Founded in 1949 by Harry Blech to delight audiences with the works of Mozart and Haydn, the London Mozart Players is the UK’s longest established chamber orchestra. Known for its unmistakable British roots, the orchestra has developed an outstanding reputation for adventurous, ambitious programming from Baroque through to genre-crossing contemporary music. LMP has enjoyed a long history of association with many of the world’s finest artists including Sir James Galway, Dame Felicity Lott, Jane Glover, Howard Shelley, Nicola Benedetti, John Suchet and Simon Callow. The orchestra enjoys an international reputation, touring extensively throughout Europe and the Far East.
The London Mozart Players regularly performs on London’s premier concert platforms, including the Royal Festival Hall, St John’s Smith Square and Cadogan Hall as well as cathedrals and other concert venues across the UK. LMP is the resident orchestra at Croydon’s Fairfield Hall and will celebrate this venue’s reopening after refurbishment in 2019 with a gala concert which will also mark the orchestra’s 70th birthday. The orchestra’s anniversary year will see a wide range of concerts in the capital’s top concert venues including performances at Kings Place, Conway Hall and a return to Southbank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. As one of the original pioneers of orchestral outreach work, LMP has enjoyed a host of relationships with schools and music hubs across the UK (and also in Dubai and Hong Kong), working with many teachers and heads of music to inspire the next generation of musicians and music lovers. As well as working with schools, LMP continues its 70-year tradition of promoting young up-and-coming musicians. Nicola Benedetti, Jacqueline du Pré and Jan Pascal Tortelier are just three of many young musical virtuosi championed early in their careers by the orchestra.
The LMP enjoys a special relationship with its audience. The orchestra always tries to break down the ‘fourth’ wall between musicians and audience, and this is achieved in part as the orchestra is self-directed. Many concerts, such as its acclaimed ‘Piano Explored’ series, involves a ‘deconstruction’ of the works on the programme, allowing greater understanding and engagement with the music and with the musicians themselves.

Nicky Spence is one of Scotland’s proudest sons and his unique skills as a singing actor and the rare honesty of his musicianship have earned him a place at the top of the classical music profession. Nicky won a record contract with Decca records while still studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and then took a place as an inaugural Harewood Artist at the ENO. Nicky has recorded prolifically and won both the BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award and Gramophone's Solo Vocal Award for his recording of Janáček's 'The Diary of One Who Disappeared' with Julius Drake. Other solo recordings include recital discs with Malcolm Martineau for Chandos and Resonus, and Strauss lieder with Roger Vignoles for Hyperion and his discography ranges from Handel and Mozart to Wagner, Brahms, Britten, Dove and Turnage. He has sung operatic roles at London’s Royal Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Staatsoper, Opera national de Paris, Madrid's Teatro Real, La Monnaie and the Glyndebourne Festival.
Nicky Spence's unique skills as a singing actor and the rare honesty of his musicianship have earned him a place at the top of the classical music profession. Nicky won a record contract with Decca records while still studying at the GSMD and then took a place as an inaugural Harewood Artist at the ENO. He has recorded prolifically and won both the BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award and Gramophone's Solo Vocal Award for his recording of Janáček's 'The Diary of One Who Disappeared' with Julius Drake. Other solo recordings include recital discs with Malcolm Martineau for Chandos and Resonus, and Strauss lieder with Roger Vignoles for Hyperion and his discography ranges from Handel and Mozart to Wagner, Brahms, Britten, Dove and Turnage. He has sung operatic roles at London’s Royal Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Staatsoper, Opera national de Paris, Madrid's Teatro Real, La Monnaie and the Glyndebourne Festival.

Exploration, insight and imagination are vital ingredients in Melvyn Tan’s blend of artistic attributes. He established his international reputation with pioneering performances on fortepiano and continues to cast fresh light on music conceived for the piano’s early and modern forms in a broad repertoire from Bach to Messiaen and many contemporary commissions.

Melvyn’s work in recital, chamber music and as a concerto soloist has been heard at many of the world’s leading concert halls, from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, AMUZ in Brussels, London’s Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center, and at major festivals in Tokyo, Salzburg, Edinburgh, San Francisco, La Roque d’Anthéron as well as Bath, the City of London and North Norfolk.

As a concerto soloist Melvyn has performed with ensembles such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Salzburg’s Camerata and Mozarteum Orchestras, Bruckner Orchestra Linz, Melbourne Symphony, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, and Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Melvyn has connected with audiences across China and Southeast Asia, introducing many to their first experience of fortepiano and attracting young people to attend recitals on both the early and the modern piano. Others have discovered his work through his large discography, complete with ground-breaking fortepiano recordings of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert for EMI Classics, and releases on the Archiv, Deux-Elles, Harmonia Mundi, NMC and Virgin Classics labels. His 2019 recording, ‘Miroirs’ (Onyx Classics) embraces three centuries of keyboard style and traces some of the inspirations for Ravel’s ground-breaking works for piano, hailed by The Times as a “fascinating disc”. On his CD of Beethoven, Czerny and Liszt – ‘Master and Pupil’ (Onyx Classics 2016), The Sunday Times commented that “The progression is from marvelousness to absolute delectation. His playing is always exquisite, but much more than that.” This 2024 release rounds off his discography of the Beethoven concerti, sonatas and smaller works.

Recent orchestral appearances include performances with MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and Filharmonie Brno (with Dennis Russell Davies), Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Wiener Akademie, Deutsche Philharmonie Merck and the Singapore re:SOUND Collective. Recital and chamber music highlights include Wigmore Hall, AMUZ, Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival, Oundle International Festival, and a symposium in Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

With curator Paul Boucher, he continues his role in devising Music and Word, a musical collaboration with narrators including Dame Vanessa Redgrave, Dame Harriet Walter, Sir Derek Jacobi and Alex Lawther within the unique setting of Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex, made famous by the Bloomsbury Group.

In addition to his concert and recording activities, Melvyn Tan gives masterclasses and is a regular adjudicator. He is also a keen and long-standing supporter of Buskaid, the outstanding South African music project in a Soweto township, listed by Gramophone Magazine as one of the world’s ten most inspiring orchestras.