Award Winners

Thom Conroy has gone from strength to strength in his musical career over the last few years.

After studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama for six years. He graduated in 2023 with an MMus (Distinction) and received The Simon Clarkson Award, recognising him as the best all-round player of the college.

In 2019, he became one of the few musicians in the College’s history to transfer from Strings to Woodwind midcourse. He now plays over 40 instruments. He now works in the West End and for UK Touring productions.

In 2023, Thom entertained aboard Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth II as a resident musician on her world tour of 18 countries.

Thom has performed in many major venues across the UK including the Royal Albert Hall, Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Birmingham Symphony Hall, the Sheldonian Theatre and Dorchester Abbey (Oxford), Wales Millenium Centre and St David’s Hall (Cardiff).

Theatre credits include:

Pippin: 50th Anniversary Concert (West End, 2024) Disney’s Aladdin

(UK tour dep, 2023/24)

A Chorus Line (ArtsEd and Bird College, 2023)

Sunday In The Park With George (The Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, 2022)

Anyone Can Whistle (UK Revival - Southwark Playhouse, 2022)

Twisted: The Untold Story Of A Royal Vizier

(Edinburgh Fringe ‘21 - Traverse Theatre)

Threepenny Opera (Richard Burton Theatre, RWCMD, 2021)

Legend Trippers (The Other Palace, London, 2019)

Read more about Thom on his website and at @ThomConroy1.

Rory Carver, tenor is a recent Exuberant Trust award-winner.

Ben Pearson

Here Comes Hell film poster

Ben Pearson, Composer, Musician

Completion of Film Here Comes Hell

Exuberant Trust award-winner Ben Pearson is a composer, musician and music teacher having earned a degree at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.  Ben has currently been composing and working on the soundtrack for the film Here Comes Hell, a black and white comedy horror being made by Trashouse Films. The film has now been successfully released and will be submitted for viewing at several film festivals.

For more infomation about the film, please see the links below:

IMDb page IMDb is an online database of information related to films.

The Kickstarter fundraising page, partly used to raise funds to make the film.

A selection of photos on Dropbox showing the production of the film and the soundtrack being recorded in a studio.

We are delighted to share some exciting news about Eleanor Voak who plays contrabassoon, bassoon and recorder.

In 2017, Eleanor was selected as the winner of the Bournemouth Symphony Instrumental Prize by the panel of judges at the age of 13. The BSO Instrumental Prize is a recital class covering the six instrumental disciplines: piano, strings, brass, woodwind, accordions and percussion and is open to all instrument players up to the age of 18 and of a minimum standard of Grade 8.

Eleanor will be awarded a prize consisting of a cheque for £250, sponsored by The Doreen Merrifield Bursary; the BSO Instrumental Prize Trophy, the opportunity to perform at the BMCF Festival Concert held at the Pavilion Theatre, as well as the chance to spend a day with the BSO.

Having won a first prize in the regional competitions for Jugend Musiziert, Germany in January 2018, Eleanor has just been awarded another first prize on second level, the Landeswettbewerb. This means that she will now progress to the final stage of the competition, the Bundeswettbewerb (nationals).

On 3rd March 2018, Eleanor competed in the Piano, Woodwind & Brass section of the Springboard Festival, Brighton & Hove, after which she was named as “Springboard´s most promising woodwind player”. Eleanor has already acheived Grade 8 in both bassoon, contrabasson and the recorder and is now working towards her DipABRSM exams in all three instruments.

In July, Eleanor (now 14 years) passed her recorder diploma with a distinction (2 marks off full marks). With bassoon and recorder diplomas completed, she will now concentrate on performance!

Eleanor is an Exuberant Trust award-winner and performed at Music at The Limes in 2016, in aid of the Trust.

Artist Emily Stapleton-Jeffries is currently in her second year studying an MA in Ceramics and Glass at The Royal College of Art in London, having achieved a First Class Honours Degree in BA Decorative Arts at Nottingham. Emily would like to work as a Ceramic Artist and also teach Ceramics after her studies.

Emily sent us an update of her studies and some photographs of her work. She said:

“My first year went by so quickly and I learnt so many skills from my fellow students and the wonderful tutors and technicians. My first project was - creating a response to an object of our choosing from the Ceramics gallery in the V&A museum. Our second project was involved with food and our third project was about site specificity. We also wrote a dissertation and I'm so happy to report that I received a distinction! I was also very fortunate as I received a travel bursary so in the summer travelled from China to Russia, through Mongolia, by train. This first term of second year has gone so quickly and I have been very involved in a whole variety of activities. This year we can direct our work ourselves which is very liberating, and at the moment I'm focusing on exploring clay and glaze in an intuitive manner making large, ambiguous forms that drip and run and are related to touch, and nature and the landscape”.

Photographs of art by Emily Stapleton-Jefferis - Exuberant Trust award-winner.

Sama is the first beat of the rhythm cycle – the beginning and the final resolution. Sama brings together a delightful evening of music, movement and poetry through an interpretive performance of Kathak, presented by Reading’s own dance company Drishti Dance. The evening features live dance and music ensemble presenting exquisite Kathak compositions both contemporary and traditional drawn from ancient Indian philosophy, mythology, folklore and Indo-Persian literature. Seamlessly intertwined with dizzying display of the virtuosity of the form, it is a celebration of dance, music and literature. Venue

Anuradha Chaturvedi is an Exuberant Trust award-winner.

