con spirito
The ethos of con spirito is to encourage the development of collaborative and expressive musicians. Penny and Tamar’s approach is to draw out each student’s innate creativity and to unlock their musical imagination.
chamber music Sundays provide weekly 90-minute chamber music sessions in North London for strings, piano and wind players from Grade 5 to Diploma level. Carefully-matched student groups explore individual ideas and create a shared musical narrative. Together the ensemble and the teacher develop rehearsal and communication skills. Students work towards projecting an imaginative interpretation in refined, stylistic performance. A small pool of young professionals and music college students assist each week.
regular concerts at various venues provide performance opportunities as well as raising money for charities chosen by the young musicians.
special events include occasional trips to concerts and masterclasses, visits from professional chamber groups and working with composers on pieces commissioned by con spirito.
Penny Driver
Penny Driver has a versatile concert career. As a recitalist and chamber musician she has performed throughout the UK and in the USA. She was co-principal with Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and has a long association with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, performing all over the world with such conductors as Valery Gergiev, Sir Colin Davis and Sir Simon Rattle.
Penny is one of the most respected teachers of talented young cellists in the UK. She teaches cello and chamber music at Wells Cathedral School, one of the UK’s four specialist music schools, from where her students frequently go on to win scholarships to the major conservatoires in London, Europe and USA. Penny is regularly invited to give Performance Classes at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and was for many years Professor of Cello at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. Penny is on the faculty of Bozsok Music Festival in Hungary, giving masterclasses in cello and chamber music.
Tamar Andrusier
Tamar Andrusier is a pianist, chamber musician and educator. Since being first introduced to the piano trio by an inspirational school teacher, Tamar has been passionate about chamber music. She has given concerts across Europe as a soloist, duo recitalist and chamber musician and has broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
In 1995 Tamar founded the critically acclaimed Andrusier Ensemble. For a decade they specialised in performing the chamber music of Terezín, the wartime concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. The Ensemble was invited by the British Home Office to perform on BBC TV to mark the first Holocaust Memorial Day and the Ensemble’s education workshops took an anti-racism message to thousands of children at schools throughout the UK.
Tamar is widely acknowledged for her creative teaching approach. She teaches and coaches privately, in masterclasses and at Highgate School and created an innovative Chamber Music Programme at the Ingenium Academy International Summer School.