HERTS PHIL - Key Persons
Jacques Cohen has been a regular conductor of Hertfordshire Philharmonia since 2000. Jacques read music at Oxford where he conducted the main university orchestra and performed several of his own compositions. When leaving Oxford, he was awarded the Conducting Scholarship at the Royal College of Music where he later won the Tagore Gold Medal, the College's prize for its most outstanding student. Since then he has won several other awards including the August Manns Conducting Prize and the Constant and Kit Lambert Award. He took First Prize in the British Reserve Conducting Competition and was also a prize winner in the Leeds Conductors' Competition.
He then went on to work as Assistant Conductor to the London Symphony Orchestra and later with the Royal Philharmonic and worked closely with Michael Tilson Thomas, Sir Neville Marriner, Vernon Handley and Oliver Knussen.
He has conducted a highly successful series of concerts in Bucharest with Romania's premier orchestra, the George Enescu Philharmonic and has guest conducted orchestras throughout Europe and the UK. He was for a period Principal Guest Conductor of the Bombay Orchestra in India and is currently Principal Conductor of the Aylesbury Orchestra and Lloyd's Choir. He has also been Musical Director of several major opera productions and was appointed as Music Director of the NPO in 2001.
He has recorded CD's for a variety of labels and broadcasts for radio and television. He is also Visiting Professor of Conducting at the Royal and Trinity Colleges of Music.
Jacques conducts an extremely wide repertoire from Monteverdi to the present day and is a passionate advocate of music by living composers. He is also an enthusiastic communicator and has a growing reputation for his ability to explain music in an entertaining way and get audiences more involved in concerts.
His many compositions include Quiet Music, which is regularly performed by British and American orchestras;Three Nottingham Dances, commissioned by the NPO and performed to great acclaim; a Tuba Concerto; a one-act opera, Magic Potions; and several award winning works for choir including his dramatic setting of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. His Fantasias, Canons & Fugues and the prize winning Elegy on a Floating Chord have been performed many times in Europe and on both sides of the Atlantic.
John read music as organ scholar of Hertford College, Oxford before postgraduate studies, firstly at the Guildhall School of Music (repetiteur), and then at The Royal College of Music (conducting). He won a scholarship to study under conductor Diego Masson at the 1996 Dartington International Summer School where he made his opera conducting debut with performances of Rigoletto.
Since then, John has worked on the music staff for Icelandic National Opera and Grange Park Opera, and he is currently Musical Director for Swansea City Opera. He has conducted over twenty opera productions for companies including Pimlico Opera (The Elixir of Love, The Barber of Seville and Cosi Fan Tutte), London City Opera (Carmen, La Traviata and Madame Butterfly) and Swansea City Opera (La Boheme, Faust, Don Pasquale, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute and The Daughter of the Regiment).
As an orchestral conductor John is currently the Principal Conductor of Redhill Sinfonia having previously held posts with Slough Philharmonia and Southampton Youth Concert Sinfonia. He made his debut with Herts Phil in February 2015 and has worked with many other orchestras including Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Oxford University Orchestra, Oxford Chamber Orchestra, Aylesbury Symphony Orchestra and Colne Philharmonic.
John has had a healthy career in Music Theatre and was for two years the Associate Musical Director for the West End production of Les Miserables. Other shows he has conducted include Miss Saigon (UK Tour), Avenue Q (West End) and Damon Albarn's opera Monkey: Journey to the West (Monkeys' World at the O2), and he has also played keyboard on a great many others including Jersey Boys, Legally Blonde, Top Hat and The Full Monty. John has also worked on many youth music theatre shows and student productions at home and abroad, and has clocked up almost 6 months ‘inside' having thrice been Musical Director for Pimlico Opera's prison projects.
Lev Parikian is much in demand as Guest Conductor with orchestras throughout Britain. He is Principal Conductor of several London-based orchestras, and the City of Oxford Orchestra. He is also Artistic Director of the Rehearsal Orchestra. He has worked extensively with students and youth orchestras, including the Royal Holloway University of London, where he also taught conducting for many years. Lev conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra in a rerecording of the theme tune for Hancock's Half Hour for The Missing Hancocks on BBC Radio 4.
Lev studied conducting privately with Michael Rose and David Parry, and at the Canford Summer School with George Hurst. He then pursued his studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire with the great Russian teacher Ilya Musin.
Lev is also active as a writer. His first book, Waving, Not Drowning, was described as ‘a must-read' by Classical Music magazine, while the Times Literary Supplement called his second, Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear?: ‘good-hearted and well made, funny and clever.' Books 3 & 4 are in the pipeline.
Lev lives in South London (someone has to) and his hobbies include resetting the WiFi, arguing with self-checkout machines and profreading.
