Stanford piano trio no 2 in G minor, op 73
NICHOLAS MILLER was born in Hertfordshire and began learning the violin at the age of eight. Whilst still at school he performed regularly at major London venues and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in their ‘Young Music Makers’ series. Following a period of study with Felix Andrievsky he continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Music with Carmel Kaine, where he won numerous prizes for both solo and chamber music. He was invited to perform the Max Bruch concerto with the Academy Orchestra and was also awarded the Recital Diploma.
During this period he won an English Speaking Union Scholarship to the Yale University Summer School in Connecticut, USA. The following year, with awards from the Countess of Munster Trust, Martin Fund and the Royal Society of Arts, Nicholas commenced two years study at the Juilliard School, New York with the legendary Dorothy DeLay.
Nicholas has appeared throughout Britain, Europe and the United States including performances at the Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall, St. John’s Smiths Square, London and Alice Tully Hall, New York. He has broadcast on Danish, Spanish, Dutch and American radio as well as live on BBC Radio 3 from the Bath International Music Festival.
Prior to his appointment in 1990 as a professor at the Royal Academy of Music he taught at the Yehudi Menuhin School. Menuhin said of his teaching “I have admired the results you have obtained as well as the quality of playing which you have inspired.” Nicholas has been recently made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.
ALISON WELLS teaches cello at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and is a regular faculty member at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in the USA. Her career as a chamber musician has taken her throughout Europe, North America and Asia, performing at venues including the Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room and New York’s 92nd Street Y and Merkin Hall. She was featured in a Channel 4 documentary on the Chamber Music of Penderecki, performing his 2nd string quartet and working with the composer.
Alison is a graduate of Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, studying with Ralph Kirshbaum and David Strange. She holds a doctorate from Yale University, where she studied with Aldo Parisot as a Harkness Fellow. Additional awards enabled her to undertake further studies at Banff, Prussia Cove and the International Menuhin Academy in Gstaad, Switzerland. In 1988 she joined the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, under Simon Rattle, and became an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. The following year she gave her London recital debut at the South Bank, sponsored by the Maisie Lewis Young Artists’ Trust. Alison is a former faculty member of the Peabody Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music in the USA, and Trinity College of Music and the Purcell School in London. She has served on the faculties of the Dartington and Aberystwyth festivals in Britain, and ENCORE School for Strings, Madeline Island Festival, ARIA and the Heifetz Institute in the US. In 2001 she became the 1st British string player to be licensed as a Body Mapping Educator.
Pianist and composer JEFFREY SHARKEY became Principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in September 2014, leading Scotland’s national conservatoire of dance, drama, music, production and screen. In addition to his duties as principal, he teaches chamber music at the conservatoire and maintains his performance collaborations with both teachers and with students. He became a British citizen in 1993 and his career spans work in both the UK and the USA.
Jeffrey lived in the United Kingdom for 13 years, serving as Director of Music at the Purcell School in London and head of academic music at Wells Cathedral School where he started the school’s composition department. He maintained his performing profile while in the United States, coaching chamber music as a faculty member and in master classes and summer festivals throughout the country. He performed with the Baltimore Symphony and collaborated with members of the Cleveland, Orion, and Cavani Quartets. Jeffrey Sharkey is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music where he was the conservatory’s first double major in piano and composition. He earned a Master of Music degree in composition from Yale University and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge. His teachers have included pianists John Browning, Boris Berman, Constance Keene and Peter Frankl and composers Aaron Copland, Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, John Corigliano and Robin Holloway.
Jeffrey was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2022.
The Pirasti Trio collaborates regularly with other instrumentalists to include piano quartets and quintets by Mozart, Schumann and Brahms, Stanford and Fauré.
The Pirasti Trio will also appear in quartet format with violist Sophie Renshaw, and in quintet format with Sophie and a guest violinist. Their repertoire will include Brahms, Schumann, Dvořák and Fauré.
Throughout her viola playing career, Sophie Renshaw has sought to develop both sides of her musicianship as interpreter and innovator. Her 38 years of professional playing began as violist in the Orford String Quartet, in residence at the University of Toronto. She later took up the Principal Viola position in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and has performed as a chamber musician at numerous festivals, including the International Festivals of Gstaad, Kuhmo, ISM Prussia Cove, London Proms and Carnegie Hall recital series.
Her orchestral and ensemble work has spanned those orchestras that use elements of Historically Informed Performance Practice such as Orchestre Romantique et Revolutionaire and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to the modern orchestra – BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Royal London Philharmonic. She has been guest Principal Viola with English National Opera, Glyndebourne and Holland Park Opera and many of the UK’s leading chamber orchestras including Britten Sinfonia, Orchestra of St Martin in the Fields and English Chamber Orchestra.
She co-founded the Blue Rider Ensemble, an instrumental-theatre group that set out to extend the expressive and dramatic range for instrumentalists in performance. Sophie has also participated in numerous projects by Ensemble Modern and London Sinfonietta, toured Japan with Ruichi Sakamoto’s opera “Life” and played live on stage to accompany the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company.
In 2019 Sophie created arrangements for Trio Mythos (with violinist Lucy Russell and cellist Ruth Phillips) to accompany original songs by Northumbrian singer-songwriter duo Brothers Gillespie and Provencal polyphonic vocal trio Tant Que Li Siam which was recorded for CD.
Performances
7.30pm, Monday 26 October 2026: Aberdeen Chamber Music (Pirasti Trio with violist Sophie Renshaw)
7.30pm, Tuesday 8 December 2026: Cockermouth Music Society (Pirasti Trio with violist Sophie Renshaw)
Sunday 25 April 2027: Gatehouse Music Society (Pirasti Trio with violist Sophie Renshaw)
7.30pm, Friday 24 April 2026: Stranraer Music for All
1pm, Wednesday 21 January 2026: Westbourne Music, Glasgow Art Club
1pm, Friday 29 November 2024, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
7.30pm, Saturday 2 November 2024, Ayr Music Club
1 – 2pm, Saturday 25 May 2024, Spire Concert Series, Glasgow
7.30pm, Saturday 13 April 2024, Keswick Music Society
