Thank you so much for putting on such a wonderful concert. I am still getting messages from everyone to say how great the evening was.

Julie Samuel
Thames Hospicecare

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Pianists

Susanna Stranders

Susanna Stranders began her musical training with Harpenden Musicale. In 1998, she graduated from Exeter University with a first-class honours degree in music, having won the major performance prize. With support from the Harpenden Music Foundation, she then completed two years as a postgraduate accompanist at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, where she won the Accompanists’ Prize, the Schubert Lieder Prize, the John Ireland Prize and the Armourer’s and Brazier’s Prize. Susanna spent a third year at the GSMD as a répétiteur on the Opera Course.

As opera coach at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, she was supported by the Sir Henry Richardson Award (Musicians Benevolent Fund) 2000-02 and a bursary from the Magro Foundation. She was répétiteur for Cincinnati Opera in 2002 and for San Francisco Opera’s Merola Programme in the summer of 2003. In 2003-04, she was a member of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, Texas.

Susanna was a répétiteur on the Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden between 2004-2006. Since then, she has been working regularly for the ROH, for the Glyndebourne Festival and Tour, for the Philharmonia orchestra, for the Festspiele and Landestheater, Salzburg, in masterclasses with José Cura for New Devon Opera, has accompanied Bryn Terfel in recital and has broadcast live for the BBC.

Susanna is a Senior Opera Coach at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and for the Cardiff International Academy of Voice, on the staff at Oxenfoord International Summer School and is resident pianist for the Musicale Young Artists Programme.


James Longford

Born and raised on the Isle of Wight, James Longford studied at the Royal College of Music in London, where he won the Tagore Gold Medal. He was organ scholar at St Martin-in-the-Fields, was awarded the first RCM Legal & General Junior Fellowship in 2000, and was the pianist for the groundbreaking orchestra Southbank Sinfonia in their inaugural year.

As a collaborative pianist, his work with a variety of singers, instrumentalists and ensembles has taken James to many major UK venues, including the Royal Opera, Barbican Hall, Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, English National Opera, Glyndebourne, Westminster Abbey, St David’s Hall Cardiff, Snape Maltings and the London Palladium; he has also performed abroad throughout Europe, the Middle East, the US and the Baltic States, and has broadcast on BBC Radio, most recently live on Radio 3 with Ann Murray and the Royal String Quartet. James was recently on the music staff for On the Rim of the World, a new opera by Orlando Gough – a six-month project which culminated in a performance by over 200 Kent primary school children and their parents on the main stage of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden.

James is one half of the acclaimed longfordbrown piano duo with New Zealand pianist Lindy Tennent-Brown. They are laureates of several major international competitions and are fast becoming one of the UK’s foremost two-piano teams, recently giving two acclaimed performances of Poulenc’s Concerto for two pianos at the Wiltshire Music Centre under Gerry Cornelius.


Jonathan Williams

Jonathan studied music at Clare College, Cambridge, and musical theatre at the Royal Academy of Music. He now works as a pianist, vocal coach, musical director and singer.

Musical direction credits include: Awaking Beauty (Stephen Joseph Theatre); Salt (Theatre Rites/Ruhr Triennale); Cattle Call (Phoenix Dance Theatre); The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Chichester Festival Theatre); Six Pictures of Lee Miller (Minerva Theatre, Chichester); Calamity Jane (national tour); Bernice Bobs her Hair (RADA) and Kiss of the Spiderwoman (Guildhall). He was assistant musical director of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Carousel (both Chichester Festival Theatre). As a repetiteur, Jonathan has worked for the Manchester International Festival (The Ground Beneath Her Feet); Scottish Chamber Orchestra (When the Earth Sings) and Grange Park Opera (Wonderful Town). He also worked as vocal coach on a production of The Medium by Peter Maxwell Davies (Muziektheater Transparant, Antwerp).

Performing credits as a singer include: The Voluptuous Tango (Almeida Opera); My One and Only (Chichester Festival Theatre); Me and My Girl (Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham); Jerry Springer: The Opera (Battersea Arts Centre) and Zipp! (Duchess Theatre). He has performed throughout the UK and Europe with The Shout, a sixteen-voice a cappella choir, and works regularly for the education departments of the Royal Opera House and ENO.

Robert Scamardella

Born in 1983, Robert Scamardella began to play and improvise at the piano at aged four and was awarded scholarships to study with celebrated British concert pianist Lucy Parham at the Guildhall School of Music. Whilst there he was a prize winner in all the major competitions as well as receiving further scholarships and awards from the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, the Musicas Fund and the Ann Driver Trust, amongst others. He made his concerto debuts aged sixteen and his recital debuts a year later.

He came to national attention on becoming a finalist in the 2002 BBC Young Musician of the Year. Subsequently, he was awarded a scholarship to further his studies at the Guildhall with Joan Havill. Other prizes at the Guildhall included the Lescek Dessent Chopin Prize, the Romantic Piano Award and was the winner of the Professional Recital Prize of the Oxford International Music Festival in 2004.

In 2005, he was a selected artist for the Countess of Munster Musical Trust’s coveted Recital Scheme enabling engagements for two years across the UK. 2006 saw awards from the prestigious Myra Hess Foundation to study for a Masters degree in Music Performance at the Guildhall. In recent years, his studies have included working with pianists Stephen Kovacevich, Paul Lewis and Imogen Cooper. Future engagements include working with the Isle of Wight Symphony Orchestra, the Westminster Philharmonic Orchestra, the Worcestershire Symphony Orchestra and recital tours across the South of France.


Dan Moriyama

Born in 1975 to a Japanese father and English mother, took up the piano at the age of 5.  Three years later he won the top scholarship to study music at Wells Cathedral School in Somerset and at 15 reached the televised semi-finals of BBC Young Musician of the Year.  After leaving Wells he continued his musical studies at the Junior Royal Academy of Music, switching focus to piano accompaniment and electro-acoustic composition.  In 1994 he embarked on a new joint jazz/classical degree course at the Guildhall School of Music, studying piano with Andrew Ball and winning the Spencer Boney Memorial Prize for contemporary piano performance before graduating in 1998.   

Dan now works as a freelancer in a wide variety of musical areas including session work, teaching and leading music workshops, jazz gigs and accompanying of all kinds.  He particularly specialises in working with singers, both individuals and groups.    Work in the last few years has included performing with the world-renowned Siobhan Davies Dance Company, BBC Radio 3 concerts, piano/vocal duo gigs with Jimmy Somerville,  rehearsal accompanist for West End shows, and performances around the country as the pianist with Scottish song duo Goldie & Grant.    Recent work for TV, both on and off camera, has included playing in the band on the Pop Idol Arena Tour, and accompaniment for televised auditions and rehearsal sessions on Fame Academy and X Factor.   Dan also writes, sings and plays bass with rock band Tomokiyo