We are a collective that offers recitals of varying instrumentation. Here are some of our core players.
Nicola Hands (oboe, Artistic Director) is a busy freelance performer, whose playing has been described by reviewers as ‘beguiling’ and ‘exquisite’, and whose ‘warm, full tone is affecting’ (MusicWeb International). Nicola was second oboe and principal cor anglais for the Orquestra do Norte from 2015 to 2017, and has played regularly as a freelancer with Philharmonia Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Ballet Sinfonia, Orquestra Metropolitana, Aurora Orchestra and Orpheus Sinfonia, amongst others. She also plays for musical theatre; from 2013 to 2014 she was the oboe and cor anglais player for ‘The Light Princess’ by Tori Amos at the National Theatre, and was a cover player for ‘Miss Saigon’.
As a soloist, Nicola has performed oboe concertos by Marcello, Martinu, Mozart, Richard Strauss and Vaughan Williams. In 2015 she was awarded a Jellinek Soloist’s Award by Croydon Symphony Orchestra. With her duo partner, pianist Jonathan Pease, she performs regularly across the UK, and the duo have released two albums.
Nicola graduated with Distinction from the Masters programme at the Royal Academy of Music in 2013, where she was awarded the Evelyn Barbirolli Prize for Oboe and the Grimaldi Cor Anglais Scholarship.
Nicola Crowe (flute) splits her time between London and Sydney and enjoys a diverse career of performing and teaching. She studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with James Kortum and later at the Royal College of Music with Simon Channing and Jaime Martin where she was awarded the RCM All Flutes Plus prize.
In 2014 she was a member of the Southbank Sinfonia before returning to Australia in 2015 to begin a fellowship with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, followed by a second flute contract with the orchestra in 2016. In 2022 she completed a PGCEi funded by the musical charity Music Masters, and is passionate about championing diversity through inclusive music education. She has also taught at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and held the Lecturer in Flute position at the Australian Institute of Music.
Since 2015, Nicola has regularly performed with the Opera Australia Orchestra as a freelance and contract musician and has played with orchestras and ensembles including the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the English National Ballet, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta and the Macao Orchestra.
Lana Bode (piano) is an American-British pianist, programmer and artistic director, whose performances have been described as ‘expertly calibrated’ (BBC Music Magazine) and ‘deeply examined’ (Gramophone). She is a leading interpreter of contemporary music and an innovative cross-arts programmer. She performs as a solo pianist and in collaboration with leading singers and instrumentalists including Robert Cohen, Marcus Farnsworth, Alessandro Fisher, Anna Harvey, Robert Murray, Mark Padmore, Lucy Schaufer and James Turnbull. A champion of new music, Lana has commissioned works by Charlotte Bray, Richard Barnard and Jeremy Thurlow. She has also collaborated with composers Alison Bauld, Harrison Birtwistle, Jonathan Dove, Helen Grime, Sadie Harrison, Libby Larsen, Kevin Malone, Zoë Martlew, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Judith Weir.
Lana’s recital career has taken her from major London venues to festivals around the UK including Aldeburgh Festival, Barbican Hall, Kings Place, Purcell Room, Snape Proms and Wigmore Hall. Her discography on Delphian Records includes the highly-acclaimed I and Silence: Women’s Voices in American Song with mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons, and dream.risk.sing: elevating women’s voices with soprano Samantha Crawford.
Lana is co-founder and Artistic Director of the Virginia Woolf & Music concert project, and a faculty member at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
Amy Thompson (bassoon, Head of Outreach) studied as a Musicians' Company Lambert Scholar at the Royal College of Music, where she was awarded the Howarth Bassoon Prize.
Amy's professional engagements include work with the City of London Sinfonia, Ulster Orchestra, Bath Philharmonia, Orpheus Sinfonia, Brandenburg Sinfonia, and London Sinfonietta, and she was a 2023 member of Southbank Sinfonia. Amy has taken part in schemes with BBCSO, ENO, Chipping Campden Festival Academy Orchestra, LSA, and Orpheus Sinfonia. She has also recorded multiple CDs of bassoon quartets and trios for Hyperion Records.
As a soloist and chamber musician, Amy has given recitals at St. John's Smith Square, Surrey Hills International Music Festival, English Music Festival, Nottingham Chamber Music Festival, and at the National Portrait Gallery, as well as performing for the British Double Reed Society.
Amy has played Weber, Bach, Crusell, and Vivaldi concertos with orchestra, and can often be found playing the contrabassoon and/or baroque bassoon.
Emma Halnan (flute) first came to prominence as woodwind category winner of BBC Young Musician 2010. She has since appeared at major venues worldwide and has performed concertos with orchestras such as the London Mozart Players and the European Union Chamber Orchestra. Other competition successes include the Sussex Prize for Woodwind in the Royal Overseas League Competition 2019 and first prize in the Sir Karl Jenkins/Arts Club Award 2016. Emma was selected as a “Making Music” Young Artist 2018-20 and is a City Music Foundation Artist.
