The Trust provides accommodation and access to the music room and library at Dr Anderson’s former home in Kensington to a student of classical music, usually for the duration of a degree programme. The the current Resident Musician, for the 2025-26 academic year, is Jose Teixeira, a trombonist at the Royal College of Music. Jose has been in residence at the house since he began his undergraduate degree in 2020 (see here).

José Teixeira is studying for a Master of Performance degree at the Royal College of Music, with Josh Cirtina, Byron Fulcher, Paul Milner, Peter Smith and James Buckle. He previously completed his undergraduate studies at the same institution, earning several distinctions and awards. In addition to his connection to the Robert Anderson Trust, Jose is supported by the Drake Calleja Trust, and the London Symphony Orchestra Conservatoire Scholarship.

Jose’s achievements include First Prize in the British Trombone Society Trombone Choir Competition (2021 and 2023), an Honourable Mention in the International Trombone Association’s Emory Remington Competition (2024), first prize in the British Trombone Society Trombone Quartet competition (2023) with The Outsliders, and runner-up in the Bob Hughes Bass Trombone Competition (2024). He also took part in orchestral schemes with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (2022), English National Orchestra (2023) and Philharmonia Orchestra (2024).

He has collaborated with the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, English National Opera, and Sinfonia Smith Square.

In addition, José also plays bass sackbut and is an active member of The Royal Sackbut Collective which, in 2025, won the Brighton Early Music Festival fellowship. The collective will be recording their first album in 2026 with the support of a grant from the Trust’s Hawkins Special Fund.

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Previous Resident Musicians

Michal Oren, a conductor, was in residence at the house during her Master’s degree at the Royal College of Music (2022-24), and professional diploma at the Royal Academy (2024-25).

Just before leaving the house, in July 2025, Michal led a wonderful concert at Leighton House to mark the tenth anniversary of the death of The Founder – some photographs from the event and the full programme are here.

Michal Oren is an award-winning conductor from Tel-Aviv, Israel. Recently, she held the Female Conductor Trainee position at Opera North in Leeds, UK (2024-2025). Michal was part of the two-year Women Conductors’ Programme of the Royal Philharmonic Society with the Royal Northern Sinfonia (2024-2025). In June 2024, she was invited by maestro Martyn Brabbins to a shared concert with the London-based Salomon Orchestra and participated in his masterclass with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Glasgow.

Michal won the 1st prize in the 4th International Academy and Competition of Orchestra Conducting in Estoril, Portugal (2023) and the 2nd prize in the 3rd International Orchestral Conducting Competition of the “Universidad de Almeria”, Spain (2023). In 2025 Michal completed her Professional Diploma in Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music under the guidance of Sian Edwards, and with the support of a full scholarship through the Bianca Falcone Sorrell Award. Prior to this she completed a master’s degree in orchestral conducting at the Royal College of Music as a Victor and Lilian Hochhauser Scholar with a full scholarship, studying under the conductors Toby Purser, Peter Stark, and Howard Williams. She was awarded a distinction for her two Bachelors of Music in orchestral conducting and clarinet performance from the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel-Aviv University, as a student of the conductor Yi-An Xu and the Israeli Principal Clarinettist Yevgeny Yehudin. She was the Trust’s Resident Music Scholar from 2022 to 2025, and since 2015, has been a scholar of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation (receiving the highest distinction award for 2024-2026). Michal is also the founder and musical curator of the “Museum Orchestra” of the Petach-Tikva Museum of Art in Israel.

For more information about Michal’s work and forthcoming engagements please visit her website: https://www.michaloren.com

The Trust’s Resident Musician for 2021-2 was John Paul Jennings, a conductor who was with us for the second year of his Master’s degree at the Royal College of Music from September 2021.

John Paul was the holder, in 2020-21, of the Trust’s ‘special award’, which was established to provide support for a deserving student of the Royal College of Music (RCM) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the particular challenges faced by musicians whose performances and other essential activities had been cancelled.

Hailing from Southern California, John Paul is fast-emerging as a young conductor of note. He has conducted, among others, the North Czech Philharmonic, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and Oberlin Opera Theatre, and held the position of Cover Conductor with the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra. In 2020-22 he is pursuing a Master of Performance in Conducting degree at the Royal College of Music.

In summer 2021 John Paul was awarded a bursary by the Trust to support his participation in the Blue Danube International Opera Conducting Competition.

Further information about John Paul and his work is available here. A selection of his performances is available in recorded form via YouTube, here and below.

David Hedley

During the academic years 2019-20 and 2020-21 the Trust’s Resident Musician was David Hedley, an oboist who was with us for the duration of his Master’s degree at the Royal College of Music. David’s studies were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic but he nonetheless graduated with distinction in summer 2021 and subsequently secured a scholarship to study for an Artist’s Diploma at Guildhall School of Music and Drama starting in autumn 2021.

David in the grounds of the Royal College of Music, July 2020

David grew up in Ashington, Northumberland and first began receiving oboe lessons at the age of 12. Four years later he was offered a full-time position in Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Band where he served for 6 years. Since leaving the Royal Marines, alongside his musical activities David has also spent a lot of time raising funds for several charities including NSPCC, Cancer Research and Marie Curie. In 2019 he graduated from Durham University where he read Music. He then moved to London to commence studies for his master’s degree at the Royal College of Music where he studied with Juliana Koch, Olivier Stankiewicz, Christine Pendrill and Fabien Thouand.

On 8 March 2020 David played principal oboe in a programme of Ravel and Saint- Saëns at the RCM conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano, the current Director of Music at the Royal Opera House. The concert was live-streamed via the RCM website and David features prominently in the recordings which are available on Youtube:

Lili Boulanger, D’un matin de printemps: as above and here.
Ravel, Alborada del gracioso and Une barque sur l’ocean.

In May 2021 David performed with the London Symphony Orchestra and one of these performances is also available online via YouTube:

Unfortunately, owing to the pandemic, it was impossible for the Trust to host its annual summer concert, at which the Resident Music Scholar would perform, in either 2020 or 2021. Deprived of this opportunity to play for friends and supporters David and the Trust decided to record a virtual concert, for broadcast online, and the result is available via YouTube and below:

You can follow David’s progress via his Instagram account here.

Jack Wong

The Trust’s first Resident Musician was Jack Wong, who lived at the Trust’s Kensington house while studying for his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, from 2013 to 2019. Jack gave his final summer concert for the Trust in June 2019. The programme from the event which includes Jack’s tribute to the Founder who had personally invited him to stay at the house, is here.

Photo courtesy of lizislesphotography.com

Jack Wong was a friend of the Founder, Dr Anderson, and first came to the UK from Hong Kong to study music at Harrow School in 2011. He subsequently became a student of violin and piano at the Royal Academy of Music and will complete his undergraduate studies in 2017. Jack has been offered a place on the ‘Artist Masters – Performance (Repetiteur)’ programme at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama commencing autumn 2017, and will become the Trust’s first resident music scholar for the two-year duration of the course.

Jack is a pianist, violinist and conductor, and the founder of the Hornton Chamber Orchestra (HCO), named after Hornton Street, location of the Trust’s Kensington house, and the former home of the Founder. Jack and the HCO have given numerous performances to great acclaim, many of which can be viewed online including the following recital of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op.64:

Jack’s talents have also drawn the attention of the media, including most recently Classic FM (‘Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 played on four pianos is both nuts and amazing’).

You can keep up-to-date with Jack’s progress via his website: https://jackwong.uk/