Grammy award-winning soprano Hila Plitmann is a glittering jewel on the international music scene, known worldwide for her astonishing musicianship, light and beautiful voice, and the ability to perform challenging new works. She regularly premieres works by today’s leading composers while maintaining a vibrant and extraordinarily diverse professional life in film music, musical theatre, and song writing.
Hila has worked with many leading conductors, including Leonard Slatkin, Kurt Masur, Robert Spano, Marin Alsop, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Andrew Litton, and Steven Sloane. She has appeared as a headliner with the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the New Israeli Opera and numerous other orchestras and ensembles in the United States and abroad. In constant demand as a singer of new and contemporary music, Hila has appeared as soloist in several world premieres, including Paul Revere’s Ride with the Atlanta Symphony, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Wing on Wing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of the composer, Mr. Tambourine Man written by Oscar and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Corigliano with the Minnesota Orchestra and Two Awakenings and a Double Lullaby, a song cycle written for her by Pulitzer Prize winner Aaron Jay Kernis. Hila premiered the role of Exstasis in Eric Whitacre’s groundbreaking electro-musical Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings. Hila sang, acted, danced and fought in long martial arts battles nightly for a seven week sold-out run, a tour-de force performance that prompted Backstage West to call her, “brilliant, eliciting strong empathy and singing gorgeously,” and Theatre Mania to declare she “fights like a warrior and sings like the angel she portrays.” For her work in the show she received nominations for Best Actress in a Musical from the Los Angeles Ovation Awards and The L.A. Ticketholder Awards.
Hila has accumulated an impressive catalogue of professional recordings, appearing on the Decca, Telarc, Naxos, CRI, Reference Recordings and Disney labels. The Da Vinci Code soundtrack (Decca) was a worldwide bestseller, spending several weeks on the Billboard charts. Both Paul Revere’s Ride (Telarc), and The Da Vinci Code received Grammy nominations, and in 2009 Hila won the Grammy for ‘Best Classical Vocal Performance‘ for her work on the Naxos recording of John Corigliano’s song cycle Mr. Tambourine Man with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Hila can also be heard on the soundtrack of the film New York, I Love You.
Born and raised in Jerusalem, Hila received both her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees, with high honors, from the Juilliard School of Music, and has been awarded the coveted Sony ES Prize for her outstanding contribution to the vocal arts. Hila currently lives in London with her husband (composer, Eric Whitacre) and their son. She has a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do.

Julian Bliss is one of the world’s finest clarinettists, excelling as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, recitalist, jazz artist, and masterclass leader. He has inspired a generation of young players and introduced a substantial new audience to his instrument. Julian started playing the clarinet aged four and went on to study in the United States at the University of Indiana and in Germany under Sabine Meyer, turning professional aged just twelve.

In recital and chamber music he has played at most of the world’s leading festivals and halls, including Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Gstaad, New York’s Lincoln Center, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Verbier, and London’s Wigmore Hall. As a soloist, he has appeared with a wide range of international orchestras, including the Auckland Philharmonia, BBC Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Paris, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Sao Paolo Symphony and the Queensland Symphony.

​​​Excellent reviews, record of the week spots and media attention flow from his recording output. In 2021, releases on Signum Records included Brahms Clarinet Sonatas with pianist James Baillieu, and an EP of Julian’s arrangements for clarinet of wind ensemble works by legends of the US band world John Mackey, Frank Ticheli and Eric Whitacre. Other albums include Mozart and Weber Quintets with the Carducci String Quartet; Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock with Ailish Tynan (soprano) and Christopher Glynn (piano); Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint; Mozart and Nielsen’s Clarinet Concertos with the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

With the launch of Bliss Music in 2020, Julian’s arrangements of a selection of pieces for clarinet and piano have been made available as sheet music. These include Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata Op. 19, the third movement of which has been set as a Grade 6 piece on the new London College of Music clarinet syllabus.

