David Whitaker rehearsing the Elgar
Cello Concerto, 2004

The NWCO actively promotes the talent of local soloists, and many of the below are regular players in the orchestra.

Stephen Jones - piano
Stephen Jones started to learn the piano at the age of seven and went on to win a prize for music at secondary school. At the age of eighteen he had the opportunity to play the Shostakovitch 2nd Piano Concerto in its original one movement form, at the Royal Festival Hall. Whilst at university he performed at lunchtime concerts. Medical studies eventually intervened until he restarted lessons with the international concert pianist Marlene Fleet at Leicester University. He returned to performing in the summer of 1996 when he performed Beethoven’s 1st Piano Concerto in the Civic Hall in Bedworth. Since then he has performed Beethoven’s 2nd and 3rd Piano Concertos, the Grieg Piano Concerto, and the Shostakovitch 2nd Piano Concerto. He is keen to promote music in the community and in 1997 helped to found the North Warwickshire Chamber Orchestra of which he is honorary president. He has also performed in a wind quintet in which he plays the french horn. Stephen works as a full-time General Practitioner and is married with two young daughters.

John Geddes - horn
John Geddes was born in 1939 on the Essex side of London. After ten years of piano lessons he took up the horn at the age of fifteen. He studied the horn and orchestration, among other things, at Trinity College of Music, London, and went on to a music degree at Oxford, where he did a little conducting and a lot of horn playing. He has played professionally with Orchestra da Camera and the Mozart Orchestra, and as a deputy in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Wind Band. As an amateur, he is currently principal horn of the Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra, the Sinfonia of Birmingham, the Beauchamp Sinfonietta and the North Warwickshire Chamber Orchestra, and is a member of the Blenheim and Nova Wind Quintets and the Nyquist Brass Quintet. He also plays the trombone in the Knowle Sinfonia and the Skyliners Big Band, and the bass recorder in the Arden Consort, and is a member of the Hunningham Singers.

John has coached for the Coventry and Edinburgh Youth Orchestras and the Leamington Sinfonia, and lectured briefly in the Art of Brass Teaching at the Royal Northern College of Music. He now lives in Knowle and was for many years Head of Brass at Solihull School, where he also conducted the orchestra and taught music to A level. His recent retirement has given him more time to indulge his keenness for making wind ensemble arrangements.

John was once married to the pianist Dorothy Maxwell, and their daughter Helen Geddes is a semi-professional cellist.

David Whitaker - cello
David began playing the cello at the age of eight. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music with Moray Welsh in addition to previous study with Florence Hooton O.B.E. of the Royal Academy of Music, Kitty Peacock and Jenny Curtis. His previous playing experience includes RNCM Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, various professional theatre orchestras and a great variety of chamber music and solo performances, including the UK premiere of the Steve Reich Octet. More recently performances have included the Haydn C Major Concerto and the Brahms Double concerto with the NWCO, and the William Tell solo with the Christchurch Festival Orchestra in Oxford. David has successfully undertaken principal cello roles in a number of orchestras including the Northern Junior Philharmonic Orchestra, Cleveland Youth Orchestra, Leamington Chamber Orchestra, Christchurch Festival Orchestra and the North Warwickshire Chamber Orchestra. David is the Operations Director of the Dutch-owned company Facilicom Group & Permaclean Environmental Services. In his spare time he is a keen cyclist, and has also completed the National 3 Peaks Challenge, climbing 3 mountains in 24 hours.

Eleanor Robson - violin
Eleanor was born in Hertfordshire and started the violin at the age of eight. She studied with Anne Park, followed by Ita Herbert from the Royal Academy of Music, and was awarded a distinction in her Grade 8 exam at the age of thirteen. Eleanor led the Harrow Students’ Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hertfordshire County Youth Orchestra, and at the age of eighteen she led a massed schools’ concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London in the presence of HRH Princess Margaret.

Eleanor read music at the University of York, studying the violin with Emma Young and Catherine Yates from the Sorrel String Quartet. After graduating, Eleanor trained as a primary school teacher in Cambridge, leading the second violins in the University Orchestra. From 1994 -1999 she worked as a primary school teacher and peripatetic violin teacher in Warwickshire, before leaving to have a family. Since 2006 Eleanor has returned to working in primary schools.

Eleanor is the regular leader of the NWCO, and also plays in the Leamington Chamber Orchestra and Orchestra of the Swan. She has performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, the Brahms Double concerto, the Bach Double Violin Concerto and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the NWCO. Eleanor has a particular fondness for chamber music, and leads the Ella String Quartet with three other NWCO front desk players.

Daniel Sanford-Casey - clarinet
Daniel Sanford-Casey graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2005 having studied clarinet with Angela Malsbury and Nicholas Rodwell. He then completed Birmingham Conservatoire’s Advanced Postgradute Diploma in Professional Performance, learning with Timothy Lines and Michael Harris. From September 2007 he will be studying for a Masters degree at Birmingham Conservatoire, specialising in bass clarinet with Mark O’Brien and Paolo De Gaspari. Daniel has taken part in masterclasses with many artists, amongst whom are Michael Collins, Andrew Marriner and Sabine Meyer, and he has worked with conductors including Sir Colin Davis, Sir Charles Mackerras and Oliver Knussen. In 2006 he won the John Ireland Prize for Chamber Music with Pianist Wan-Ju Hsueh, won the woodwind section of both the Ludlow Philharmonic Concerto Prize and the Symphony Hall Recital Competition and has been nominated for the NYOS Staffa Award twice. In 2007 he has won the Sylvia Cleaver Prize for Chamber Music and Birmingham Chamber Music Society’s Derek Young Memorial Award, both for his performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Daniel is a member of the Britten-Pears Orchestra, the Cheltenham Festival Academy Players and has taken part in the orchestral training schemes of the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. His recent concerto performances have included works by Mozart, Nielsen and Finzi.

