6 March: Ken Aiso and Sam Haywood

Tuesday 6th March, 7:30pm
Ken Aiso (violin) and Sam Haywood (piano)

Booking information
Tickets £11 in advance (£12.50 on the door, no charge for under-18s)

Ken Aiso is internationally recognized as one of today’s most musical and versatile violinists. His playing is praised not only for his singularly beautiful tone, but also for the unique atmosphere of intimacy he evokes as he draws in his audiences.

As recitalist and chamber musician, Ken has performed widely in Europe, the US and Japan with appearances at prestigious concert halls such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore and Queen Elizabeth Halls in London. In 2003 he was honoured to appear before the Emperor and Empress of Japan. In recent years, performing and teaching have also taken him to Georgia, Bolivia, Moldova, Serbia and Kazakhstan.

Ken has been invited to renowned music festivals in Europe, India and Bolivia, and has been a faculty member at Montecito Summer Music Festival in Southern California since 2008. He is a member of Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and has regularly appeared with Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, performing in all major concert venues in Europe and USA in this capacity. He was elected an Associate at the Royal Academy of Music in London in 2005.

Ken is currently a teaching faculty of Violin and Viola at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and La Sierra University in Riverside. He has co-founded Soundness Festival which brings awareness of classical music as healing medium, working with vibration in music meditation, singing and improvisation workshops. His work includes music at hospitals and institutions for special needs children.

Sam Haywood has performed to critical acclaim in many of the world’s major concert halls. The Washington Post hailed his ‘dazzling, evocative playing’ and ‘lyrical sensitivity’ and the New York Times his ‘passionate flair and sparkling clarity’. He embraces a wide spectrum of the piano repertoire and is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician or with accompanying Lieder. He has had a regular duo partnership with Joshua Bell since 2010 and often performs with cellist Steven Isserlis.

He has recorded two solo albums for Hyperion, one featuring the piano music of Julius Isserlis (grandfather of Steven Isserlis) and the other Charles Villiers Stanford’s preludes. His enthusiasm for period instruments led to a recording on Chopin’s own Pleyel piano.

In 2013 Haywood co-founded Solent Music Festival in UK. The annual Lymington-based festival features highly varied programmes by internationally-renowned artists with projects in the local community. Artists have included the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Alina Ibragimova, Mark Padmore and the Endellion Quartet.

He was mentored by David Hartigan, Paul Badura-Skoda and Maria Curcio. Following his early success in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, the Royal Philharmonic Society awarded him the Julius Isserlis Scholarship. He studied both at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna and at the Royal Academy of Music in London, of which he is an Associate (ARAM).

Haywood has written a children’s opera and is regularly involved in family concerts, workshops and master classes. He is on the roster of Musical Orbit, the online teaching website and his invention ‘memorystars®’ can significantly reduce the time needed to memorise a music score. His other passions include literature, physics, natural history, technology, magic, fountain pens and table tennis.