Michael Pandya - Biography

https://www.michaelpandya.com/

Michael Pandya is a versatile young pianist specialising in song and chamber music. He has appeared in performance alongside Graham Johnson, Jonathan Lemalu, Robin Tritschler, Eamonn Dougan, and his recital schedule has taken him across the UK and into both Europe and the USA. In 2018 he has won the Gerald Moore Award, the Help Musicians UK Accompanist Prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards and the Oxford Lieder Young Artist Platform with duo partner Harriet Burns

Michael has received numerous other prizes including the Paul Hamburger Prize, Brenda Webb Award, Joan Chissells/Rex Stephens Schumann Lieder Prize, the Vivian Langrish Piano Prize and the Pianist Prize at the Rosenblatt North London Singing Competition. Recent performing engagements include appearances at the Wigmore Hall, KlavierFestRuhr in Germany, Newbury Spring Festival, Royal Overseas-League London, Hinchingbrooke Bösendorfer Series, Aberdeen Youth Festival, the Barbican Hall, and several live performances on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune. Upcoming engagements include concerts at Oxford Lieder Festival, Barnes Music Festival, Leeds Lieder Festival and Harrogate International Festivals, and recitals in Brugge, Edinburgh and Belfast. He is an Oxford Lieder Young Artist and a Samling Artist and has given recitals for the Park Lane Group and the Concordia Foundation and. In 2017 he was the recipient of the Graham Johnson Fellowship at SongFest, Los Angeles.

Michael is an experienced repetiteur and vocal coach, having worked as a repetiteur for New Chamber Opera for two years. He is also a scholar of the Solti Peretti Repetiteur course. Michael graduated from The Queen’s College, Oxford with First Class Honours in 2015. There he directed student operas by Albinoni, Haydn and Michael Nyman, amongst many others. For two years he was also Accompanist in Residence for the Oxford Lieder Festival.

Michael now studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, having graduated from the Royal Academy of Music with a DipRAM in 2017. Teachers have included Graham Johnson, Julius Drake, Michael Dussek, James Baillieu, Ian Brown, Caroline Palmer and Sholto Kynoch. Michael’s studies have been generously supported by the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, Help Musicians UK, the Leverhulme Trust, the Clumber Studio Trust and the Winifred Christie Trust.

Ema Nikolovska

Mezzo soprano

Ema Nikolovska studies on the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music Drama, and previously completed the Artist Masters programme. Her principal teachers have included Rudolf Piernay and Susan McCulloch in London, and Helga Tucker in Toronto, Canada. Ema was born in Skopje, Macedonia and spent most of her life in Toronto, where she completed an undergraduate degree in violin performance on full scholarship at The Glenn Gould School. Ema is the winner of the Guildhall Wigmore Prize with pianist Dylan Perez (resulting in a debut evening recital at Wigmore Hall on 18 May, 2019), and winner of the Second Place Singer Prize at the International Helmut Deutsch Lied Competition with pianist Michael Sikich in September 2018. Ema also won the 2018 Susan Longfield Prize at Guildhall, and First Prize and Audience Prize at the 25th Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards in Wigmore Hall.

Ema has performed in masterclasses and recitals at the Toronto Summer Music Academy and Festival, Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme, Music Academy of Villecroze, Les Azuriales, the Franz-Schubert-Institut, and Thomas Hampson’s Lied Akademie at the Heidelberger Frühling Music Festival. Ema was part of Graham Johnson’s Song Guild, performed a side-by-side recital with The Prince Consort in Wigmore Hall, and was a finalist at the 2018 Oxford Lieder Young Artists Platform with pianist Nathan Tinker. Ema is grateful to the Shipley Rudge Scholarship and London Syndicate for supporting her Opera Course studies, and to the Countess of Munster Musical Trust as a recipient of their 2018-2019 ‘Star Award’.