Martin Smith was an Exhibitioner at the Royal College of Music Junior Department and a scholarship winner at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied violin and conducting.
Martin has been active as a professional violinist for many years. He began as a member of the Duke String Quartet, with whom he appeared throughout Britain and Europe, and he has also appeared with the Allegri and Bridge Quartets. He currently performs with the Ellerdale Piano Trio, which he founded in 1992, the Cirrus String Quartet and the Primavera Ensemble. Martin works with many of the country's foremost chamber orchestras, such as the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the English Chamber Orchestra; he has been a member of the London Mozart Players for many years, and is currently one of the Directors of the orchestra. He also leads New London Sinfonia and Orchestra Nova, and has appeared as guest leader with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra, Brunel Ensemble and London Concertante. With Orchestra Nova he has led many premières and première recordings of music by British composers. He has made solo appearances around the UK and in France, Germany, Holland and the United States, many as leader of the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra, which he led and directed for over ten years.
In recent years Martin has returned to conducting, buoyed by success in concerts for the London Mozart Players and London Soloists Chamber Orchestra in 2007. He conducted the LMP most recently in 2015, and has led orchestral workshops for them and for the European String Teachers' Association. Since 2008 he has been Artistic Director of Enfield Chamber Orchestra, and he has also worked with West London Sinfonia and the Southgate and Bushey Symphony Orchestras. In 2016 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Richmond Orchestra.
Martin's hobbies include Roman roads, the outdoors in general, and the avoidance of housework. He lives in St. Albans with his solicitor wife Margaret, and hopes one day to understand his daughters.
Patrick Bailey has notched up more than a dozen concerts at the helm of Hertfordshire Philharmonia, making him our most widely used conductor to date.
Patrick Bailey held the conducting scholarship at the Royal College of Music where he worked as assistant conductor to, amongst others, Sir Andrew Davis and Diego Masson. Further study was made possible by a generous scholarship from the Wall Trust. Whilst at the Royal College he won prizes for both conducting and composition including the Worshipful Company of Musicians Silver Medal and the Constant & Kit Lambert Award. He has since won bursaries to continue his studies at the Britten-Pears School as assistant to Oliver Knussen and at the Dartington International Summer School. He has conducted concerts with Sinfonia 21, New Music Players, Britten-Pears Orchestra, Feinstein Ensemble at the Barbican, South Bank and St. John's Smith Square and at festivals in Aldeburgh, Brighton, Salisbury and Warwick.
For The Opera Group he has conducted tours of Shostakovich's The Nose and Peter Maxwell Davies' The Martyrdom of St. Magnus and also conducted opera for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Dartington Festival, Solaris Music Theatre and the London College of Music. Patrick has also given concerts in France, Germany, Dubai, India and the USA.
Other recent engagements include concerts with the Orchestra of the Royal Marines, for Music for Youth at the Royal Festival Hall and in festivals at Thaxted, Bath, Buxton and York as well as a Radio 3 broadcast with the New Music Players. Patrick is Head of Conducting at the London College of Music & Media where he directs the Orchestra and Composer's Ensemble.
He is the Music Director of the City University Symphony Orchestra and the Hertfordshire Schools Symphony Orchestra and is the Principal Conductor of the Essex Chamber Orchestra.
Rachel Fryer (piano) was born in Hemel Hempstead, went to Hemel Hempstead School and led the Dacorum Youth Orchestra. Her educational background is very diverse, having studied as far afield as Kharkov, Ukraine, The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and The Royal College of Music, where she was awarded a Masters Degree in Advanced Performance and many prizes. She has received guidance from renowned pianists including John Lill, Barry Douglas, Joanna MacGregor, Steven Kovacevich and Bernard Roberts. She has been widely praised for her depth of musical understanding, sensitive interpretations and virtuosity. She has performed throughout Britain at venues including Croydon's Fairfield Hall and St. John Smith's Square and for music societies including the Beethoven Piano Society as well as on luxury cruise liners. Her recordings have been broadcast on Classic FM and on European radio and television. Rachel now lives in Sussex where she is in demand as a soloist and accompanist. She has performed for the Brighton Philharmonic Chamber music series and worked with Glyndebourne Youth Opera. She performs with education groups Kidenza and Orchestra of Sound and Light. She is also Founder and Concert Director for Music and Wine at St. Luke's, a concert series in Queen's Park, Brighton. Rachel has given many performances of Bach's Goldberg Variations which she has recorded and in July 2020 she premiered Variations Down the Line, a project which commissioned 5 composers to each write 3 new variations based on and interspersed into Bach's Goldbergs. www.rachelfryer.co.uk