Joanna Kirkwood - flute
Joanna graduated from the Birmingham Conservatoire with First Class honours and the Principal’s Prize for Outstanding Contribution in 2003. Whilst at the Conservatoire Joanna studied with Jonathan Rimmer, Judith Hall and Colin Lilley; performed as Principal Flute with each major ensemble and enjoyed playing in master classes with many eminent Flautists such as Paul Edmund-Davies, Elena Duran and Claire Southworth. Since graduating Joanna has been developing her career across the midlands and further afield. As a soloist her engagements include performing at the Varen Music Festival, France and concerts given for Leicester University and Tinnitus trust. Joanna is also a keen chamber musician. With Duo Rosa (flute and guitar) she has performed workshops and recitals nationwide and with her wind trio, Trio Capriccio she has performed for HM The Queen and Prince Charles as well as played a live broadcast for the BBC as part of the Jersey Arts Festival. Joanna is currently studying for an Advanced Diploma in Music (Professional Performance) at the Conservatoire for which she competed successfully for a Tillet Trust award to aid her with her studies. As well as this other awards she has enjoyed receiving include a Woolfsen Trust Award, The Sylvia Cleaver Chamber Music Prize and the Derek Rollasson Award. During the Autumn Joanna has exciting performances coming up including a Duo Rosa recital as part of the Leicester University recital series and performing the Liebermann Flute Concerto with Conservatoire’s Sinfonia in December.

Anton Rosenfeld - horn
Anton was surrounded by music from an early age and was inspired to take up the horn by a number of music students living in the house who played the instrument. His initial attempts at playing the bathroom shower hose showed great promise and he was encouraged to take up the real thing. He later gained a scholarship as a junior exhibitioner at the Royal Academy of Music. Throughout his 25 years of playing he has particularly enjoyed orchestral work, with highlights including Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Messiaen’s Turangulila Symphony. He has also played as a soloist in recitals and performed concertos including Mozart’s third and fourth horn concertos, Schumann’s Konzertstuck for Four Horns and Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.When he is not playing the horn he earns a living doing research on growing vegetables. Previously he worked in Guyana, South America for two years before coming to work at the Henry Doubleday Research Association at Ryton, a charity active in promoting organic horticulture.

Christopher Morgan - tenor
Chris started singing as a Cathedral Chorister at Hereford under Roy Massey after which he continued his vocal studies with Lucy Bowen. He is currently having singing lessons with Richard Whitehouse.Chris a graduate of the University of Warwick where he read Law. As a music scholar at Warwick he sang as a soloist with the University Chorus and Chamber Orchestra in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Tippett’s Spirituals from Child of our Time and Haydn's Mass in Time of War. Chris also sings regularly with the University of Warwick Chamber Choir, and Armonico Consort with whom he recently performed various pieces by F. Scarlatti in Naples.Chris has performed with Warwick Student Opera as Tamino in A Mozart Revue and with Music Theatre Warwick in productions of Cabaret and Guys and Dolls. Most recently Chris directed and performed in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance for Warwick Student Opera.Prior to University Chris performed with the Hereford Gilbert and Sullivan society and has won various prizes at the Hereford Competitive Music festival including a place at the Hereford International summer school where he studied with Neil Jenkins.Chris lives in Nottingham with his partner and is studying at Nottingham Law School on the legal practice course.

Melanie Ryan – violin
Melanie was born in 1974 and studied violin with Berkshire Music Service under Krzysztof Smietana before going on to read Music at Cambridge. She then moved to the Midlands to study for an MA in European Cultural Policy and Administration at Warwick University and is currently the Marketing Manager for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. As well as playing for the NWCO, Melanie also leads the second violins for the Leamington-based Beauchamp Sinfonietta.

Bill Brewer - oboe
Bill Brewer studied the oboe with Janet Craxton and Celia Nicklin, and played principal oboe in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Going on to study Maths and Philosophy at Oxford and, later, Cambridge, he then taught Philosophy at the universities of Oxford, Berkeley, and Brown, and was offered a Professorship in Philosophy at Warwick University in 2004, where he currently teaches. Throughout this time he has played with various amateur orchestras in the Midlands, Oxford and London, and currently learns with Julie Robinson. Previous concerto performances include the Bach Double, as well as the oboe concerti of Mozart, Francaix and Albinoni.

Miranda Walton - violin
Miranda’s musical life embraces performance on baroque, classical and modern instruments. A graduate of York University and the Birmingham Conservatoire of Music, she was privileged to study violin with Rimma Sushanskaya and baroque violin with the late Micaela Comberti. Miranda regularly performs as a freelance violinist in chamber ensembles, larger orchestras, operas and theatre music (including the Royal Shakespeare Company). In addition to her frequent appearances with the Musical and Amicable Society, she works with groups such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (at Glyndebourne) and is a regular member of the Oxford Philomusica. She has also appeared on live and recorded BBC radio broadcasts.
Miranda resides as Head of Strings at the Kingsley School in Leamington Spa.