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Introducing Capriccio

Clare Pitchford   Violin
Eleanor Graff-Baker   Violin
Elizabeth Paling   Viola
John Bean  Cello
Jeremy Kimber   Piano
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Capriccio is comprised of experienced professional musicians who bring a broad range of chamber music to people of all ages.
​Their enthusiasm for drama and variety in performance is evident from their dynamic musical expression on stage.

Clare Pitchford

Clare studied the violin at the Royal Academy of Music with Lionel Bentley and Winifred Roberts, where she was awarded the Gertrude Norman prize. Her Great Great Great  Grandfather was a Musical Director in Zwickau and her Grandfather was Hi Fi pioneer G.A.Briggs of Wharfedale Wireless Works, so an interest in music certainly runs in the family! She has lived in Italy playing for Orchestra Sinfonica dell’Emilia Romagna, where conductors included Zubin Mehta. Clare was Principal Second for Scarborough Spa Orchestra, where they did regular BBC radio broadcasts, and she has also performed with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and English String and Symphony Orchestras. Clare enjoys chamber music ensembles and is a regular session player for TV and film Library Music. Her string quartet, Arioso, played for the Queen in 2012 to celebrate her Jubilee Celebrations. She plays on a Giovanni Battista Gabrielli, made in Florence C1760.

Eleanor Graff-Baker

Eleanor Graff-Baker read Music at The Queen’s College, Oxford, where she was a Choral Bursar and a member of Schola Cantorum. She continued her studies for a further year at Cambridge and is also an Associate of the Royal College of Music. As a violinist she has worked with many orchestras including the Royal Ballet, the London Film Orchestra and the Melachrino Strings, and with many smaller ensembles, as well as playing in a wide range of musicals. Original compositions include settings of George Herbert's poetry for tenor solo, choir and strings and Six Leicestershire Dances which use the same instrumentation as each of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Recently she composed music to accompany a semi-dramatic performance of Keats' The Eve of St Agnes. She is on the staff of Leicester Grammar School and conducts Loughborough University Choir.

Elizabeth Paling

Elizabeth Paling grew up in Loughborough and started to learn the Piano at the age of 6, and the Violin at 7. She gained Performing Diplomas at the age of 15 and continued her studies at the Royal College of Music, where she was a prizewinner, and the Birmingham Conservatoire. During this time she also studied the viola; after graduating she joined the Viola section of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, also playing piano and harpsichord with the RSNO. She has adjudicated at Music Festivals and for competitions at the Scottish Conservatoire, and was the Musical Director of Patchwork Youth Theatre and Kaleidoscope Children’s Theatre. She is now working in the Midlands and is currently embarking on a new series of solo CD recordings.

John Bean

John studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Derek Simpson, cellist in the Aeolian Quartet. He subsequently played with the Halle Orchestra, Manchester. The orchestra toured regularly around Europe and visited countries such as Hong Kong. He subsequently trained as a luthier at the Newark School of Violin Making and enjoys the variety of performing, teaching and restoration of stringed instruments. He has played with a number of Midlands ensembles, including the Heart of England Orchestra, Sinfonia Viva, and also for Her Majesty the Queen’s Golden Jubilee visit to Leicester. He is often in demand with popular music and rock bands and records backing tracks for new releases.

Jeremy Kimber

Jeremy almost became a farmer but decided to go to the Welsh College of Music and Drama instead. Here he began with trombone as his first study, then, after becoming bored with playing only one note at a time, switched to the piano, specialising in accompaniment. Since leaving college he has taught at all levels:beginners to diploma candidates, has performed as soloist and accompanist, conducted and examined. In addition to concerts in the UK, he has performed in Tanzania, Uruguay, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic. Jeremy has worked with Young Musician competition winners from Australia, Germany and the U.K. And performed concertos by Mozart, Beethoven Schumann and Rachmaninov. For eleven years he was Director of Music at Emmanuel Church, Loughborough. He now divides his time between teaching the piano at Nottingham and Loughborough Universities, performing; now almost exclusively an accompanist/chamber musician and examining for ABRSM.

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