Northern Chords - piano quartet

Benjamin Baker, violin
Charlotte Bonneton, viola
Jonathan Bloxham, cello
Daniel Lebhardt, piano


JONATHAN BLOXHAM discovered the cello while still at primary school in the North East of England. His talent was fostered and encouraged by the Gateshead Schools Music Service and he began to consider becoming a professional musician. At the age of 16, he left the region to study at the world-renowned Yehudi Menuhin School, followed by the Royal College of Music, where he won several prestigious awards, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Aged 20, Jonathan was keen to return to the region and in 2008 he decided to start Northern Chords, with the dual aim of bringing some of the most talented young musicians in the world to inspire more local youngsters and amateur musicians to follow their dreams and to develop their own musical talents, and to delight local audiences with concerts and musicians that they would not otherwise get to hear in their area.
The annual Northern Chords Festival was then established in 2009.

An acclaimed cellist, Jonathan was a founder member of the award-winning Busch Trio, with whom he played until 2015. He has performed regularly at the Wigmore Hall, Kings Place and the Southbank Centre and been a frequent guest on BBC Radio 3. He now has a flourishing international career as a conductor, appearing with many of the leading orchestras at home and abroad. He made his Glyndebourne Festival debut in 2021, conducting sold-out performances of Luisa Miller. He was recently appointed Conductor in Residence and Artistic Advisor to the London Mozart Players.

All of tonight's performers are award-winning musicians.


MATTHEW KANER (b. 1986) is a composer based in London whose works are performed and broadcast widely in the UK and abroad. His music has been described as 'glittering... sparking electricity...' (Guardian, 2022), 'forlornly exquisite' (New Statesman, 2016) and he has received praise for its 'orchestral imagination and poetic word-setting' (Bachtrack, 2022). His works include a 2022 BBC Proms commission, 'Pearl', for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Chorus and baritone Roderick Williams, setting medieval poetry in modern translation by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage.

Matthew has received commissions from the London Symphony Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia, and Benjamin Baker and the Northern Chords Festival Orchestra, among others. His music has been performed at the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican, Seiji Ozawa Hall, St John's Smith Square, the Purcell Room and other prestigious venues and festivals in the UK and abroad. He has been a Professor of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama since 2013. In 2016, he was the BBC Radio 3 Embedded Composer for the duration of its 70th birthday celebrations. His debut solo album of chamber works, performed by Guy Johnston, Mark Simpson, Benjamin Baker, Daniel Lebhardt and the Goldfield Ensemble, was released by Delphian Records in November 2022.