ASHLEY SOLOMON
flute/recorder
Director
Ashley Solomon enjoys a successful career as a soloist, chamber musician and guest director in the UK, across Europe as well as the Americas, Far East and Australia. He is the director of Florilegium, the baroque ensemble he co-founded in 1991 and has made close to 40 recordings with them, many of which have garnered international awards. They have given over 1,600 performances over the years, and more than 90 of these have been at London’s Wigmore Hall.
As a soloist, he has performed worldwide, including concertos in the Sydney Opera House, Esplanade (Singapore), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Konzerthaus (Vienna), Beethoven-Haus (Bonn) and Frick Collection (New York).
He also records as a solo artist with Channel Classics and his recording of the complete Bach’s Flute Sonatas was voted the best overall version of these works on either modern or period flute by Gramophone Magazine (February 2017):
Solomon’s luminous tone and unfussy command of the complicated melodies conflate into something utterly beautiful. Slow movements are soulful in their infinite variety, fast ones are clever and with a wealth of invention behind them.
In recent years he has been involved in a unique recording project using a private collection of 17th and 18th century flutes. To date he has released 3 volumes in the Spohr Collection series involving 27 rare and original 1-keyed baroque flutes made of ivory, boxwood, ebony and porcelain. This project has given new insight into the sound world of European flute makers in the baroque period.
Since 2003 he has been training vocalists and instrumentalists in Bolivia, working on the remarkable collection of music held in archives by the Moxos and Chiquitos Indians. He formed Arakaendar Bolivia Choir in 2005 and Arakaendar Baroque Orchestra in 2007 and has directed them in concerts at major international festivals. In 2008 he was one of the first Europeans to receive the prestigious Bolivian Hans Roth Prize given in recognition of the enormous assistance he has given to the Bolivian musicians, their presence on the international stage and the promotion and preservation of this music.
Combining a successful career across both theory and practice, Ashley is also Head of Historical Performance at London’s Royal College of Music, having been appointed a professor in 1994. In 2014 he was awarded a Personal Chair and in July 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music (FRAM) and in 2019 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Music (FRCM). Since 2014 he has been working closely with the Royal Collection Trust to curate musical performances in their Royal venues.
He has given masterclasses and lectures worldwide, including The Juilliard School, Yale University, Sydney Conservatorium, Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Singapore, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Oslo and Bergen Conservatories, Frankfurt Hochschule and Mozarteum in Salzburg.
He has recently been appointed a Patron of the Continuo Foundation.
MAGDALENA LOTH-HILL
violin
British-Polish violinist Magdalena Loth-Hill enjoys a diverse career performing on both modern and period instruments. She is a regular player with Solomon’s Knot, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Mozartists, La Nuova Musica, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and London Mozart Players.
Magdalena is a passionate chamber musician and a founding member of the Consone Quartet, the first period-instrument quartet selected as BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists (2019-2022). The group was awarded a prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust fellowship in 2022 and are partway through a Mendelssohn cycle for Linn Records. Recent projects include premieres of new works by Gavin Bryars and Oliver Leith, alongside residencies at Paxton House and Music in the Round. Magdalena also plays with Ensemble Hesperi – a period ensemble that champions rarely heard music. Hesperi won first prize at the 2020 London International Festival of Early Music competition, third prize at the International Van Wassenaer Competition in Utrecht in 2021 and were City Music Foundation Artists.
In 2016 Magdalena opened Bolivia’s Misiones de Chiquitos Festival with two solo recitals as Artist of the Festival. She has recorded music for the British Library’s “Georgians Revealed” exhibition and exam repertoire for ABRSM.
Magdalena studied at Chetham’s School of Music and the Royal College of Music, where she held the Mills Williams Junior Fellowship while she gained her Artist Diploma in period performance. Upon graduating, Magdalena was presented with the Mills Williams Medal.
GABI JONES
violin
Gabi Jones enjoys a diverse career performing as a soloist and chamber musician in the UK and internationally. As both a modern player and a historical specialist, she plays and records regularly with Florilegium, Solomon’s Knot, The Academy of Ancient Music, The English Concert, Aurora and the English Baroque Soloists.
Gabi is the co-founder of Liturina, a dynamic chamber ensemble specialising in the trio sonata repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as genre-crossover and contemporary music. She is a sought-after leader with ensembles including Vache Baroque, Opera Settecento, Wond’rous Machine and the Waterperry Opera Festival Orchestra, and led Florilegium in their South American tour in June 2024, as well as their upcoming Telemann CD. In addition, she has directed projects at the Royal College of Music, Chetham’s, and the Baroquestock Festival. Gabi has spoken for events with The English Concert, AAM, RCM, and Waterperry Opera Festival on a range of musical topics.
