Hello and welcome!

I am a versatile and experienced cellist with a particular passion for chamber music, new music and performance art collaborations. Since making London my home in 2003, I have enjoyed a varied career both as a freelance cellist and as a member of various ensembles including Westminster Chamber Orchestra and early music trio The Nightingale Consort with soprano Carollyn Eden.

I have performed with chamber ensembles at many London concert venues, notably the Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall and Handel & Hendrix, and as a session musician with bands and solo artists at venues such as Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club and the Century Club Soho. My European travels with chamber groups have taken me to a variety of performance venues from Barcelona Cathedral to a French chateau. My love for opera and the theatre has frequently enticed me into the orchestra pit, most recently as principle cellist of the Orchestra of the Midsummer Opera (directed by David Robleau) and as part of an experimental, small-scale production of The Beggar’s Opera with a fledgling opera company in Oborne, Dorset (directed by Peter Ford). 

I frequently record for producers and film/TV composers at studios including Rak Studios, Metropolis and BBC Maida Vale, recently working with singer Debi Doss (of The Kinks) on a track for her solo EP, Debi Does, and with producer Harry Coade on a world music project, Heart of Marrakesh. I also regularly record from home: I am currently working with composer Paul Ayres on some of his newly composed cello music, while also recording string ideas for alternative/indie band The Leaf Library. I am developing Nyia, a music recording project with my sister and pianist Ginny Richards (who is based in the US), with the primary aim of creating music for cello and piano to be used in therapeutic settings. 

I am always on the look-out for collaborative performance projects,  one example being Handhold, a semi-improvised collaboration involving musicians, actors and contemporary dancers, directed by choreographer Cherie De Haven.  I am currently collaborating with composer Mark Glentworth on his project The Music of Seven and a Half Years which seeks to combine music with storytelling. For several years I was a member of the new-wave folk/electronic band Gallows Ghost who performed extensively and released their debut EP, Arrows, in 2015. I have since joined the prog rock band Storm Deva with singer/composer Carollyn Eden and guitarist/astro-physicist Stu Clark, who are currently making the final touches to their first album (hint: glorious soaring vocals and epic guitar solos!)

With Kate Young of Gallows Ghost at London’s Troubadour 

I have always taken great pleasure in using music to support people and communities, and have performed on a voluntary basis in schools, churches, hospitals and care homes in my local area and beyond. I have also performed in several Camphill Village Trust communities where the audiences consisted of children and adults with special needs.

Looking back, I began thinking about the cello as a possible career at around the age of 15 whilst at Junior Guildhall in London, where I studied cello with Nancy Green and later with Selma Gokcen. I continued my music studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, where I emerged with a Masters in Music (specialising in Performance Studies and Ethnomusicology). I then spent a year at the Royal College of Music on their post graduate early music programme.