Staff Accompanists for 2025
Nancy Cooley
Nancy Cooley studied the piano with Joseph Weingarten and Maria Donska and took a degree in music at King’s College, Cambridge. As a young professional I went on to play regularly for singers’ masterclasses at the Britten-Pears School, and was on the music staff at Glyndebourne for ten years. More recently I have been a vocal and operatic coach at the Royal College of Music.
One unusual experience I enjoyed in my twenties was coaching and directing Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Jeremy Irons in a Decca recording of Walton’s Façade.
In 1987 I won the accompanists’ prize in the Walther Grüner International Lieder Competition and have since made a speciality of song repertoire and chamber music. I’ve given concerts around the country and abroad for the BBC, the Wigmore Hall, the South Bank, St. John’s, Smith Square, and at the Aldeburgh, Brighton, Edinburgh, Cheltenham and Aix en Provence festivals. Locally, a highlight was performing Elgar’s Piano Quintet with the Fitzwilliam Quartet in 2019 in the town where I now live, Lewes.
I’m Artistic Director of the Lewes Festival of Song (www.lewesfestivalofsong.co.uk) which I began in 2015. An annual summer festival, we celebrate the rich variety of art-song through thought- provoking programmes. Performers range from young professional singers and instrumentalists on the brink of their careers to very well-established musicians: music by local composers and recitals from the local music community are also integral to the flavour of the festival. Mark Padmore is our patron and I’ve collaborated with him in several recitals.
Music for the community has been an important part of my life. While living in St. Leonards and raising a family, I coached a community choir in a performance of Sea-tongue by Orlando Gough and Richard Chew, written for the re-opening of the De La Warr Pavilion in 2010. With friends, I co-founded Raising the Roof, a Hastings-based music-drama group established to help young people find their voices and talents. Together we put on a performance of Britten’s Noye’s Fludde involving local schoolchildren and musicians. For the local Excellence Cluster, I led a children’s choir funded by Youth Music, co-led creative music workshops and founded The Enchanted Lark, created to bring imaginative music experiences to young children. More recently I collaborated with story-teller Ashley Ramsden, taking an Eleanor Farjeon tale around Sussex primary schools, with original music for the children to perform. This was funded by Help Musicians. When circumstances allow, I would like to re-establish The Enchanted Lark for children in Lewes, in collaboration with others.
These days I continue to give chamber, vocal and solo concerts, run the song festival and co-lead Raise Your Voice, a charity bringing music to those living with dementia and their carers. I regularly give concerts for the local branch of the charity Freedom from Torture.
Ilan Kurtser
Pianist Ilan Kurtser is a Britten-Pears Young Artist, Samling Artist and Leeds Lieder Young Artist. He won numerous prizes in competitions in the UK and abroad, including First Prize at the Copenhagen International Lied Duo Competition, Kathleen Ferrier Awards Accompanist Prize and Bampton Classical Opera Competition Accompanist Prize. Ilan was a finalist at the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition 2024 together with baritone Jonathan Eyers.
Ilan was a Bicentenary Scholar at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied Piano Accompaniment with Michael Dussek, James Baillieu and Malcolm Martineau. As part of his Bicentenary Scholarship, he is recording his debut CD of the complete Goethe-Lieder by Hugo Wolf.
Concert highlights have included recitals with Gweneth Ann Rand and Stephen Whitford at the Aldeburgh Festival, recital violist Paul Silverthorne in London and Museo del Violino in Cremona, Italy, recital with mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston in Leeds Lieder Festival, recital with Elizabeth Watts in Jersey, and performances at Wigmore Hall, International Lied Festival Zeist, Sage Gateshead, Leeds Victoria Hall and Jerusalem Music Centre.
Ilan was a Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music where he curated over 20 concerts for the Academy Song Circle and Academy Voices concert series, teaching and coaching singers and pianists. Ilan is currently a répétiteur for the Royal Academy Opera.
Francis Rayner
Francis Rayner was born in Merthyr Tydfil in 1960, and started piano lessons at the age of six. Three years later, he won first prize in the Under-14 National Piano Competition. He then entered Chetham's School of Music, and studied piano with Fanny Waterman and Ryszard Bakst. Whilst there, he gave many solo recitals and performed a number of concertos, including Beethoven's 3rd with the Hallé Orchestra.
While a pupil there he gained the LRAM performer's diploma at the age of sixteen, and entered the Royal Northern College of Music two years later. At College, he continued to perform extensively as a soloist as well as a chamber musician, visiting Prague and the Channel Islands, and graduated in professional performance.
In 1982, he won major prizes in the Alessandro Casagrande competition in Terni and in the Claude Debussy competition in Paris. In 1983, he moved to London, where he benefited from the professional advice of Murray Perahia and Charles Rosen, and continued to perform and to teach both in the U.K and abroad, visiting Switzerland, Spain, Sweden and the U.S.A. He has also broadcast on Italian television, French radio and the B.B.C.
In 1990, Francis moved to Sussex, where he is now regarded as one of the most distinguished musicians in the region. He lives in St Leonards-on-Sea, and, since he is also an accomplished chess player, he takes an active part in the musical and chess life of the region, acquiring pupils in both fields. He has for many years been a member of the Welsh National chess team in events abroad, and has won the Hastings and St Leonards championship nine times.
Musical organizations with which he has been closely associated in recent years include Enfield Choral Society, Opera South East, Glyndebourne Touring Opera, Counterpoint Arts, and Hastings Philharmonic Choir.
He has been associated with the prestigious Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition as an orchestral pianist every year since 2011. He will be performing as a member of the London Piano Trio in Vernantes, France in May 2016, and again in Essex in June 2016.
He has been the pianist for the London Piano Trio in St. John's Smith Square, with a programme of Spanish music, on 27th November 2016. He will be playing again with the Trio in St. John's Smith Square on the 26th March 2017, with a programme of English music, and again on 18th May 2017, with a programme of Russian music.
