Katherine Jenkinson - 'Cello

Born in1980, Katherine studied at the Royal Academy of Music where she obtained a first class degree, a distinction in the postgraduate performance diploma, the special award of Dip RAM and ten Academy prizes. She was selected to have "RAM Associate Studentship" for 2003/4.

A winner of the Maisie Lewis Competition and playing on the 'Markevitch' Stradivari 'Cello (1709), she gave a shared recital at The Wigmore Hall in March last year. Katherine has been supported by the Countess of Munster Music Scheme and the Musicians Benevolent Fund. She received an 'Allcard Award' from The Worshipful Company of Musicians for 2002/3. As an award winner of the Dorothy Grinstead Memorial Fund Katherine gave a recital at the Fairfield Halls in July 2004.

Since the year 2000, Katherine has performed internationally in Spain, The Seychelles, France and Africa. She has played concertos in London venues including St. Martin-in-the-Fields with The New London Soloist's Orchestra, Regent's Hall with The Wallace Ensemble, The Purcell Room with London Soloist's Chamber Orchestra, Dukes Hall with The Royal Academy of Music Concert Orchestra and at Imperial College with their university orchestra. Katherine performed recently with The Sheffield Symphony Orchestra (Elgar and Dvorak Concerti), at the Ashover Festival, Derbyshire (Shostakovich Concerto) and Tchaikovsky and Dvorak Concerti at The Seychelles Festival, the Lalo Concerto with Derby Concert Orchestra and the Schumann concerto with the Nottingham Symphony Orchestra.

She devotes much of her time to the performance of Chamber Music and has played string sextet concerts with principal players of the CBSO as recently as February in Birmingham and in June in Shropshire. Other chamber music partners have included Ed Vanderspar, and Rachel Roberts, principal violas in the LSO and Philharmonia. She joined the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in a concert at The Barbican last October and also plays on occasion with The CBSO and ICE (strings of CBSO).

Katherine is a member of The Rautio Piano Trio which recently won the 2005 Young Artists’ Platform Scheme from the Tillett Trust. The trio has played at the Fairfield Halls, The Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square, St Martins in the Fields, St James’s, Piccadilly and at various music societies. In October this year the Trio broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and were awarded a Levershulme Chamber Music Fellowship at the Royal Academy of Music.  They have also won a Musician’s Benevolent Fund Ensemble award this Autumn.

In the Summer of 2005 Katherine was invited to join the established Iuventus String Quartet which recently played at St Martin In the Fields and has engagements at many music societies over the next year.

‘I must put on record the performance of  the 'cello and piano version of Fratres, in which Katherine Jenkinson’s account of the formidable technical difficulties of the 'cello part was backed up by rare musical sensitivity both from her and from her partner, Alision Farr.  – The Independent, 2000

'Cellist, Katherine Jenkinson showed remarkable poise in her intense and expressive  performance’ - The Strad Magazine 2004