Sir John Tomlinson was born in Lancashire. He gained a BSc in Civil Engineering at Manchester University before winning a scholarship to the Royal Manchester College of Music. He was awarded a CBE in 1997 and knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2005. He was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award for Singer in 1991, 1998 and 2007 and in 2014 their Gold Medal. He has sung for the world’s leading opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Deutsche Oper and Staatsoper, Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Geneva and Paris, the Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, Munich and Glyndebourne festivals and all the leading British companies. He made his Bayreuth Festival debut in 1988 as Wotan (Der Ring des Nibelungen) under Daniel Barenboim and went on to sing there every summer from 1989 to 2006. His repertory has included Boris Godunov, Bluebeard, Baron Ochs (Der Rosenkavalier), Golaud (Pelléas et Mélisande), Claggart (Billy Budd), General (The Gambler), Philip II and the Grand Inquisitor (Don Carlo), Méphistophélès (Faust), the four villains (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), the title role of Ivan Susanin, Jacopo Fiesco (Simon Boccanegra), Tommaso Becket (Assassinio nella cattedrale), Boris Ismailov and Moses (Moses und Aron). He also created Green Knight (Gawain) and the Minotaur (The Minotaur) for Harrison Birtwistle. Tomlinson’s wide discography includes CDs of works by Handel, Mozart, Wagner and Stravinsky and DVDs of The Minotaur, Parsifal and Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Rozanna was born in Leicestershire, England, of Ukrainian descent. After completing her undergraduate degree in English Literature and Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, Rozanna decided to dedicate herself to classical singing. She won a place to continue her vocal studies on the postgraduate course at the Royal Academy of Music with Anne Howells and Jonathan Papp in September 2011, where she was recipient of the Kohn Foundation Award. A year later, she became a member of the internationally acclaimed Royal Academy Opera School and Academy Song Circle, where she was recipient of the Karaviotis Scholarship, the Sir Charles Mackerras Award and the Carr-Gregory Trust Award and was a finalist in the prestigious Royal Academy of Music Patrons Award. Rozanna was also awarded the Karaviotis Prize at Les Azuriales Young Artist Competition, Nice, in August 2012 and, in the summer of 2013, attended the Solti Accademia in Castiglione della Pescaia. In May 2012, Rozanna was awarded a place on the prestigious Young Artist Platform at the Oxford Lieder Festival. Since then, she has been invited to perform in various concert halls around the UK and abroad, including the Holywell Music Room, Kings Place, the Mendelssohn-Remise Berlin, the Prokofiev Hall at the Mariinsky Theatre and the Small Hall of the St Petersburg Philharmonia. Previous roles include Prinz Orlofsky in Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus (Berlin Opera Academy), Mother Goose in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (cover for Festival d’Aix-en-Provence), Second Woman/Second Witch in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (Birmingham Opera Company), Jezebel in Goehr’s Naboth’s Vineyard (Melos Sinfonia), Beggar Woman in Britten’s Death in Venice (Garsington Opera), Smeraldina in Dove’s The Little Green Swallow (British Youth Opera), the title role in Handel’s Ariodante (Royal Academy Opera), Madame de la Haltière Cendrillon (RAO), Fidalma in Cimarosa’s The Secret Marriage (cover for BYO), the title role in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges (RAO and the BBC Symphony Orchestra), Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (Sinfonia d’Amici) and Maddalena in Verdi’s Rigoletto (Stanley Opera).

The Philharmonia was founded in 1945 by EMI producer Walter Legge, originally as a recording orchestra for the growing home audio market. We have worked with a who’s who of 20th- and 21st-century music. Herbert von Karajan, Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Arturo Toscanini and Riccardo Muti are just a few of the great artists to be associated with the Orchestra, and we have premiered works by Richard Strauss, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Errollyn Wallen, Kaija Saariaho and many others. We have always pioneered the use of technology to reach broader audiences for orchestral music. During the Coronavirus pandemic, we continued to create outstanding performances designed to experience online. We played for lifelong fans and first-time listeners in Brazil, Sudan, Indonesia, India, and high above the Arctic Circle in Norway.

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, in the heart of London, has been our home since 1995. We also have residencies at venues and festivals across England: Bedford Corn Exchange, De Montfort Hall in Leicester, The Marlowe in Canterbury, Anvil Arts in Basingstoke, the Three Choirs Festival in the West of England, and Garsington Opera. Central to all our residencies is a Learning & Engagement programme that empowers people to engage with, and participate in, orchestral music.

The Philharmonia is a registered charity. We rely on income from a wide range of sources to deliver our programme. We are proud to be supported by Arts Council England, and grateful for the generosity of the many individuals who make up our supporter family, as well as the Trusts and Foundations who underpin our work. In the US, the Orchestra’s American Patrons generously support the Philharmonia Foundation, a US-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation.

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s restless innovation drives him constantly to reposition classical music in the 21st century. In 2020, he will become the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. Until the end of the season 2020-2021, he is the Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor for London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, where the award-winning RE-RITE and Universe of Sound installations have allowed people all over the world to step inside the orchestra through audio and video projections. Salonen also drove the development of a much-hailed app for iPad, The Orchestra, which gives the user unprecedented access to the internal workings of eight symphonic works. As the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he is now Conductor Laureate, Salonen was instrumental in opening the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall and made the orchestra one of the best attended and funded in the country. He is the Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic and Artist in Association at the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. Additionally, Salonen is Artistic Director and cofounder of the annual Baltic Sea Festival.