (made possible by the generous support of the LMP Friend’s network), and Deck the Halls – our Christmas extravaganza on Friday 14th December, a concert in aid of the charity Crisis.
For the full list of upcoming concerts, please visit our What’s On page. Alternatively, donate to our appeal and help us reach £100k by Christmas – Donations of any size are greatly appreciated!
Ben Rogerson
As well as playing the cello with the London Mozart Players Ben Rogerson is a member of the BBC Concert Orchestra. He spent most of the nought-ies with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and also enjoys playing regularly with the John Wilson Orchestra. With the ICO he toured all over the world giving concerts with artists including Maxim Vengerov, Steven Isserlis, Anthony Marwood and Nigel Kennedy in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall in New York, the Forbidden Palace in Beijing, and the Community Centre on Inis Boffin off the West Coast of Ireland.
His life with the BBCCO involves a more eclectic range of music making, from classical and pop concerts, to recording music for TV, film, radio and CD. Jeff Lynne and the ELO, Earth Wind and Fire, Kylie Minogue, Sinead O’Connor and Dame Edna Everidge are amongst the artists they have worked with recently, and the orchestra is resident for Radio 2’s flagship show “Friday Night is Music Night”.
Ben has been fortunate to play as Guest Principal Cello for the City of London Sinfonia, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera and Opera North, the Mozart Festival Orchestra and the Johann Strauss Gala Orchestra.
With violinist Gabrielle Painter and Leslie Hollingworth he formed the Szabo Piano Trio. Together they gave recitals throughout the UK and Ireland, recorded for Champs Hill Records, and broadcast on Lyric FM. Nowadays he gives chamber music concerts mostly with the Minerva Ensemble. He has appeared as a guest with the Carducci, Tippet, Merchant and St. Paul’s quartets for performances of the Schubert C Major Quintet.
Ben studied at the Royal Academy of Music where his cello teacher was Derek Simpson of the Aoelian Quartet, and at SUNY Purchase, USA,with Julia Lichten of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
For several years he coached the cello section of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland, and served on the faculty of Con Corda, a chamber music course founded in Ireland by the late Hugh Maguire. Now Ben teaches the cello at Tonbridge School, Kent, and at Frensham Heights in Surrey.
He is married to the pianist Alexis White and is very proud of his two children Harry and Scarlett.
Jeremy Metcalfe
I suppose it was as head chorister in a third-rate church choir, receiving the Fane Trophy, engraved ‘For General Progress’, that I perhaps realised my prospects of being a celebrated musician were to be down-graded. Being ‘the excellent leader’ (Oxford Mail) of the County Youth Orchestra counted for nothing as a student at the Royal Academy of Music. But by being generally inoffensive and largely invisible I have enjoyed a rich and varied career freelancing with orchestras including the RPO, LPO, BBCSO and Royal Opera Covent Garden. Opera has played a major role, being a member of ETO and GTO. I have probably played The Marriage of Figaro over 200 times, a record possibly unmatched?
On screen I’ve appeared in scenes with Keira Knightley, Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant and Michael Caine. Other highlights include concerts with George Harrison, standing at a urinal next to Andre Previn, and a few more. Downsides have been multiple Saturdays ruined by disappointing Everton results and late night motorway closures. Early in my student days I narrowly avoided death from a falling slab of frozen meat in Marylebone High St.
Embarrassing moments have been mercifully few, but the discovery that it was my mobile phone ringing in the hushed final moments of Boheme, and my subsequent inabilty to silence the wretched thing stands out. The fact that it was in full view of a packed hall was irksome to say the least. And the caller? LMP’s Orchestral Manager, Mr D Wilson. It obviously hasn’t spoiled our relationship as, for the time being, I still hang on to my membership of this esteemed group. Outside interests? Birding, gardening and the Guardian cryptic crossword.