Recent soloists
Cristina Cooper
Cristina Cooper is an award-winning cellist who has an Artist Diploma postgraduate degree in music performance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and a Master’s degree in performance from the Royal College of Music. She has studied with some of the most well-known professors in London such as Richard Lester, Hélène Dautry, and Derek Aviss OBE, director of Trinity Laban College. She has received numerous bursaries to continue her studies including The Founders Scholarship, which has enabled her to do a postgraduate Artist Diploma and a research programme at Trinity Laban in 2020. In 2017 she was awarded “Silver Medal for the most outstanding contribution to the strings department”. She was awarded 1st Prize at the “Cavatina Intercollegiate Chamber Music Competition” with Isbilia Quartet, 2018 she was a finalist at the RCM Concerto Competition with the Caspian Trio, and she recently joined the ViViCo Quartet, winner of the Carne Trust Mentorship Scheme last year. She has performed all over London, France and Spain, and has a busy concert schedule as a soloist and chamber musician.
Matina Tsaroucha
Matina Tsaroucha is a Greek soprano studying for a Master of Performance as an Elaine Hugh-Jones scholar at the Royal College of Music, London. She holds a Bachelor of Music with Honours from Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she was also a scholar. Matina won 2nd prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards 2023, arguably the most prestigious singing competition in the UK, which takes place at Wigmore Hall. Since her debut with the Greek National Orchestra of ERT in 2018, Matina has played many roles, including Contessa (Le Nozze di Figaro), Magda (La Rondine) and Leila (Les Pêcheurs de Perles) at the Britten Theatre, as well as Adele (Die Fledermaus). Matina has participated in opera galas with world-renowned singers from the Greek National Opera, sung in Verdi’s Requiem at the Barbican Centre, and was a semi-finalist in the Mozart Singing Competition 2022. In the recent 2023/24 season, Matina made her role debut as Mimì (La Bohème) in London.
Gabriel Thomas
Gabriel Thomas is the orchestra's former Principal Clarinet. He studied clarinet with Victoria Samek through the Pimlico School Special Music programme, a unique project that taught gifted young musicians from every corner of the capital, within a comprehensive setting. Gabriel furthered his studies through his teenage years at the Centre for Young Musicians with their school holidays Symphony Orchestra.
Having founded a successful construction business after leaving higher education, Gabriel returned focus to his clarinet studies in 2018, and continues his learning with Victoria Samek. When time off clarinet practice allows, he likes to escape to the country lanes on his bicycle. He lives with his partner Fiona and young son Percy.
Nicholas Austin
Nicholas Austin played Saint-Saëns’s formidable 2nd piano concerto at our most recent concert.
As a teenager, he was a competitive swimmer, regularly representing Northern Ireland as a junior. He learned piano at age 10 with Douglas Brown and Thomas Davidson at the Belfast School of Music, within 15 months becoming able to tackle some of Rachmaninoff’s works, and later progressing to becoming a regional winner in the annual BBC Young Musician of the Year competition.
Coming to London, his teachers were John Bingham and Alex Kelly, and while still a postgraduate student at the Royal Academy of Music, he made several broadcast recordings for BBC Northern Ireland. His speciality is Russian and unusual Late Romantic piano music, including Godowsky and some of the more exotic transcription repertoire, and he has played programmes of this in London, Germany and Japan.
He teaches piano, sending his pupils on to study music at Oxford University, Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music. He also has a BSc in Physics and is active in valve amplifier design.