In addition to its one-month placements (see here) the Trust also provides accommodation and access to the music room and library at Dr Anderson’s former home on Hornton Street, Kensington on a long-term basis to a student of classical music, usually for the duration of a degree programme. The Trust is only able to offer one such scholarship at a time and the current Scholar, for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years, is Michal Oren, a conductor who will be in residence at the house during her Master’s degree at the Royal College of Music.

Michal is an award winning conductor and a clarinettist from Tel-Aviv, Israel. Her work represents a contemporary modern approach aiming to combine classical music with additional arts as a new step in the 21st century’s cultural creation.

Michal was awarded her Bachelor of Music in orchestral conducting from the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv University with distinction. She is currently studying for her Master of Performance in Orchestral Conducting, with a full scholarship, at the Royal College of Music in London under the conductors Toby Purser, Peter Stark and Howard Williams. Among Michal’s teachers are the conductors Yi-An Xu, Doron Salomon, Dr Dale Lonis and the IPO principal clarinettist Yevgeny Yehudin.

In 2020 Michal won the first prize in the conducting competition of the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music with Haifa Symphony Orchestra. In addition to being the Trust’s Resident Music Scholar Michal is a Victor and Lilian Hochhauser Scholar and, since 2015, Scholar of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.

As part of her modern approach, Michal initiated, together with Reut Ferster, the manager of Petach-Tikve Museum of Contemporary Art, a new chamber orchestra in Israel named the “Museum Orchestra”. The orchestra repertoire is based on the museum exhibitions. The orchestra preforms at the museum concert hall and galleries as well as in other artistic spaces.

Michal has made guest conducting appearances with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Israeli Chamber Orchestra, Haifa Symphony Orchestra, Jerusalem Street Orchestra, Hertford Symphony Orchestra, Central London Orchestra, Salomon Orchestra, Berlin Sinfonietta, Pazardjik Symphony Orchestra and more. In addition, Michal was the conductor and musical director of the Israeli Flutes Ensemble for two seasons (2020- 2022). During her time as musical director, Michal established together with the Israel Music Institute a new Israeli composition competition for the Flutes Ensemble.

Michal will be performing on 28 June (see here) and 2 July 2023 (here), conducting two masterpieces by Stravinsky – Dumbarton Oaks and Soldier’s Tale Suite – with the Royal College of Music Ensemble.

In addition, Michal will be performing alongside Maestro Martyn Brabbins at the Salomon Orchestra 60th anniversary concert on 14 October 2023. For more information or to book tickets please see here.

You can follow Michal’s progress via her website, here.

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Previous Resident Music Scholars

The Trust’s Resident Scholar 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 Music Scholar 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 Music Scholar 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/