After graduating from Lancaster University, Sophie went on to study recorder, modern and baroque flute at Trinity College of Music with Rebecca Miles, Ann Cherry and Stephen Preston.  Other teachers have included Pamela Thorby and Rachel Brown.  She has performed widely as a soloist and chamber musician, appearing at many festivals throughout the country including Chichester, Brighton, Suffolk, Kingston-upon-Thames and Edinburgh.    Sophie is busy as a solo recitalist and has performed at venues including the Handel House Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and at the Fairfield Hall, Croydon.  She is also in great demand as a teacher and has been recorder tutor at Chichester University since 1996.  Sophie formed The Parnassian Ensemble in 1998.

Helen studied recorder at Trinity College of Music with Philip Thorby, graduating with a first class degree and the Post-Graduate Certificate in performance with distinction.  She also won the Grace Wylie Thesis Prize and the Louise Band Prize for musicianship. Helen has performed widely in chamber ensembles and as a soloist.  Recent critically acclaimed performances have included the Walter Bergmann Centenary Concert in London and concerto performances in The Hague and Leiden. Helen also works regularly as a director of recorder orchestras and ensembles. In 2003 she was Assistant Conductor of the National Youth Recorder Orchestra of Great Britain and has worked as guest conductor with recorder ensembles throughout the British Isles.

Joseph Crouch -‘cello

Joseph began his musical education as a chorister at Westminster Abbey, and was later a Choral Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, where he came to love “early music” through constant exposure to choral repertoire of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He went on to study historical performance practice as a postgraduate at The Royal Academy of Music. Since completing his studies with Jennifer Ward Clarke, Joseph has quickly established himself as one of the country’s outstanding baroque instrumentalists. As the continuo cellist with The Academy of Ancient Music, The Gabrieli Consort and The Sixteen he has a full orchestral schedule which is complemented by his work with the Gramophone Award-winning chamber group, Sonnerie.  More recently, he has started to make regular forays away from the bass line, performing numerous concerto solos with The AAM, The Orchestra of The Age of Enlightenment and many others.

Joseph now combines his playing commitments with a full teaching schedule, both at the Royal Welsh College of Music, where he is professor of baroque ‘cello, and at summer schools and residential courses across Europe. This summer he will be coaching at Dartington International Summer School and at Aestas Musica (Croatia).  All that aside, Joseph spends a good deal of blissfully happy hours at the playground with his two sons Oscar and Louis. He is hoping to bring them up to be sufficiently erudite and lucid that they will be able to keep his biography regularly updated, allowing him more time to practise.

David Pollock - harpsichord

David specialized in the harpsichord at the Royal Academy of Music where he won the Croft Early Music First Prize.  Since then he has appeared at such venues as the Purcell Room and St John's Smith Square London, St George's Bristol and St. David's Hall Cardiff.  David has given critically acclaimed recitals at the Fairfield Halls Croydon and has performed in international music festivals in Great Britain and abroad.  In demand as a concerto soloist, he recently performed the complete harpsichord concertos of JS Bach.

An interest in new music has led to composers writing specially for David.  He gave the premiere of a large-scale work Seven Mimicries for Solo Harpsichord (1996) by Gavin Stevens at The Chichester Festivities, and Colin Hand has composed Five Portraits for the Virginals (2008).  Other composers are currently preparing pieces for David’s project of establishing a 21^st century ‘Virginals Booke’.

Solo CDs are The French Harpsichord and O Mistris Myne:150 years of English virginals music on the London Independent Records label.  He is harpsichordist in Duo Dorado.  David teaches harpsichord at Chichester University.