The Solarek Piano Trio
This long established group has toured extensively through Britain and Europe and has given performances at London’s South Bank, St Johns Smith Square and St. David’s Hall, Cardiff. Their concerts are well known for their informative and entertaining introductions. Sparkling performances combined with a friendly convivial atmosphere send audiences home elated.
The trio regularly performs and gives masterclasses in Germany where they frequently introduce British composers like Alan Bush, Samuel Coleridge Taylor ,Rebecca Clarke and Frank Bridge.
In 2019 the trio started collaborating with the author Anna Beer, a Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford, whose 2016 celebration and exploration of the achievements of female composers through the centuries, ‘Sounds and Sweet Airs: the Forgotten Women of Classical Music’, was shortlisted for the RPS Creative Communication prize. Together with Anna the trio brings these previously neglected composers’ works to new audiences.
They recently have recorded works by Henriette Bosmans and have started a series of workshops and talks 'silent scores' with the aim of making the vast unheard repertoire by underrepresented women composers part of the curriculum for schools and colleges .
Marina Solarek studied violin in Mannheim and Hamburg and completed her studies in London with Prof Yfrah Neamen. She has performed regularly in Britain and abroad with the Feinstein Ensemble and the Baroque Ensemble Kontraste. She has given concerts at the South Bank and has made several broadcasts for Classic FM and BBC Radio 3. She has recently given the first performance of the Violin concerto by Henriette Bosmans with the Richmond Orchestra.
Marina was a member of the BBC Radio Orchestra in is now leading a busy freelance career, working with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, BBC Symphony Orchestra, West End Shows and for Film and Television.
Marina is Artisitc Director of the Youth Music Centre in North West London. She has taught at the Royal College Junior Department, has done Chamber music coaching on many residential courses including the Arpeggione Viola Course which she founded togehter with Jacky Woods, and has given Masterclasses at the University of Belfast.
Diana Cooper - Winner of numerous awards including 1st Prize at the Brest Chopin Competition, 1st Prize at the Halina Czerny-Stefanská International Competition in Poznań (Poland) and 1st Prize at the Concurso Internacional de Piano de Vigo (Spain), Diana Cooper has been invited to perform in various venues and festivals in France and abroad, including the Nohant Chopin Festival, the Festival Chopin à Paris (Bagatelle), the Salle Cortot, the Polish Embassy in Paris, the Festival International de Colmar, the Ysaye Festival in Belgium, Kings Place in London, the Royal Albert Hall, the Círculo de las Artes in Lugo, the Teatro Filarmónica de Oviedo, the Teatro Jovellanos in Gijón, the Kielce Filharmonia in Poland, Chopin’s manor in Duszniki, Chopin’s birthplace manor in Żelazowa Wola (concerts organised by the Chopin Institute), the Hrvatski dom Split in Croatia...
In 2023 and 2024, she was selected to take part in the project Un été en France avec Gautier Capuçon, for which she performed solo and chamber music in several open-air concerts across France, including in Corsica.
She was invited in 2018 to take part in the radio program Générations Jeunes Interprètes on France Musique and, in 2023, performed as a trio in the television programme Fauteuils d'orchestre, broadcast on France 5. In 2024 she was chosen to take part in a masterclass with Yuja Wang, filmed and produced by the BBC for the art series Arts in Motion.
She appeared with several orchestras including the Orkiestra Symfoniczna Filharmonii Kaliskiej, in Poland, performing Chopin’s 1st concerto under the baton of Maciej Kotarba.
Born in Tarbes (France), Diana is a graduate of the
Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP), the Ecole Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot and the Royal College of Music in London. Her main professors include Norma Fisher, Philippe Giusiano, Rena Shereshevskaya, and Marie-Josèphe Jude.
Diana has recently recorded her first CD, featuring works by Haydn, Chopin and Ravel, after winning 1st Prize in the Concours d’aide aux Jeunes Artistes organised by the Festival du Vexin.
Ellen Baumring-Gledhill is the only cellist to reach the Strings Category Final of BBC Young Musician 2020, Ellen won Junior Guildhall’s Lutine Prize the same year.
She completed her undergraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in summer 2024, graduating with a First Class Honours Degree.
During her time at the Royal Academy of Music she has been awarded several prizes for performance including the Jacob Barnes Award, Sir John Barbirolli Memorial Prize, the Royal Academy of Music’s Historical Women’s Composer Prize, the Wolfe Wolfinsohn String Quartet Prize as well as the Katie Thomas Memorial Prize and Rhoda Butt Award for achievement and contribution to the Royal Academy of Music.
In 2025, Ellen won the Westbourne Orchestra Concerto Competition. Recent concerto performances include the Dvořák Cello Concerto with the Deeside Orchestra in Aberdeen, opening the 2024 Aboyne and Deeside Festival, the Lalo Cello Concerto with the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, Welwyn Garden City Orchestra and Junior Guildhall Symphony Orchestra as well as the Elgar Cello Concerto with the Glyndebourne Touring Orchestra, the Ernest Read Symphony Orchestra and North London Sinfonia.
In summer 2023, Ellen was selected to participate in a residency at the Lake District Summer Music Festival, working with Guy Johnston and Melvyn Tan.
Ellen is cellist of the Regency String Quartet, who were supported by the Royal Academy of Music’s Frost Trust Advanced Specialist Strings Ensemble Training (ASSET) Scheme. The quartet were chosen as Kirckman Concert Society Artists for 2025/26 and won the 2025 Royal Overseas League String Ensembles Prize.
