Winner of the 2018 BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Award, violinist Fenella Humphreys enjoys a busy career combining chamber music and solo work. She has broadcast for the BBC, Classic FM, and German, Canadian, Australian and Korean radio and TV.

A champion of new and unknown music, a number of eminent British composers have written works for Fenella. During 2014/ 15 she premiered a set of six new solo violin works by leading British composers including Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Sally Beamish and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, with performances at Aldeburgh, and the St Magnus and Presteigne festivals. She has been fortunate to record these works on two critically acclaimed discs for Champs Hill Records, both discs chosen by BBC Music Magazine as Instrumental disc of the month (October 2015 and January 2017) with five- star reviews, and the second also picked as Editor’s Choice in Gramophone magazine.

Concertmaster of the Deutsche Kammerakademie, Fenella also enjoys guest leading and directing. As a chamber musician, she has collaborated with artists including Alexander Baillie, Adrian Brendel, Pekka Kuusisto, Nicholas Daniel, Sir John Tomlinson and Martin Lovett, and is regularly invited by Steven Isserlis to take part in Open Chamber Music at the International Musicians’ Seminar, Prussia Cove. Fenella can also be found playing Tango with the great Uruguayan bandoneonist, Héctor Ulises Passarella.

Her teachers have included Sidney Griller CBE, Itzhak Rashkovsky, Ida Bieler and David Takeno, studying at the Purcell School, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Robert-Schumann-Hochschule in Düsseldorf graduating with the highest attainable marks. Fenella plays a beautiful violin from the workshop of Peter Guarneri of Venice, kindly on loan from Jonathan Sparey.