She attended Chetham’s School of Music, before graduating from Trinity College Cambridge in 2016 and going on to pursue a masters at the Royal College of Music. Gabi was awarded the prestigious Kit and Constant Lambert Fellowship while she gained her Artist Diploma in historical performance. A passionate music educator, Gabi teaches violin and modern and historical chamber music at Chetham’s. She has given masterclasses in the UK and abroad, including competition moderation and adjudication. She plays a Kloz school violin from 1679.
JENNIFER MORSCHES
cello
Jennifer Morsches enjoys an international career as a versatile cellist, acclaimed for playing with “intelligence and pathos” and a “fine mixture of elegance and gutsiness.” Especially inclined towards historical performance, she is the principal cellist of Florilegium since 2000, with whom she performs around the globe and has recorded numerous award-winning discs for Channel Classics Records. She is Co-Artistic Director of Sarasa Ensemble, based in Cambridge, MA, highly acknowledged for its outreach in youth detention centres in the Boston Metropolitan Area. World premieres of chamber music include pieces by David Matthews, Michael Wolpe and Ben Zion Orgad, and a new commission for Julian Grant in 2019. She is a founding member of Richter Ensemble, tracing and focussing on the interdependence of today’s music with the past. A longtime member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Les Siècles and Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, she has toured and recorded with eminent artists such as Sir Simon Rattle, Sir András Schiff, Vladimir Jurowski, Sir Roger Norrington, Dame Emma Kirkby, Michael Chance, David Zinman, François-Xavier Roth and Philippe Herreweghe. Jennifer graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cumlaude, First Group Scholar from Smith College with degrees in Music History and German Literature, and was awarded the Ernst Wallfisch Prize in Music.
She received her Master’s and Doctorate in Cello Performance as a scholarship student of Timothy Eddy at the Mannes College of Music and SUNY at Stony Brook in New York. Recipient of the CD Jackson Prize for outstanding merit and contribution at Tanglewood, she was featured on Wynton Marsalis’s educational music videos with Yo-Yo Ma. Awarded a Finzi Travel Scholarship and residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), Jennifer has focussed research on the ambiguous history of the five-string piccolo cello.
REIKO ICHISE
viola da gamba
Reiko was born in Tokyo and began her musical training as a pianist. She read musicology at the Kunitachi College of Music where she started playing the viola da gamba, having lessons with Yukimi Kanbe and Tetsuya Nakano.
In 1991 she came to Britain, winning the foundation scholarship at the Royal College of Music, to study gamba with Richard Boothby. Whilst there, she won the concerto prize and completed her post graduate study with distinction. Since leaving the RCM, she has established herself as one of the leading gamba players in the UK.
Reiko has performed extensively throughout the UK as chamber musician and soloist, appearing in venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall and the Royal Opera House.
She has worked with many leading conductors and orchestras including Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists, Sir David Willcocks and the English Chamber Orchestra, Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort, and Kurt Masur and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Reiko regularly works with early music ensembles such as Concordia, Passacaglia, Charivari Agreable and the Early Opera Company. She has recorded chamber music for Lynn, Metronome, ASV and deux-elles. Since 2001 she has been a core member of Florilegium.
STEVEN DEVINE
harpsichord/organ
Steven Devine is renowned as a keyboard player specialising historic instruments and a Music Director who has worked with many of the leading musicians and groups around the world. His repertoire encompasses a huge variety of music from the 15th century to the present day and he is equally at home conducting Christmas Carol shows at the Barbican and playing intimate clavichord recitals at the Purcell Room. He is Principal Keyboard Player for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) and Director of their hugely successful “Bach, the Universe and Everything” series.
In addition he is Conductor and Artistic Advisor of The English Haydn Festival and Music Director of New Chamber Opera, Oxford. His recordings including directing the award-winning “Dido and Aeneas” with Sarah Connolly for Chandos records and many solo discs for Resonus, all of which have been critically acclaimed. Recent releases have included Bach Harpsichord Concertos with the OAE (Res10318), the complete harpsichord music of Bach’s favourite student, Johann Ludwig Krebs and Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Books 1 and 2. Steven teaches harpsichord, fortepiano and continuo at the Royal Academy of Music and is Early Keyboard Consultant to the Royal Welsh and Royal Birmingham Conservatoires.
