Formed in 2002, Belsize Baroque is one of the leading amateur baroque orchestras. It comprises young professionals, students, and top amateur baroque players from London and elsewhere. The orchestra performs on period instruments in an historically informed style. It collaborates regularly with leading baroque directors to give orchestral performances, and works on baroque and classical repertoire with choral groups.
The orchestra showcases the abilities of talented college students and young professional musicians, providing these players with the opportunity to perform with top directors and an experienced baroque orchestra.
Our next concerts
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Tickets on the door, or click here to order tickets in advance.
Director:
Catherine Martin read music at St Anne’s College, Oxford University, completing her postgraduate at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, studying the modern violin with David Takeno.
Catherine now specialises in performance on period instruments and has been the leader of the Gabrieli Consort and Players for the last 11 years. Catherine also leads the orchestra of the Early Opera Company, and has appeared as guest leader of The English Concert and Florilegium.
In demand as violin soloist and director, recently Catherine has directed concerts with Barokkanerne in Oslo and the Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra as well as collaborations with amateur and student orchestras on both baroque and modern instruments. Catherine has been a member of the Salomon String Quartet since 2003, exploring music of the Classical period from Haydn to Mendelssohn.
She appears on many recordings; for Deutsche Grammophon and Winged Lion with The Gabrieli Consort and Players, EMI with Ensemble Galant, and Chandos with I Fagiolini. Catherine teaches at the Royal College of Music in London.
Belsize Baroque Orchestra Leader Scholarship:
Belsize Baroque is delighted to announce the award of the Belsize Baroque Leadership Scholarship for 2019/20 to Marguerite Wassermann.
Marguerite writes
I am really excited about working with this high-level early music ensemble. I look forward to the mentorship offered by Belsize Baroque’s exceptional guest directors, to their challenging and varied programmes, and most of all, to being part of this thriving historical performance community.
Marguerite is a postgraduate student at the Historical Performance department of the Royal Academy of Music, where she holds the Scholarship of the Enlightenment and studies with Margaret Faultless. This year, Marguerite has performed at St Martin-in-the Fields, St. John’s Smith Square, the Reform Club, and St. Anne’s, Kew. With her ensemble, Judith Collective, Marguerite has staged cantatas by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and is creating a festival of early music by women composers for 2020. Before she enrolled at the Academy, Marguerite graduated from New College, Oxford University, with a first class degree in music. At Oxford, she helped found and direct an early music ensemble, The Bate Players, which regularly performed at the Holywell Music Rooms, the Keble Early Music Festival, and which won the Bate Recording Prize. Marguerite currently plays on a Jacob Stainer baroque violin generously loaned to her by the Royal Academy of Music
We would like to thank everyone who applied for the scholarship.
We would also like to extend particular thanks to Alice Poppleton, our Bursary Award winner for 2018/19 for her exceptional support of the orchestra.
We wish Alice Poppleton and Simone Pirri all the best in their futures in baroque music.
