Tamsin Waley-Cohen and George Fu
violin and piano
Born in London, Tamsin Waley-Cohen enjoys an adventurous and varied career. In addition to concerts with the Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Hallé, Liverpool Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Royal Northern Sinfonia and BBC orchestras, amongst others, she has twice been associate artist with the Orchestra of the Swan and works with conductors including Andrew Litton, Vasily Petrenko, Ben Gernon, Ryan Bancroft and Tamás Vásáry.
Her duo partners include James Baillieu and Huw Watkins. She gave the premiere of Watkins’ Concertino, and in Summer 2020 will premiere a new work for violin and piano with him at Wigmore Hall. She is thrilled to be a Signum Classics Artist. With her sister, composer Freya Waley-Cohen, and architects Finbarr O’Dempsey and Andrew Skulina, she held an Open Space residency at Aldeburgh, culminating in the 2017 premiere of Permutations at the Aldeburgh Festival, an interactive performance artwork synthesising music and architecture. Her love of chamber music led her to start the Honeymead Festival, now in its twelth year, from which all proceeds go to support local charities.
She is a founding member of the Albion string quartet, appearing regularly with them at venues including Wigmore Hall, Aldeburgh Festival, and the Concertgebouw. In 2016-2017 she was the UK recipient of the ECHO Rising Stars Awards, playing at all the major European concert halls and premiering Oliver Knussen’s Reflection, written especially for her and Huw Watkins. In the 2018-19 season she toured Japan and China, and gave her New York Debut recital at the Frick.
She is Artistic Director of the Two Moors Festival, and has previously been Artistic Director of the Music Series at the Tricyle Theatre, London, and the Bargello festival in Florence. She studied at the Royal College of Music and her teachers included Itzhak Rashkovsky, Ruggiero Ricci and András Keller.
Chinese-American pianist George Xiaoyuan Fu is establishing an international reputation as “one of the most exciting pianists of our time… a deep thinker, thoroughly in command” (The Arts Desk). His playing has been praised for its “stunning virtuosity” (Boston Music Intelligencer) and as “a fantasy of sounds and colours” (Christopher Axworthy) that “combines phenomenal technique with a profound sense of interpretative clarity” (Apple Music).
George has appeared across the Americas and Europe, in venues such as the Konzerthaus Berlin, Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, St Martin In the Fields, the Southbank Centre, Kings Place and Tanglewood. His performances and interviews have been featured on broadcasts around the world, ranging from BBC Radio 3 and National Public Radio, to appearances on PBS/American Public Television and On Stage At Curtis in Philadelphia.
George has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the National Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. An active chamber musician, George is a founding member of Trio Zimbalist, a new piano trio consisting of himself, Josef Špaček (violin) and Timotheos Gavriilidis-Petrin (cello), in addition to frequent collaborations with a variety of musicians and ensembles. An enthusiastic performer of contemporary music, George enjoys collaborations with composers such as Harrison Birtwistle, George Lewis, Tansy Davies, Phil Cashian, Matthew Aucoin, and Freya Waley-Cohen, as well as being a composer himself.
George’s debut solo album, Mirrors, was released in November 2022 on the Platoon label and draws on George’s visionary style of programming, using Maurice Ravel’s Miroirs as an focal point and featuring an eclectic mix of composers; each movement in Ravel’s suite inspires a reflection with a more recent work. Gramophone declared “Fu’s precise fingerwork cannot be faulted, and his gift for programme-building deserves serious attention”, while International Piano claimed “Fu’s fluent and nuanced ‘Barque’ is one of the finest available”.
After receiving a bachelors from Harvard University, George studied under Jonathan Biss and Meng-Chieh Liu at the Curtis Institute of Music, and then under Christopher Elton and Joanna MacGregor at the Royal Academy of Music, where he later served as the piano fellow and currently teaches. He has also worked intensively with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, specifically on the music of Messiaen and Debussy. George is a City Music Foundation Artist.