About us
The international team of the event involves both professional concert pianists and talented amateurs - students and alumni of the Central Saint Martins university.
Julia-Anna Simonchuk
performer, the concert organiser
Instagram: @julia_anna_simonchuk
Facebook: Julia Anna Simonchuk
Julia is a CSM Fine Art student, originally from Kyiv, Ukraine. In her art practice she explores ideas around cultural identity, historical memory and time through monuments and architecture in Eastern Europe. She is examining the notions of power, discipline and upbringing with culturally-specific phenomena and converting them into object-based metaphors. Julia is working with various media, including collage, installation, dance and performance. She has experience in participating in cultural, theatrical and visual art events (e.g. Gogolfest, ProEnglish Theatre) and collaborative performative projects of CSM with Studio Wayne McGregor and the National Gallery. Alongside visual art Julia practices piano as an amateur. From an early age she was taking classes from performing pianists and tutors Julia Vash and Natalia Tolmacheva.
Olga Paliy
performer
FB: Olga Paliy
Olga Paliy, originally from Chernihiv in Ukraine, is a London-based pianist successfully combining performance, research and teaching in her musical career.Giving her first solo recital at the age of thirteen Olga received her musical education in Ukraine and the UK.
As well as around UK and Ukraine, her concert career has taken her to Hungary and Czech Republic, to Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Spain – and to Australia.
Off stage, Olga researches in music, lectures both children and adults, creates study days and gives masterclasses. Since 2016 Olga is a jury member of the Riga International Competition for Young Pianists, held annually in Latvia. As Artistic Trustee she co-drives the British charity IMPEF – International Music in Performance & Education Foundation.
Olga Stezhko
performer
Website
Acclaimed by Classical Source in a Wigmore Hall review as ‘a supremely delicate master of her instrument’ who possesses ‘an extraordinary presence’, award-winning pianist Olga Stezhko has performed worldwide from the Barbican Hall in London to Salle Cortot in Paris to the Carnegie Hall in New York City. Born in Minsk, she was educated in Belarus, Italy and the UK where she completed her Bachelor's and Master’s degrees with distinction at the Royal Academy of Music.
Olga’s debut album ‘Eta Carinae’ combined her passion for astronomy with music by Scriabin and Busoni and was hailed by the Gramophone Magazine as ‘an outstanding debut’. Her second all-Debussy album ‘Et la lune descend’ received unanimous critical acclaim in the publications including International Piano Magazine and BBC Music Magazine.
Tomislav Fras
performer
Instagram: @tomis_fras
Website
Tomislav is Croatian/British interdisciplinary artist with a focus on developing emotive performances for Virtual Reality. He is a recent graduate in Performance: Design and Practice course in Central Saint Martins. His work includes set design, musical composition, writing for screen, theatre and VR, acting, digital art and VFX. He uses Blender for 3D sculpting and animation, and Unreal Engine 4 for VR development. Tomislav composes soundtracks for his projects and is strong in pianistic improvisation.
Andrey Novikov
performer
Instagram: @alius.modi
Andrey is a performing musician, composer and data scientist and is classically trained in Music Theory. His main project is respair (@_respair_) - a hypnotic blend of jazz and electronic music. He writes music and designs soundscapes for film, immersive theatre performances, exhibitions and art projects - including for interactive art installations commissioned by Nowhere Festival, Noisily, Birmingham International Dance Festival, LightNight Leeds and Lightwaves Manchester. Andrey wrote music for short films commissioned by Nowness, Dazed&Confused, Vogue. He plays piano and keyboards with a strong improvisation element and performed headline shows at Jazz Cafe and PizzaExperess jazz clubs and numerous performances at UK-based and international festivals. He is also part of No Such Thing collective creating site-specific multi-disciplinary improvisational performances.
Zeus Li
performer
Instagram: @lizeqize
Zeus Li is a Chinese artist based in London. Second-year of study at Central Saint Martins Fine Art Department. She is a cross-media artist whose media includes installation, land art, video and performance etc. She has always been observing and capturing social phenomena. Based on her personal experience, ready-made products and daily scenarios are further expanded on the basis of their original functions, then transformed into concepts and elements that are used to explore the relationship between her and society.
Christopher Faulkner
performer
Instagram: @christopher.aif
Christopher Faulkner is a self taught pianist who is currently studying Fine Art at CSM. He largely plays from ear, transcribing pieces visually as well as listening to many recordings and interpretations. As a self taught pianist, he plays because he loves this instrument. As well as this he also works closely with film, bring 16mm film together with his music. He also likes to work alongside dancers and other musicians for various performances largely where improvisation is involved.