Guernsey Photography Festival 2021

Opening night

Opening night

with Guernsey Symphony Orchestra

Thursday 23 September
St James at 7pm

This year GPF is excited to collaborate with the Guernsey Symphony Orchestra and The Accidentals choir in a free, live event celebrating photography and music. Contemporary meets classical in a carefully curated presentation of music and art as the work of photographers including Anastasia Samoylova, Alec Soth, and Hannah Modigh will be accompanied by composers such as Beethoven, Handel and Stravinsky. The Accidentals will also be performing a newly commissioned piece inspired by traditional Southern African song ‘Toyi Toyi’, as part of a display of photographer Gideon Mendel’s work.

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Meet the Guernsey Symphony Orchestra

The Guernsey Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1991 with the aim of developing orchestral music in all its forms for the benefit and advancement of musicians and the appreciation and enjoyment of concert audiences. Made up of local amateur and professional musicians and often engaging guest soloists, conductors and section leaders, the orchestra currently produces three ambitious concerts each year.

Jean Owen - Conductor

Jean Owen studied conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in addition to her main studies, bassoon and piano. Jean was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music for ‘Distinction in the Profession’ and was a recipient of the gold medal and title ‘Commonwealth Musician of the Year’ awarded by the Royal Overseas League. Owen has performed and recorded with many of the leading orchestras in the UK.

I hope that the audience will feel enriched and stimulated by the wide variety of musical styles and textures entwined with international contemporary photography. It has been a privilege to work with Jean-Christophe Godet to celebrate their anniversary and tonight’s event is the culmination of almost two years of collaboration in finding music that we feel will support the amazing photography.

David Le Page - Violin

Born in Guernsey, David Le Page began playing the violin at the age of seven. He was offered a place at the Yehudi Menuhin School aged twelve and has since forged a diverse career as a performer, composer, producer and arranger. He appears regularly as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral leader and has formed his own groups, the Le Page Ensemble, The Harborough Collective, Subway Piranhas and Mysterious Barricades. He is Artistic Director and leader of the Stratford-Upon-Avon based Orchestra of the Swan, artistic director of the successful Harborough Concerts and also of Le Page Ensemble Concerts. David plays a violin made in 1874 by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume.

Deborah Bideau - Soprano

Deborah Bideau is a graduate of the University of York gaining both a BA Hons and MA in Music. Now Faculty Head of Performing Arts at Guernsey Grammar School and Sixth Form Centre. Bideau has performed with a wide range of choirs during her career starting with world and UK tours with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. She has also undertaken a varied range of principal roles in both the UK and Guernsey, including works such as Mozart’s Requiem, Elgar’s Sea Pictures with Rutland Sinfonia and Handel’s Laudate Pueri Dominum, to name but a few.

Sarah Tennant - Clarinet

Sarah Tennant is the Head of Creative Arts at St Sampson’s High School and coordinates a wide ranging programme of musical opportunities there as well as overseeing the music curriculum provision. She trained as a clarinettist, conductor and composer and has performed extensively as an orchestral, music theatre and chamber musician in the UK.

Carmen Craven-Grew - Viola

Carmen Craven-Grew attended the Yehudi Menuhin School of Music. She was awarded the prestigious ABRSM Scholarship to study at the Royal Northern College of Music for a BMUS and PGDip. She had her Royal Festival Hall debut with the Liverpool Philharmonic aged nine and continued to perform extensively as a soloist nationally and internationally. She was winner of the Cecil Arnowitz viola competition, a recipient of the Halle String Leadership Training Scheme and performed a solo for Lord Yehudi Menuhin’s funeral. In 2014, she moved to Guernsey to work for the Guernsey Music Service and is presently Head of Strings.

Elena Fedorenko - Piano

Elena Fedorenko is a classically trained pianist and composer from Russia currently based in Guernsey. Having graduated from Moscow region College, St Petersburg State University of Cinema and Odessa National Music Academy, she completed her studies under the supervision of professor Andrew West at The Royal Academy of Music in London, achieving a Masters Degree in Performance with Distinction, and also was awarded a DipRAM diploma in piano accompaniment for outstanding performance at a Postgraduate Level. Elena works as Head of Piano at the School of Popular Music.

Jack Tostevin-Hall - Oboe

Jack Tostevin-Hall has completed his second year at the Royal Academy of Music, where he gained a scholarship to study oboe with Christopher Cowie and cor anglais with Jane Marshall. During his first two years at the Academy Tostevin-Hall has enjoyed playing with a variety of London student orchestras as well as performing with a number of Royal Academy ensembles, most recently in the RAM Opera production of Cosi fan Tutti and in the RAM Symphonic Winds. Tostevin-Hall started playing the oboe at the age of nine with the Guernsey Music Service under the tutelage of Elizabeth Green.