Kate Whitley

photo by Ambra Vernuccio

Kate Whitley News 2017

New Release on NMC,

BBC-Commissioned Piece &

Multi-Story Orchestra - Summer 2017 Events

Read about Kate Whitley's exiting news for 2017 below. Kate is a Composor and Pianist and former Exuberant Trust award-winner.

I Am I Say by Kate Whitley

I Am I Say is a new release by Kate Whitley in NMC's Debut Discs series. The album comprises a wide-ranging repertoire of Kate's compositions ranging from piano miniatures and chamber works to a concerto and the album title track for children’s choir and The Multi-Story Orchestra. More information about this album and how to purchase a CD copy can be found here.

Malala Yousafzai whose words influenced Speak Out by Kate Whitley

BBC Radio 3 celebrated International Women's Day (8 March) with a host of special programming, including a new BBC-commissioned piece by Kate Whitley, Speak Out setting the text of Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai’s historic 2013 UN speech to music for the first time. Speak Out, uses extracts from Malala’s speech about every girl’s right to an education. The piece was world premiered by the BBC National Orchestra, the Chorus of Wales with Cor y Cwm (Youth Choir Of The Year) at the BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, led by Principal Guest Conductor Xian Zhang and it was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on the same evening. Hear a clip on the BBC website here.

Multi-Story Orchestra 2017

The Multi-Story Orchestra, co-founded by Kate Whitley (also Artistic Director) has announced its Summer 2017 programme. The Multi-Story Orchestra performs classical and chamber music in the Bold Tendancies Peckham car park every summer as well as taking the orchestra around schools in a Tour Bus and running choir projects. Watch a video trailer here.

Tom Poster, pianist and composer has a particularly exciting set of events taking place between 30th January and 18th February at Wilton’s Music Hall, London in which he features as composer, pianist and curator.

There will be a 15-performance run of his chamber opera, The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak, written in collaboration with his brother Tobi Poster and presented by Wattle & Daub, featuring a multi-talented cast of two singers, two instrumentalists and two puppeteers (of which Tobi is one), who operate over 20 puppets of all shapes and sizes. There will also be two performances at The North Wall, Oxford on 8th March - 9th March.

The opera is based on the true story of Tarrare, an 18th-century French revolutionary spy and circus freak with an insatiable appetite for live cats, snakes, and the occasional amputated limb!

Tom has also been invited to programme and perform in three concerts at Wilton's Hall, drawing on themes from the opera:

7.30pm, Thursday 2nd February

FRENCH CONNECTIONS

Mark Simpson (clarinet), Elena Urioste (violin),

Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello), Tom Poster (piano)

Ravel, Debussy & Messiaen

7.30pm, Thursday 9th February

A COLE PORTER SONGBOOK

Winnie Brückner (vocalist),

Ronan Collett (baritone), Tom Poster (piano)

Thursday 16th February

LIGHT AND SHADOWS

Tom Poster (piano)

Schubert, Schumann, Ravel, Gershwin & Chopin

Read more about the show in a piece Tom wrote for The Times about monsters; and in an interview for The Cusp Magazine.

Tom Poster, is an internationally renowned pianist and composer and originally from Oxford. Although Tom is not an Exuberant Trust award-winner, we are honoured to mention his work in this section; he performed a concert in aid of the Exuberant Trust in 2012 and performs with Mark Simpson (Exuberant award-winner) on 2nd February at the Wilton Hall, London.

Debut Album Release by Adam Taylor

Volume - Zuntz

Jazz guitarist Adam Taylor, leader of jazz trio Zuntz, has released their debut Album Volume (December 2016), with tracks available to download or on CD. Zuntz will be bringing their blend of contemporary jazz, collective improvisation and groove music to venues across Europe in 2017.

Adam also plays with quartet Neon and the Deons and is part of a duo project with singer Vera Naus in which the two set Shakespeare sonnets to music.

Mark Simpson

Opera by Mark Simpson

Album by Mark Simpson

South Bank Times Breakthrough Award

Concerts for Syria

Exuberant Trust award-winner Fatima Lahham is currently involved with the Concerts for Syria project that she set up in 2015, to facilite and promote fundraising concerts and music events that support Syrian refugees.

The funds raised will go to the Save the Children's Syria Appeal and Fatima has an online donation page here. Fatima has also raised funds for the Appeal by running the London Marathon 2016, with her recorder! Please do consider supporting this extremely worthy cause either online or in person at one of the concerts if you can get there!

Rachel Elizabeth Wood, Jeweller and Silversmith is launching her new collection on 6th - 8th March at the Desire Fair, Chelsea Old Town Hall, London.

Read more here.

Rachel is an Exuberant Trust award holder.

Former Exuberant Trust award-winner and performer Kate Whitley is the Kettle’s Yard New Music Programmer for 2015. Read an interview with Kate on the Kettle's Yard website about her new post there. Kettle’s Yard is the University of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery and also hosts a series of Student Lunchtime, New Music and Chamber concerts.

Kate is also a composer, pianist and founder of The Multi-Story Orchestra, a project that brings classical music to unexpected places. It began in 2011 with a performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring for 100 musicians in a Car Park in Peckham Rye, London. The Multi-Story Orchestra plays in the Car Park every summer as well as touring schools, playing in night clubs, and running choir and education projects across the country. Kate’s work in bringing classical music out of the concert hall and into new contexts has been hailed as part of “the most exciting development in classical music for decades, if not centuries”, The Times.

'Alive' composed by Kate Whitley to words by Holly McNish
performed in Peckham Rye multi-storey Car Park, 20th June 2014 by Children's Choir & Multi-Storey Car Park, conducted by Christopher Stark.