Jennifer Galloway, Ross Knight, Rachel Roberts, Edward Gregson, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra & Ben Gernon
Biography Jennifer Galloway, Ross Knight, Rachel Roberts, Edward Gregson, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra & Ben Gernon
Jennifer Galloway
has been principal oboe of the BBC Philharmonic since 2000, having joined in 1993 as sub-principal while still a student at the Royal Northern College of Music. She also appears as guest principal with some of the UK’s finest orchestras, and in 2012 joined the World Orchestra for Peace for the Solti Centenary Concerts in the US, and its BBC Prom in 2014.
Solo performances with the BBC Philharmonic include the Strauss, Mozart and Vaughan Williams concertos, and a recording of the Malcolm Arnold Concerto for Chandos in 2001. In 2020 she premiered Edward Gregson’s Oboe Concerto, which the BBC commissioned him to write for her.
Ross Knight
is the Solo Tuba player of l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and since September 2022 the International Visiting Tutor at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Ross has played with several of the world’s top orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, where he was a member of the prestigious Karajan Academy, the London Symphony Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich, as well as many others. He was also the principal tuba player of the European Union Youth Orchestra from 2012-2015 and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra from 2015-2016.
Ross was awarded 2 nd Place and the Overall Winner of the Category Tuba of the 2019 Aeolus International Competition for Wind Instruments. In 2012 he was the Overall winner of the BBC Radio 2 Young Brass Player award and in 2014 he was awarded 2 nd place in the European Brass and Percussion Solo Championships in Perth, Scotland. He has also performed as soloist with l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Neue Lausitzer Philharmonie, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, BBC Concert Orchestra, Tredegar Town Band, Brighouse and Rastrick Band, Grimethorpe Colliery Band, amongst others.
Ross features on Tredegar Town Band’s CD “Vaughan Williams on Brass” as the feature soloist performing Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Tuba Concerto.
As well as being the interim professor of Tuba and Euphonium at the Haute École de Musique de Genève in 2022-2023, Ross gives regular masterclasses at some of Europe’s Top Conservatoires including the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, and has given classes also at the CNSMD Lyon, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, HEMU Fribourg, amongst others. He was also the tuba tutor for the Australian Youth Orchestra in 2019, the National Youth Brass Band of Switzerland in 2024 and the National Youth Brass Band of Scotland in 2024.
Rachel Roberts
is one of Europe’s leading violists and performs internationally as a soloist and chamber musician.
As a soloist she has collaborated with conductors Christoph von Dohnanyi, Andras Schiff and Richard Hickox, performing concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Koln Kammerorchester, Kammerphilharmonie Graubunden in Switzerland and the Manchester Camerata Chamber Orchestra amongst others. She was the featured viola soloist in the BBC TV documentary ‘The Passions of Vaughan Williams’ with Richard Hickox and the Philharmonia Orchestra, and has performed Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante alongside violinists Christian Tetzlaff, Antje Weithaas and Benjamin Schmid in Germany, Switzerland and London. In January 2025 she recorded Edward Gregson’s Viola Concerto ‘Three Goddesses’ with the BBC Philharmonic, for future release on Chandos Records. Commissioned by the Presteigne Festival, the concerto was written especially for Rachel, and subsequently nominated for the 2024 Ivors Classical Awards (Best Large Ensemble Composition).
Rachel enjoys a busy schedule of chamber music. She has appeared as chamber musician at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, the Musikverein (Grand Saal) Vienna, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Cadogan Hall, St John’s Smith Square and King’s Place in London. She is a regular guest at international chamber music festivals such as Salzburg Festival, Wiener Festwochen, Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg, Heimbach “Spannungen”, Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Hamburg “Oestertone”, Lofoten in Norway, and Stift in Holland.
Rachel is the violist of award-winning chamber music group Ensemble 360, with whom she gives frequent performances at Sheffield’s Crucible Playhouse as well as other venues across South Yorkshire. She regularly performs and records with Wigmore Soloists and Nash Ensemble, involving regular appearances at London’s Wigmore Hall, and has appeared with other celebrated ensembles such as the Tetzlaff String Quartet. Prizes for her chamber music recordings include thrice being awarded the coveted Diapason d’Or (2009, 2021, 2023), BBC Chamber Choice in BBC Music Magazine, and CD of the month in Fonoforum magazine, Germany. She has recorded chamber music for Hyperion, Champs Hill Records, Signum Classics, cAVI, Deutsche Rundfunk, Orchid Classics and BIS Records.
