The Kirker Ischia Music Festival

Barry Cheeseman has been the Manager of the Kirker Cultural Tours & Music Holidays programme for over 10 years. 

Barry has been an opera lover for more than 40 years and has seen and heard every major singer during this period. He loves the challenges of organising complex arts events and working closely with the musicians. Out of the office, Barry manages to fit in time to organise his own Chamber Music Festival in North Norfolk where he lives

The Maxwell String Quartet was internationally recognised after winning First Prize in the 9th Trondheim Chamber Music Competition in 2017. They very soon started to appear in leading chamber music venues throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, with performances in Copenhagen, Stavanger and Amsterdam. The quartet is comprised of players who grew up together and who played both classical music and Scottish folk music across Scotland.

They studied with the Endellion String Quartet and have been mentored by current and former members of the Belcea Quartet, Krysztof Chorzelski and Alasdair Tait. They have a very busy performing schedule planned for the 2018/9 season with performances in Trondheim, throughout Scotland, and nine concerts on a tour of the United States. At the start of 2019, they perform at St. John’s Smith Square and at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge.

"Performer, editor, composer and teacher, Simon Rowland-Jones has always led a very busy, all-embracing musical life. He was founder violist of the Chilingirian Quartet, in which he played for a total of ten years, and subsequently performed with many other leading chamber groups. 

His solo CDs, on the Meridian and Etcetera labels, include the first-ever complete version of the Bach Cello Suites on viola. Peters Edition published his viola transcription of the suites shortly after the recording was made and he then went on to make a new critical/performing edition of the Haydn String Quartets. His many works include pieces for viola, four string quartets, a string trio, a piano quartet, songs and ‘A Turn Outside’, a musical adaptation of a play by Stevie Smith commissioned by Dame Josephine Barstow. He teaches viola and chamber music at the Royal College of Music and is co-director of the North Norfolk Music Festival."

Latvian soprano Laura Lolita Perešivana started her operatic journey when she was only nineteen years old covering Lauretta (Gianni Schicchi) at the Latvian National Opera House. She is a recent graduate of Guildhall School of Music & Drama Opera Course, where she was recipient of the Derek Butler Trust Scholarship and The Mercers’ Company Scholarship. This year Laura was one of four finalists selected for the Guildhall School’s most prestigious music prize, The Gold Medal, and performed on the stage of the Barbican Hall.

During the summer Laura performed with great success as Berenice (L’occasione fa il ladro) with the British Youth Opera at Opera Holland Park with Laura described as ‘her tone pearly, her coloratura purling’ (Opera Magazine) and called ‘a superb singer and actress’ (Opera Today). Laura Lolita has participated in many competitions, receiving awards including the Second Prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, the 54th Tenor Vinas International Singing Contest Extraordinary prize, as well as the Musicians’ Company Award, and was selected as a 2021 City Music Foundation Artist.
Laura Lolita is Georg Solti Accademia di Bel Canto alumna and has worked with conductor Richard Bonynge and she has joined the famed National Opera Studio in London for the 2021/22 season.

Laura Lolita will be joining the Young Artists' programme at La Scala, Milan immediately after her performances in Ischia.

A multiple-prize winning and critically acclaimed conductor and accompanist, William Vann is equally at home on the podium or at the piano and is particularly renowned for his revival performances and recordings of lost and lesser-known works of vocal and choral music by British composers. Gramophone, reviewing Purer than Pearl, Albion Records’ 2016 disc of Vaughan Williams song, reserved “a special word of praise for William Vann’s deft pianism”; his recent revival of Hubert Parry’s oratorio Judith at Royal Festival Hall “was an unalloyed triumph for William Vann…he had complete command of the score and evident belief in the music” (Seen and Head International). His studio recording of Judith was released to critical acclaim on Chandos Records in March 2020 and was subsequently shortlisted in the 2020 Gramophone Awards. William is the founder and Artistic Director of the London English Song Festival, the Director of Music at the Royal Hospital Chelsea and the Music Director of Dulwich Choral Society.
Born in Bedford, he was a Chorister at King’s College, Cambridge and a Music Scholar at Bedford School. He subsequently read law and took up a choral scholarship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was taught the piano by Peter Uppard, and studied piano accompaniment at the Royal Academy of Music with Malcolm Martineau and Colin Stone.

William has collaborated across the world with a vast array of orchestras, singers and instrumentalists, among them the Academy of Ancient Music, Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Allen CBE, Roderick Williams and the Benyounes and Navarra String Quartets. Recent performances have included appearances at Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Opera House, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, Sage, Gateshead, St John’s, Smith Square and the Holywell Music Room, at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Oxford Lieder and Machynlleth Festivals, the Northern Ireland Festival of Voice (broadcast on Radio 3) and abroad in France, Germany (on live ZDF television), Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa (National Arts Festival) and Sweden.

Born in November 1998, Thomas Kelly started playing the piano aged 3, and in 2006 became Kent Junior Pianist of the Year and attained ABRSM Grade 8 with Distinction. Aged 9, Thomas performed Mozart Concerto No. 24 in the Marlowe Theatre with the Kent Concert Orchestra.
After moving to Cheshire, he regularly played in festivals and competitions and has claimed a string of awards and prizes including 1st prize at the Pianale International Piano Competition 2017, Kharkiv Assemblies 2018, Lucca Virtuoso e Bel Canto festival 2018, RCM Joan Chissell Schumann competition 2019, Kendall Taylor Beethoven competition 2019, BPSE Intercollegiate Beethoven competition 2019 and the 4th Theodor Leschetizky competition 2020. In 2021 Thomas was a finalist in the Leeds International Piano Competition. Most recently, he was awarded 2nd prize and special prize for best semi-final performance at Hastings International Concerto Competition 2022.
Between 2015 and 2021 Thomas studied with Andrew Ball, firstly at the Purcell School of Music and then at the Royal College of Music. Thomas has also gained inspiration from masterclasses with musicians such as Vanessa Latarche, William Fong, Ian Jones, Tatiana Sarkissova, Valentina Berman, Boris Berman, Paul Lewis, Mikhail Voskresensky and Dina Yoffe. Thomas began studying with Dmitri Alexeev in April 2021, with whom he will continue whilst studying Masters at the RCM.
Thomas has been chose as the recipient for the 2023-24 Benjamin Britten Fellowship at The Royal College of Music. It is awarded to pianists with exceptional talent, and provides financial assistance and help for further studies with the world's leading pianists. The Fellowship is awarded every two years.

He has performed in a variety of venues, including the Wigmore Hall, the Cadogan Hall, St John’s Smith Square, Steinway Hall London, Holy Trinity Sloane Square, at the North Norfolk Music Festival, Paris Conservatoire, the StreingreaberHaus in Bayreuth and separately at the Teatro Del Sale and the British Institute in Florence.
Thomas is supported by the Kendall-Taylor award. He has been generously supported by the Keyboard Charitable Trust since 2020, and Talent Unlimited since 2021.