Jamie Walton was born in Germany before moving back to the UK at an early age. Noted for his rich, powerful sound with purity of tone and emotionally engaging performances he was one of the great William Pleeth’s last students who said of him: “He is a cellist of outstanding performance ability. Combining warmth of tone with a technical command that reaches dazzling proportions, he leaves little doubt as to the success that lies ahead of him - he is a musician of great integrity whose performance give great pleasure” and has already been compared by some reviewers to great cellists of past times with his distinctive sound and clean interpretations marking him out as a true individualist. Jamie plays on a Guarneri instrument dated 1712.
In the UK Jamie Walton has performed concertos with London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestras. He gave his BBC National Orchestra of Wales debut with a Radio 3 broadcast of the Elgar concerto and has appeared throughout much of Europe, the USA, New Zealand, Australia and the UK performing concertos, recitals and giving broadcasts in some of the world’s most eminent © Wolf Marloh venues and festivals. He recently performed the Lutosławski concerto in Poland and made his Finnish debut with Bloch’s Schelomo alongside Bach and Britten Suites at the Riihimäki Summer Concerts Festival before returning for a series of Walton concertos with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra/Damian Iorio at the Sibelius Hall. As a recording artist for Signum Records he has recorded ten concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, including those of Dvořák and Schumann with Vladimir Ashkenazy. He has also recorded much of the sonata repertoire for Signum to significant critical acclaim, as well as the solo suites by Benjamin Britten which he also made into a film with Paul Joyce, released on DVD through Signum Vision and premiered on Sky Arts.
Jamie Walton is as passionate about chamber music as he is with concerto work and has performed in many of the world’s great concert halls in both capacities, including Lorin Maazel’s Chateuaville Foundation in Virginia through personal invitation. The Washington Post review by Robert Battey after his debut with Finghin Collins at The Phillips Collection said: “Walton is a major cello talent. He sports a particularly strong left hand – dead-center intonation and a wonderful, lithe vibrato that’s alive in every register. Though relatively young, he plays with the dignity and reserve of a wellseasoned artist.” His activities as a player are accompanied by his role as Founder and Artistic Director of the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival which he started in 2009. The festival has exceeded all expectations in selling out every year and is now established as an annual event during the last two weeks of August with its artistic excellence reflected when, in summer 2011, being shortlisted by the Royal Philharmonic Society in the festival category of its ‘Concert Series and Festivals’ award. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, its patron, wrote a work specifically for the festival (for cello, baritone and string quartet), given its world premiere at the 2015 festival. Jamie is also setting up a record label affiliated with the festival, launched late in 2015.
Jamie Walton won a scholarship to Wells Cathedral School in a period which he says remains at the soul of his music making and where his first inspirational cello teacher was Margaret Moncrieff before continuing his studies with William Pleeth. He is a member of the Worshipful Company of Musicians and has been elected to the Freedom of the City of London. Jamie was awarded a Foundation Fellowship by Wells Cathedral School for his outstanding contribution to music.

The Philharmonia was founded in 1945 by EMI producer Walter Legge, and has worked with a who’s who of 20th- and 21st-century music. Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali took up the baton as Principal Conductor in September 2021. The sixth person to hold the title, he is known for his expressive, balletic conducting style and irrepressible energy.
Herbert von Karajan, Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arturo Toscanini, Riccardo Muti and Esa-Pekka Salonen are just a few of the great artists to be associated with the Philharmonia, and the Orchestra has premiered works by Richard Strauss, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Errollyn Wallen, Kaija Saariaho and many others.
Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, in the heart of London, has been the Philharmonia’s home since 1995.
The Orchestra also has residencies at venues and festivals across England, each embracing a Learning & Engagement programme that empowers people to engage with, and participate in, orchestral music.
The Philharmonia’s international reputation is built in part on its extraordinary 76-year recording legacy, which in the last ten years has been built on by pioneering work with digital technology. The Orchestra’s installations and VR experiences have introduced hundreds of thousands of people to the symphony orchestra. The Philharmonia has won four Royal Philharmonic Society awards for its digital projects and audience engagement work.
The Philharmonia is the go-to orchestra for many film and videogame composers in the UK and Hollywood, and its music-making has been experienced by millions of cinema-goers and gamers. It has recorded around 150 soundtracks, with film credits stretching back to 1947.

In the years since Vladimir Ashkenazy first came to prominence on the world stage in the 1955 Chopin Competition in Warsaw he has built an extraordinary career, not only as one of the most renowned and revered pianists of our times, but as an artist whose creative life encompasses a vast range of activities and continues to offer inspiration to music-lovers across the world.
Conducting has formed the largest part of his activities for the past 20 years and, following on from his period as Chief Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic from 1998 to 2003, Ashkenazy took up the position of Music Director of NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo in September 2004. In Autumn 2005 he completed his second highly successful European tour with them, including a televised concert at the Vienna Musikverein which marked the orchestra’s debut in this prestigious venue. Their regular work in Tokyo has included several television broadcasts and special programmes, such as a commemoration in Spring 2006 of Toru Takemitsu, a composer whom Ashkenazy greatly admires – and in homage to whom he directed ‘Riverrun’ from the keyboard in this concert. After a short visit to Seoul in June 2006 they undertook a major tour of the United States including Disney Hall in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston and Carnegie Hall in New York.
Alongside his position with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Ashkenazy continues to have a warm and rewarding relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra as their Conductor Laureate. In addition to his performances with the orchestra in London and around the UK each season, he tours with them worldwide, and has developed landmark projects such as ‘Prokofiev and Shostakovich Under Stalin’ in 2003 (a project which he also took to Cologne, New York, Vienna and Moscow) and ‘Rachmaninoff Revisited’ in 2002 at the Lincoln Center, New York.
Ashkenazy also holds the positions of Music Director of the European Union Youth Orchestra, with whom he tours each year, and Conductor Laureate of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. He maintains strong links with a number of other major orchestras with whom he has built special relationships over the years, including the Cleveland Orchestra (of whom he is a former Principal Guest Conductor), San Francisco Symphony and Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin (Chief Conductor and Music Director 1988-96), as well as making guest appearances with many other major orchestras around the world.
While conducting takes up a significant portion of his time each season, Ashkenazy continues to devote himself to the piano, directing Mozart and Beethoven concertos from the keyboard in performances in Europe and Asia, and continuing to build his extraordinarily comprehensive recording catalogue with releases such as the 1999 Grammy award-winning Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues, Rautavaara’s Piano Concerto No.3 (a work which he commissioned) and Rachmaninov Transcriptions. Most recently released is his recording of that most challenging and enriching of works, Bach's Wohltemperierte Klavier.