Gamal Khamis first performed at the Wigmore Hall at the age of ten, and he has since appeared at Carnegie Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Sage Gateshead, as well as all over Europe, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Gamal completed his formal education at the Royal College of Music, after gaining a degree in Mathematics from Imperial College London. He has won major prizes at the Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition and the Ferrier Awards, and he has worked with many of Britain’s leading composers, including Thomas Adès and Mark-Anthony Turnage. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 3 In Tune, where he has performed alongside Sol Gabetta, Vilde Frang and Erwin Schrott. Recent engagements have included concertos by Rachmaninov and R Schumann with orchestras across the UK. Gamal was the inaugural Finzi Trust Scholar at Iain Burnside’s Ludlow English Song Weekend in 2021, and he regularly performs at the Flatirons Chamber Music Festival in Colorado, USA. Gamal is a Samling Artist, a member of the award-winning Lipatti Piano Quartet, and he has recently joined the RCM Junior Department as a Chamber Music Coach. His disc of works by Richard Strauss alongside the actor Christopher Kent was released in 2022 by SOMM Recordings and has received glowing reviews.

Guido Martin-Brandis is a director and cellist based in London. His imaginative, character driven, musically sensitive productions have garnered consistently excellent reviews in the press, marking him out as a rising talent amongst British opera directors. His shows have been finalists in the OffWestEnd Awards and the Standing Ovation Awards. His productions of Onegin and Tatiana and The Cunning Little Vixen with The Opera Company, which he founded in 2017, enjoyed sell out runs at the Arcola Theatre as part of the Grimeborn Festival. In the past few seasons he directed three operas by Rameau, and devised two shows centring around French Baroque Music. More recent directing projects have included critically acclaimed productions of L’elisir d’amore for Wild Arts, La Cenerentola and Hansel und Gretel for Opera Kipling, the world premiere of A Child in Striped Pyjamas based on John Boyne’s bestselling novel, and Dido and Aeneas for Somerset Opera. Future projects include Die Fledermaus (Merry Opera) revivals of L’Elisir d’amore and a chamber version of Der Rosenkavalier.