Presented by Heather Williams and John Gough

Heather Williams and John Gough enjoy busy and varied careers and each have a wealth of experience both as professional musicians and teachers. They met when they were studying at the Royal Northern College Of Music where they performed in several chamber ensembles together and made their debut at the Wigmore Hall.

Heather Williams
Heather began her free-lance career playing the Oboe and Cor Anglais for the world renowned Flautist, Atarah Ben Tovim. She travelled extensively with “Atarah’s Band” giving school and family concerts all over the country and was involved in several of the “Atarah’s Band” television series.

More recently she was featured in another children’s television programme, demonstrating the oboe with “Ripley and Scuff”.

As a free-lance musician, Heather plays with all the major orchestras in the north west and is currently a member of the Manchester Concert Orchestra and the Mozart Festival Orchestra. She also plays the Baroque and Classical oboes and has travelled to New Zealand, Mexico, Germany, and Switzerland with the New London Consort, Florelegium and Kent Opera.

Managing to combine a successful free-lance career with a part-time teaching post, Heather has been the music co-ordinator at St Ambrose Preparatory School for the past 5 years. During her time at the school she has written a musical nativity and a mini-musical for performance by the children there.

Prior to working at St Ambrose, Heather set up and ran pre-school music groups called “Keynotes-Stepping Into Music”. These ran very successfully in centres around Manchester.
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John Gough
Following his studies on the piano with Marjorie Clementi and Gordon Green, John won several scholarships and prizes including the John Ireland Centenary Piano Competition at the Wigmore Hall.

Engagements have taken him throughout the United Kingdom to Denmark and to America. He has given frequent broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and he has also recorded for Radio 2, Classic FM, World Service, S4C TV and BBC TV

As a soloist John has appeared with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic “Pops”, the Northern Chamber orchestra and the Halle Wind Soloists. As a chamber music player, he has given live broadcasts of the complete piano quartets of Brahms, Dvorak and Faure.

John has performed at the Purcell Room and Wigmore Hall on several occasions and at the Buxton and Chester Festivals. He has given recitals at the Ribble Valley International Piano week, a live broadcast from the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester and for many seasons was the soloist with the Performing Arts Symphony orchestra.

John has played in concert under Sir Neville Mariner and with Martin Roscoe, Jack Brymer and Janet Hilton and he narrowly missed an Oscar when he made his screen debut with a brief appearance in the film “Hilary and Jackie”.
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