The Heartwood Quartet formed in 2020 over a love of chamber music in their first year of study at the RNCM. They have participated in masterclasses with Marie Bitlloch, Nic Pendlebury, and Anna Menzies, and engaged in numerous coaching sessions from members of the Elias Quartet, Endellion Quartet and the Talich Quartet. In August 2022 they appeared as Quartet in Residence at the Lake District Summer Music Festival, performing in venues such as Kendal Town Hall and Ambleside Parish Church. They have also participated in concert series around Manchester, including Didsbury Coffee Concerts, St Ann’s Church, Buxton Pavillion, and Monday Night Musicales. They have received tuition as part of the European Chamber Music Academy in March 2023, and have been selected to represent the RNCM in numerous external engagements. They were finalists of the RNCM Weil and Nossek Prize, and recently enjoyed attending the Chilingirian Quartet course at the West Dean College of Arts and Conservation. They have recently appeared as part of the Lake District festival and the Yorke Trust concert series.

Established in 2020, the award-winning Kyan Quartet brings together four exceptional musicians from the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and France. The quartet enjoys a busy and vibrant career, having performed across Europe and Asia. Recent highlights include winning the Richmond Concert Society String Ensemble Award at the 2024 Royal Over-Seas League competition, and undertaking a three-week tour throughout China. As upcoming Tunnell Trust award holders, the quartet will tour across Scotland in February 2025. The Kyans are looking forward to their residency at this year’s South Downs Summer Music International Festival. They have held residencies with the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme, the European String Teachers Association, and the Borromeo Music Festival. Recent collaborations include guitar quintets with Ahmed Dickinson at Wigmore Hall, and Mendelssohn’s famed Octet with the Carducci Quartet. ​ In the past year, the quartet have won places on prestigious courses, including Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland’s 68th International Chamber Music Campus, and Chamber Studio’s inaugural Hans Keller Forum. Through these they have received coaching from Heime Müller, John Myerscough, Richard Ireland, the Kuss Quartet, Alasdair Beatson and Péter Nagy. The quartet continues to be mentored by Ying Xue of the Doric Quartet. They have also been coached by members of the Carducci, Chilingirian, Heath, London Haydn, and Piatti Quartets. The quartet are proud members of Le Dimore del Quartetto. ​ Widening musical participation and access is central to the quartet’s artistic mission. They are Live Music Now artists, sharing their love of participatory music-making in care homes and SEND schools. The quartet are looking forward to giving masterclasses and working with young composers at the Junior Royal Academy of Music. As the 2022/23 fellows of the Open Academy/Wigmore Hall Learning Programme, they appeared regularly on the Wigmore Hall stage and in community settings, sharing music with families, young children, and those living with dementia. A particular highlight was leading workshops across six primary schools in Tower Hamlets, in partnership with Spitalfields Music. The Kyans are excited to return to Wigmore this October to perform a low stimulus concert as part of the organisation’s Imagine Series. ​ The Kyan Quartet pride themselves on championing new music. They have given Wigmore premieres of commissioned pieces by Florence Anna Maunders and Zhenyan Li, and performed Symphony for String Quartet and Forest by Jacob Fitzgerald at the 2022 Timber Festival, featuring 200 school children singing alongside the quartet. The Kyans collaborated with Cem Güven to record his 2023 quartet Atmospheric Manipulations, and will feature on Ben Nobuto’s upcoming debut album.

Winners of the 2023 Kirckman Concert Society Artists and recipients of the prestigious Tunnell Trust Awards in 2021, the Elmore Quartet is a young award-winning ensemble founded in 2017 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK. Since their formation, the Elmore Quartet has been guided by some of the world's foremost chamber musicians, including Donald Grant (Elias Quartet), Petr Prause (Talich Quartet), Henk Guittart (Schoenberg Quartet), David Waterman (Endellion Quartet), Marc Danel (Quatuor Danel) and Catherine Manson (London Haydn Quartet). The Elmores accepted the position as Studio Quartet at the RNCM in 2020 and their journey continued with their appointment as Junior Fellows in Chamber Music at the Royal Northern College of Music from 2021 to 2023, a position which gave them the opportunity to deliver regular coachings to Bachelor and Masters students. Over the past two years, the Elmore Quartet has made multiple recordings for BBC Radio 3 and has performed at renowned UK venues, including Wigmore Hall, Conway Hall, the Pitville Pump Room, and Oxford’s Holywell Music Room. In 2020, the Quartet proudly launched the Elmore Chamber Music Festival, and it has since become an annual event held in the village of Elmore, Gloucestershire, every August. Presently, holding the position as Chamber Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, the Elmore Quartet have enjoyed a busy past year performing across the UK and Europe. Noteworthy collaborations have included performances with the Jerusalem Quartet, Elias Quartet, NOVO Quartet and pianist Keigo Mukawa.

Bryn was born and bred in West Penwith and started playing the double bass when he was sixteen. He has just completed his masters degree at the Royal Northern College of Music, after studying for his undergraduate degree at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Bryn will take up the position of Junior fellow in double bass at the RNCM next academic year, while continuing his freelance career with the BBC Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras. He hopes to study abroad from September 2024.

James Warburton is a freelance violinist based in the North West of England and North Wales. He recently graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester with first-class honours. Hailing from Bolton, James started playing the violin at age 7 and progressed through the local music service orchestras, before joining the Halle Youth Orchestra and the RNCM’s junior department, where he was taught by Steve Wilkie for four years. During his undergraduate degree at the RNCM that followed, James led notable projects such as the RNCM Symphony Orchestra’s annual Bridgewater Hall concert and their production of The Marriage of Figaro. Currently, James freelances with various orchestras in the North West, including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic, as well as the Symphonia Verbum Orchestra (as leader) and Manchester Concert Orchestra. James also performs at Candlelight Concerts run by Fever and the Piccadilly Sinfonietta, as well as weddings and events across the UK. James is very fortunate to play a 1772 Joseph Hill violin, generously loaned to him by the Tompkins Tate Musical Instrument Trust.

Welsh harpist Angharad Huw completed her undergraduate degree at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2023 with first class honours, and was awarded the Musicales Prize on graduation. She studied with Eira Lynn Jones and Dr Anne-Marie O’Farrell, and was previously a member of Junior RNCM, where she was awarded the Rotary Prize for Performance and the John Ellis Memorial Prize. Angharad has performed in numerous concerts across North Wales, Cheshire, Merseyside, and Greater Manchester as a soloist, ensemble player, and orchestral musician. She has performed in Edinburgh and Wales International Harp Festivals, was a prize-winner in the Urdd National Eisteddfod and the National Eisteddfod of Wales, and has performed in venues such as Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, The Bridgewater Hall, and Nottingham Theatre Royal.