Lucia D’Avanzo · violin
Now a Masters student at the Royal Academy of Music, Lucia graduated with a First Class degree from the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in June 2010. Teachers have included Thomas Kemp, Pavel Fischer and Mateja Marinkovi?, and she has played in Master Classes taken by Wen Zhou Li and Ivry Gitlis. Lucia also has strong musical connections with Kent, where she studied at the Kent Music Academy (KMA) from 2000–2006 and developed a love of orchestral and chamber music. Her KMA string quartet was chosen to represent the centre as part of a tour of Mauritius, where they appeared on Mauritian Television and performed for the British Ambassador. Lucia held the title of Maidstone Young Musician of the Year in 2005 and was the leader of the Kent County Youth Orchestra for two years, working with esteemed conductors such as Peter Stark, Kenneth Woods and Guillermo Scarabino.

Whilst in Manchester, Lucia progressed to the final round of the RNCM’s Norman George Violin Scholarship and was chosen as one of the first students to perform in the college’s new Monday Lunchtime Recital series playing Leoš Janá?ek’s Sonata for violin and piano. Lucia loves organising concerts and performing neglected works. Her third year recital featured Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto no. 3, op. 58, and in her Final Recital she performed Violin Sonata no. 4 by Charles Ives alongside a work she commissioned especially by Greenwich-based composer Lucy Williams called The Way of the Ostrich. In November 2009 she organised a concert in Emmanuel Church, Didsbury featuring large ensemble repertoire, including the recently-discovered String Octet by Max Bruch.

Since moving to London Lucia has performed with English National Opera, the Co-Opera Company and the Young Musicians’ Symphony Orchestra. She remains heavily involved with chamber music, performing with a horn trio and the D’Avanzo Piano Trio. Her violin-viola ensemble Duo Figaro performs at recitals around the country and she continues performing at public and private functions with the D’Avanzo Quartet.