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Biography

Image: Morwenna Del Mar

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Morwenna Del Mar graduated in 2009 with a Masters in Music and an Orchestral Studies Diploma from the Eastman School of Music, New York, where she studied for two years with professor Steven Doane. She gained a postgraduate performance diploma (with Distinction and DipRAM for outstanding final recital) from the Royal Academy of Music in 2007, having graduated from Cambridge University with an Honours Degree in Music in 2005.

Morwenna has a busy performance schedule giving concerts across the country, both as a soloist and chamber musician. She has performed in the Purcell Room, St James's Church (Piccadilly, London), Leeds Town Hall, Colston Hall (Bristol), West Road Concert Hall and Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge), the Duke’s Hall (Royal Academy of Music), and as part of the St Endellion (Cornwall), Shoreham (Kent), Budleigh Salterton (Devon) and Norfolk & Norwich Festivals. Performances with orchestra include concertos by Schumann, Saint-Saëns and Elgar, and Tchaikovksy's Variations on a Rococo Theme. Recent concerts include the Elgar and Schumann cello concertos with the Orchestra of St Paul's and the Oxford Sinfonia, a solo recital in the Budleigh Salterton Festival, and a performance James Macmillan's Kiss on Wood as part of the King's College Easter Festival in King's Chapel, Cambridge, in the presence of the composer. In 2011, the Del Mar Piano Trio - with violinst Francesca Barritt and pianist Susie Summers - will give four performances of the Beethoven Triple Concerto around the country.

Morwenna works regularly with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, and the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra, was a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra, and has performed as principal cellist of the Dartington Festival and St Endellion Festival Orchestras, the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, and orchestras of the Royal Academy of Music and Eastman School of Music. She has played under some of the world's most distinguished conductors including Jiří Bělohlávek, Herbert Blomstedt, Sir Colin Davis, Christoph von Dohnányi, Iván Fischer, Richard Hickox, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Simon Rattle, and Yan Pascal Tortelier, and in August 2008 she played with the London Symphony Orchestra in the BBC Proms under Valery Gergiev. She is currently on trial with the Philharmonia Orchestra, with whom she has toured the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, under Lorin Maazel, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Whilst at the Royal Academy of Music she was awarded a Leverhulme Orchestral Fellowship and, following her involvement in the London Symphony Orchestra’s ‘String Experience Scheme’ she was awarded their PROMIS Award for the most outstanding string experience student, giving her further work with the orchestra and a recital for the sponsors. Whilst at Eastman she was a member of the school's Orchestral Studies Diploma run in partnership with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, which provided her with further professional orchestral and orchestral management experience. Morwenna has received awards for solo and chamber performances, including the Royal Academy's Rhoda Butt Award, Harry Isaacs and John Ireland Prizes (as a member of the Del Mar Piano Trio), a Cambridge Instrumental Award, and one of the English Chamber Orchestra's inaugural Duchess of Cornwall Awards.

Morwenna is grateful for the very generous support of Richard Syred and the Richard Syred Music Bursary Fund, Churchill College, Cambridge, and also to the Dulce Haigh Marshall Trust and Dartington International Summer School for their awards and bursaries over many years.