Christopher Glynn is a Grammy award-winning pianist and one of the UK’s best- known accompanists and chamber musicians. He combines his performing life with the role of Artistic Director of the Ryedale Festival, where he has been praised by The Times as a ‘visionary’ and ‘inspired programmer’.
His recital partners have included Sir Thomas Allen, John Mark Ainsley, Benjamin Appl, Fleur Barron, Julian Bliss, Claire Booth, Ian Bostridge, Allan Clayton, Dame Sarah Connolly, Bernarda Fink, Dame Emma Kirkby, Steven Isserlis, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Jonas Kaufmann, Dame Felicity Lott, Christopher Maltman, Mark Padmore, Ian Partridge, Joan Rodgers, Kate Royal, Kathryn Rudge, Nicky Spence, Bryn Terfel, Sir John Tomlinson, Robin Tritschler, Ailish Tynan, Roderick Williams and many others. He also performs with a wide variety of chamber ensembles, with choirs including The Sixteen, VOCES8 and the Eric Whitacre Singers, and on historic pianos with artists including Rachel Podger.
Recent highlights include performances at Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Edinburgh and Aldeburgh Festivals, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Vienna Konzerthaus, Southbank Centre, BBC Proms and tours to Japan, USA, Canada, Brazil, China and South Asia.
In 2015, Chris founded a Lieder in English project to bring classical song to a wider audience, initially by commissioning Jeremy Sams to create new English versions of song cycles by Schubert, Schumann and Wolf, which have been performed widely and are being recorded for Signum Classics.
His many awards include the accompaniment prize in the 2001 Kathleen Ferrier competition, the 2002 Geoffrey Parsons Award and the 2003 Gerald Moore Award. He has made many acclaimed and ground- breaking recordings and in 2021 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.

“In everything he played, Bowes revealed an exacting and deeply felt musicianship.” Los Angeles Times “The playing was superb: brilliant, authoritative, free, passionate, totally committed, and powerfully projected. Bowes’ tone is intense, variable and pure; his identification with every style was complete,…” Strings Magazine USA The product of many years of steady growth, the playing of Thomas Bowes is now fast gaining international recognition. Not a child prodigy, or an early developer, Bowes has spent many years developing an unusually deep and expressive musical personality. In concerto repertoire Bowes has featured British composers. He has played the Elgar concerto in the USA and Germany as well as in the UK, most recently with the Hallé and Mark Elder. With the Britten concerto he made a dramatic German debut with the Bremen Philharmonic, stepping in at less than 24 hours notice for performances BIOGRAPHIES with Sian Edwards in 2003. Bowes also has a deep knowledge of that other glory of the English violin concerto, that by Walton. In 2004, he spent 3 weeks at the invitation of Lady Walton studying the work at the composer’s home on Ischia. He performed it in Oxford in 2005 in collaboration with the late Vernon Handley: “First up was Walton’s highly passionate Violin Concerto, handled with immense skill by Thomas Bowes… The result is an extraordinary fusion of the player and the music, in which Bowes seems to engage totally with the composer’s emotions and intentions…And all this was combined with Bowes’s own musicianship, technical mastery and tonal purity to produce a performance of rare quality.” Oxford Times. Bowes has excelled with the sensual and still little played Szymanowski concertos, making a specially recorded broadcast of No.2 for the 1998 BBC Proms season with the Ulster Orchestra and Takou Yuasa. Future plans include the concertos of Bartók and Schoenberg.
Bowes is an enthusiastic champion of contemporary music and made his debut with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the world premiere of John Metcalf’s concerto “Paradise Haunts…”. He has recorded the work for Signum Classics with the BBC NOW and Grant Llewellyn. In 2001 he premiered the concerto of Eleanor Alberga with the SCO and Joseph Swensen to a flourish of rave reviews. The work was an SCO commission. Plans for a second Alberga concerto are taking shape. Born in Hertfordshire and graduating from the masterclass of Bela Katona at Trinity College of Music in 1982, Bowes joined the London Philharmonic in 1985 and a year later the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. In 1987 he gave his London recital debut and between 1988 and1992 was the founding leader of the Maggini String Quartet. In 1989 he was invited to become the leader of the London Mozart Players, making a BBC Proms debut with them and Jane Glover in 1991. Still in demand as a guest leader, Bowes has led many of the UK’s finest orchestras – LSO, Philharmonia, RPO, London Sinfonietta, SCO, BBC Symphony Orchestra, CBSO, and in France, L’Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. Bowes has also concert-mastered plenty of film scores, working closely with many eminent film composers. But it is as a solo artist, both as recitalist and concerto player, that he has made the greatest impression since 1993. Forming, in 1995, the duo “Double Exposure” with his wife, the composer and pianist Eleanor Alberga, the Duo toured regularly and extensively in the USA until 2000. They made a ground breaking trip to five Chinese cities in 1997 as well as broadcasting and concertising in the UK. The repertoire was adventurous and featured commissions and first performances from Alberga herself as well as a host of US and UK composers. A New York recital at Carnegie in 2000 was extensively and tellingly reviewd by the distinguished writer Paul Griffiths in the New York Times.
In 2003 Bowes became the Artistic Director of the Langvad Chamber Music Jamboree in northern Denmark and more recently with Eleanor Alberga founded the chamber music festival Arcadia in north Herefordshire.