Joanna Lawrence

Joanna has played in venues and Festivals in the UK and around the world and made many recordings with the Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE), London Classical Players, Gabrieli Consort, The Sixteen, The Hanover Band, The King’s Consort, Florelegium, Istante Collective, High Wire Baroque, L’Aventura London and Les Arts Florissants. For the last few years she has co-led the English Haydn Festival Orchestra with Simon Standage.

She’s played with many new music ensembles such as Icebreaker, Ensemble Exposé, Opus 20 and The Homemade Orchestra. She loves playing folk music from around the world and often works with musicians from other cultures, most recently with, Club Inégales and Gukami.

She has been acting and playing in an interactive multi-sensory chamber opera for 3 players and 2 singers with Seaglass Arts at the Royal Opera House this year and continues to lead creative workshops for OAE and London Mozart Players. She is directing and leading an adaptation of Acis and Galetea for Early Opera Company in the autumn. With Music for Life, run by Wigmore Hall, she works with people living with dementia in free improvisation workshops.

She has coached OAE ‘experience’ players, students in RAM’s Outreach department, at the Purcell School and the Centre for Young Musicians.

This year she is recording an album of intimate duos, in memory of her father, with colleagues (including David Gordon, Martin Lawrence, Colin Riley, Katherine Spencer, Adrian Woodward) always with elements of co-creating and improvising.