The North Norfolk Music Festival

Members of the Marmen Quartet come from the four corners of the globe; the violinists Johannes Marmen from Sweden and Laia Valentin Braun from Switzerland, cellist Sinéad O’Halloran, from Ireland and from New Zealand, the violist Bryony Gibson-Cornish.

The quartet was formed at the Royal College of Music in 2013 and were mentored by a number of leading players including Peter Cropper and Simon Rowland-Jones. The next six years were spent building up their career and in 2019 they won first prize at two of the world’s most important quartet competition – in Banff and in Bordeaux. This led to a series of international engagements around the world including at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, Lucerne, Dallas, concerts throughout Germany and Austria and at the Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. At home in the UK they will appear at Oxford Lieder Festival, the Sage and many other music festivals.

They are currently Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. This season they have given concerts in Milton Court in the City of London, Eindhoven, Sweden, Wigmore Hall and the Lake District Music Festival.

Ensemble 360 is a group of 11 chamber musicians, each of whom has their own parallel solo careers as soloists or member of leading orchestras. Formed in 2005 by the late Peter Cropper of Music in the Round, the ensemble is based at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield where they have their own annual festival each spring. 

Ensemble 360 consists of five string players, five winds and a pianist – this combination means they are able to work as a team at most of their concerts but at the same time create a hugely diverse programme of works not often heard in chamber concerts. Joining us on board the cruise are seven members of the group including pianist Tim Horton who is a veteran of a number of Kirker Music Festivals and one of our most popular performers.

Tim Horton studied at Chetham's School of Music with Charles Hopkins, Ryszard Bakst and Heather Slade-Lipkin. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1995. In the same year he replaced Alfred Brendel at short notice in two performances of Schoenberg's Piano Concerto with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle at Symphony Hall, Birmingham and the Royal Festival Hall, London.

Since then he has played with the RLPO, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Trondheim Symphony Orchestra. In 2005 Tim was chosen as the scholar of the Klavier Festival Ruhr at the recommendation of Alfred Brendel. Tim has a duo partnership with cellist Adrian Brendel with whom he has given tours of Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK, including concerts at the Wigmore Hall, London. He has played regularly at the Plush, Aldeburgh, Bath and Elverum festivals and has collaborated with many leading chamber musicians including Paul Lewis, Peter Cropper, the Elias Quartet, the Vertavo Quartet, Charles Owen and the members of the Kungsbacka Piano Trio.