Following the success of her second solo CD (Schubert, Britten and Shostakovich) with pianist Lars Vogt on the cAVI label, Rachel Roberts has frequently joined Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Antje Weithaas and Isabelle Faust for further chamber music collaborations, both in Germany and the UK.
Building on their highly successful collaboration at Wigmore Hall, in 2021 Rachel joined Christian Tetzlaff, Florian Donderer, Marie Elisabeth Hecker and Tanja Tetzlaff in Germany, to record and perform Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, D. 956. The resulting disc was released on the Alpha Classics label to critical acclaim.
Rachel is also a member of Trio Meister Raro alongside pianist Tim Horton and clarinettist Robert Plane, performing a selection of acknowledged masterpieces and fascinating curiosities, with a particular focus on themes of storytelling and fantasy.
Rachel Roberts is Professor of Viola at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She has given masterclasses in the UK, Europe and Scandinavia. She holds the Institute of Education qualification: Professional Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher and Professional Education and many of her students are now enjoying professional careers in the UK and abroad.
Edward Gregson
was born in Sunderland, Co Durham, England, in 1945. He graduated from London’s Royal Academy of Music in 1967, having studied piano and composition (with Alan Bush), and then completed a B.Mus (Hons) degree at London University. He is a composer of international standing whose music has been performed, broadcast, and recorded worldwide. He has written orchestral, chamber, instrumental and choral music, as well as making major contributions to the wind and brass repertoire. He has also written music for the theatre, film, and television,
His orchestral music has been performed by many orchestras and conductors worldwide, including all the BBC orchestras, the London Symphony, Royal Scottish National, Hallé, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Bournemouth Symphony orchestras; with conductors such as Martyn Brabbins, Edward Downes, Rumon Gamba, Alexander Gibson, Gunther Herbig, Kent Nagano, Gianandrea Noseda, Bramwell Tovey, and soloists including Ole Edvard Antonsen, Wissam Boustany, Olivier Charlier, Michael Collins, Nelson Goerner, Guy Johnston, Nobuya Sugawa, and Richard Watkins. His chamber music has been performed and recorded by groups including the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, London Brass, the Navarra and Nightingale string quartets, the Nash Ensemble, whilst his music for brass bands has been performed by all the major ensembles in the world.
His music has been extensively broadcast and recorded, and perhaps of special note is the ongoing series of his symphonic music and concertos on the Chandos label performed by the BBC Philharmonic and BBC Concert orchestras, and London Brass – the latest volume being released in 2020. Included in this series are all his major concertos: horn (1971), tuba (1976), trumpet (1983), trombone (1979), clarinet (1994), piano (1997), violin (2000), saxophone (2006), cello (2007), and flute (2013). He has also recently embarked on a three-volume series of his instrumental and chamber music for the Naxos label, the third of which is due for release in May 2022. In addition, and of similar importance, is the six-volume survey of his complete music for brass band on the Doyen label.
His most recent compositions include Three Études EG 2008 portrait (7) for piano, recorded on the Naxos label by Murray McLachlan, an Oboe Concerto (A Vision in a Dream) for Jennifer Galloway and the BBC Philharmonic, a Euphonium Concerto for David Childs, The World Rejoicing (Symphonic Variations on a Lutheran Chorale) - a commission from five European countries, and The Salamander and the Moonraker, a work for children’s choir, narrators and orchestra commissioned by the Hallé Concerts Society in 2018, with story and libretto by his wife Susan Gregson. In 2016, as Composer in Association with Black Dyke Band, he composed a Cornet Concerto and Four Études, and in 2017, as Composer in Residence at the Presteigne Festival, his 2nd String Quartet was premiered by the Nightingale Quartet from Denmark.
Edward Gregson has had an impressive career as an academic, from his time as Head of Composition and resident conductor in the music department of Goldsmiths College, University of London (1976-96), and where he was appointed a Professor of Music, to his tenure as Principal of the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester (1996-2008). He retired from academe in 2008 in order to concentrate on his composition.
He holds honorary degrees and fellowships from a dozen English universities and conservatoires, including the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, Manchester University and Lancaster University, and is also a Companion and Emeritus Professor of the RNCM. He has won many awards and prizes, including an Ivors Academy Composer Award in 2019, having been nominated on two previous occasions. He was a Writer Director of the Performing Right Society (1995-2021), and has also served on many international music juries, worked as jury member and expert commentator for the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year programmes, and as a conductor has premiered many works by UK composers. He has also written a number of scholarly articles for various publications.
