Simon read music at King’s College Cambridge. He is a professor of piano accompaniment at the Royal College of Music, London where he also co-ordinates the piano accompaniment course. He is an official accompanist for BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. A regular at leading concert halls around the world, he has performed at the Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall and recitals in Amsterdam, Paris, Salzburg, Cologne and Madrid to name a few.

As an adjudicator, he has been on the panel for the Royal Overseas League, Kathleen Ferrier, Maggie Teyte and Maureen Lehane competitions as well as for the prelimary round of the Wigmore Hall International Song competition.

Mezzo-Soprano Anna Huntley was a scholar at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music International Opera School. Awards during this time included the Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera Vocal Fellowship at the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition, 3rd Prize at the Das Lied Competition in Berlin and the Michael Oliver Prize at the London Handel Singing Competition. She was selected for YCAT in 2012, mentored by Angelika Kirchschlager as part of the Royal Philharmonic Society/YCAT Philip Langridge Mentoring Scheme and has been featured as a ‘Rising Star’ in BBC Music Magazine. Most recently, she was awarded an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.

An established recitalist, Anna is a regular performer at the Wigmore Hall, London and across the rest of the UK and Europe including Wiener Musikverein, Opéra Lille, Warsaw Philharmonic Hall and at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Oxford, Bath, Cheltenham and St Magnus Festivals, working alongside many of the world’s leading accompanists including Graham Johnson, Julius Drake, Iain Burnside, Simon Lepper and James Baillieu. Other highlights of recent seasons include her Wiener Konzerthaus debut with Daniel Harding, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Alexander Vedernikov and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Haydn’s Harmoniemesse with Sir András Schiff, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Michael Collins and the City of London Sinfonia and a performance of Walter Arlen’s The Song of Songs with the Wiener Symphoniker, recording it for Japanese TV station NHK and Austria’s ORF. Anna has performed a variety of roles for ENO, WNO, ETO, the Cambridge Handel Opera Group and the Israeli Opera.

Gavan is a multiple national and international prizewinner, most recently being awarded second prize at the 2015 Concorso Lirico Internazionale di Portofino in Italy. Gavan was also awarded second prize at the 2013 Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition. Major national awards include the Southbank Sinfonia Award for Orchestral Song, the National Concert Hall Dr Bernadette Greevy Bursary and the Cuisine de France John Count McCormack Bursary.

Concerts include performances with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra and the Scottish Opera Orchestra with recent highlights including Offenbach’s Fantasio under the baton of Sir Mark Elder, Britten’s War Requiem with Mark Padmore and Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore for the 2015 Edinburgh International Festival under the baton of Richard Egarr.

Bradley Travis was born in Cheshire and studied at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) where he was the Drapers’ de Turckheim Scholar, winner of the Alexander Young Award and a finalist in the Frederic Cox Award.  He graduated from the Royal College of Music International Opera School (RCMIOS) winning the Eric Joseph Shilling Award for Opera. He also received a Sir Gordon Palmer Scholarship supported by the South Square Trust Award.

0peratic roles performed include Figaro The Marriage of Figaro (Opera North), Masetto Don Giovanni (English Touring Opera, Classical Opera, Opera Project), and Fireman Biedermann and the Arsonists (Independent Opera).

Most recently he received the prestigious Garsington Opera Leonard Ingrams Award in 2015, and the Helen Clarke Award in recognition of his contribution and musical skill during their 2014 season.

James Butler is one of today’s foremost figurative sculptors. He has been a member of the Royal Academy since 1964; he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors and a Member of the Royal West of England Academy. His many monuments and memorials stand in London and other UK cities and also abroad in Kenya, Zambia, Saudi Arabia, France, Singapore, Madeira and in the USA. His small and medium-size bronzes are in many private collections.

An image of his Rainbow Division Memorial, a pieta at the site of the Battle of the Croix Rouge Farm in Fère-en-Tardenois is used for the song cycle “Doomed Youth” with his kind permission.

His large monumental figurative sculptures also include the winged figure of Daedalus, a Memorial to the Fleet Air Arm which stands in the Embankment Gardens in London; the Memorial to the Green Howards, a seated figure of a contemplative soldier, described as ‘one of the most moving war memorials of our time’; and the figure of Field Marshall Earl Alexander of Tunis in Wellington Barracks, are just a few examples of his love for the military hero.

In contrast he has designed for the Royal Mint, the Royal Seal of the Realm, the Jubilee coin and the 50 pence piece, commemorating Roger Bannister’s 4 minute mile.

Cotesbach Educational Trust (CET), a registered charity established in 2009, hosts and provides learning opportunities focusing on Heritage, Environment, and the Arts. The Trust has access to a unique family archive dating back over 400 years, which, thanks to an extensive cataloguing process, is now shared with the wider community.

The Trust is based in the heart of the rural Midlands, close to the meeting point of Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and Northamptonshire. The site comprises a restored Georgian Grade II listed Schoolhouse and archive storage inside the Victorian coach house and a new café/teaching space constructed in oak and glass