Emma was principal flute of the European Union Youth Orchestra 2014-16. She has also freelanced with orchestras including the London Mozart Players, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, English National Opera and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. She teaches privately, for the University of Cambridge, and at Trinity Laban Conservatoire. She has given a masterclass at the Royal Academy of Music, and has also taught at the international Oxford Flute Summer School.
Emma studied at the Royal Academy of Music with William Bennett and Kate Hill, then with Robert Winn. She previously studied at the Purcell School with Anna Pope.
Helen Pierce (clarinet) graduated from Goldsmith’s University and continued her studies at Trinity College of Music for a Masters degree, which she passed with distinction. She was awarded the Wilfred Hambleton prize for clarinet and went on to study in Germany and Italy with Hans Deinzer. Whilst in Germany Helen worked with the country’s leading contemporary music group ‘Ensemble Modern’, touring with them to Cologne, Brussels and Frankfurt. She also played with Darmstadt Staatstheater Opera Orchestra and with Frankfurt Schauspiel.
In the UK Helen has worked with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Ballet Sinfonia, English Sinfonia, Manning Camerata, Covent Garden Sinfonia and Britten Pears Orchestra amongst others. She plays principal clarinet with St Paul’s Sinfonia. In the field of chamber music, Helen plays with the quartet Clariphonics who were semi-finalists in the Royal Overseas League Competition and were selected as Park Lane Group Young Artists in 2009. Their Purcell Room recital was received with great acclaim:
‘Clariphonics delivered spirited musicianship’ according to The Guardian who awarded the performance four stars.
Sessions Helen has played on include Miguel d’Oliveira’s score for The Prosecutors (BBC 4) and Walton’s Façade for Suzy Klein’s ‘Our Classical Century’ (BBC 4). As a bass clarinettist and saxophonist Helen is a regular visitor to Cornwall’s St. Endellion Summer Music Festival.
Anna Drysdale (french horn) is the 2nd horn of Scottish Opera, and has been playing with the Tailleferre Ensemble since 2021. She studied at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, winning prizes including the Dennis Brain Horn Prize and the Richard III Prize for Early Music. As a student, she toured with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and the European Union Youth Orchestra; she also auditioned successfully for a number of training schemes with UK orchestras, including the Academy of Ancient Music’s AAMplify Orchestra, LSO Brass Academy and playing guest principal horn with the LPO Future Firsts Ensemble.
She has trialled with orchestras including Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and BBC Philharmonic. For the past few years, she has been the principal horn with English Touring Opera, receiving recent critical acclaim for performances of Bellini’s “I Capuleti e I Montecchi”, with reviewers lauding “the sheer quality of the musical performances…complemented by some instrumental solos that were very fine indeed, notably the horn solo for Giulietta’s opening aria“. She has also played with UK orchestras including Britten Sinfonia, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Welsh National Opera, London Mozart Players and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Anna is passionate about solo and chamber repertoire. She has performed Brandenburg 1 several times with leading UK baroque ensemble Florilegium, and has recorded the work for a forthcoming CD alongside Anneke Scott with the collective Solomon’s Knot. She has performed a complete cycle of Mozart Horn Concertos on the natural horn with the Amadè Players, and Mozart 3 and Strauss’s 1st Horn Concerto with both orchestras at Harrow Young Musicians, the organisation that originally kindled her love of music. She also performed Ethel Smyth’s Concerto for Horn, Violin and Orchestra in 2018. On the modern horn, she was the 2015 winner of the Paxman Prize; 2015 also saw her first appearance at the British Horn Society’s annual meeting in Liverpool as a featured soloist. She is a regular guest with period wind sextet Boxwood and Brass and chamber collectives the Berkeley Ensemble and Istante Collective, and has explored much of the wind chamber repertoire with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Wind Soloists and the Hastings Philharmonic Wind Quintet.
Jennifer Dunsmore (clarinet) studied her Undergraduate at the Royal College of Music, then Masters in clarinet at the Royal Academy of Music with Mark van de Wiel, Angela Malsbury, and Laurent Ben Slimane. She freelances with ensembles and orchestras around the UK, at venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Cadogan Hall, Hackney Empire, St David’s Hall, and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, as well as festivals, namely the Edinburgh Fringe, Cumnock Tryst, and the BBC Proms. Jennifer has also recorded at Abbey Road Studios and the English National Opera’s Lilian Baylis House.
Jennifer has played with internationally revered conductors including Sir Mark Elder, Semyon Bychkov, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Christopher Hogwood, and Ed Gardner. Outside the UK, she has performed across Europe, Asia, and North America. She enjoys playing diverse musical styles – performing on the Wilderness Festival’s Atrium stage, in a birthday celebration for jazz legend Norma Winston at Cadogan Hall, Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s music conducted by the composer, an opera with libretto written and performed by Stephen Fry, and New York Counterpoint at the Glasgow Minimal Festival in the presence of Steve Reich. Jennifer was invited to perform a sonata for clarinet and piano composed by the pioneering Alice Mary Smith at the Royal Academy of Music’s Amazing Women of The Academy exhibition opening.