Gold medallist in the 1984 Royal Over-Seas League Competition in London, Nicholas Cox won international honours at the 1987 Jeunesses Musicales International Clarinet Competition in Belgrade. He studied at the Musikhochschule in Hanover with Hans Deinzer and at Cambridge University. He has since played Principal Clarinet with most of the UK’s orchestras and appeared as soloist at festivals in Britain and abroad. He plays quintets regularly with the finest quartets such as the Brodsky, Danel, Endellion, Chillingirian and Skampa and concertos with several orchestras. His recording of Mozart’s Concerto & Quintet (ClassCD1502) was Record of the Week on Classic FM on its release in 2003 and has become one of the most frequently broadcast and highly rated recordings of the Concerto. His recording of Richard Strauss’s Duet Concertino (Avie 2071) is equally regarded as one of the finest versions in the catalogue. Nicholas Cox has been Senior Tutor Clarinet at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester since 2003.

Ian Buckle enjoys a varied freelance career working as soloist, accompanist, chamber musician, orchestral pianist, teacher and ABRSM examiner. As concerto soloist he has appeared with orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic, Opera North, Sinfonia Viva and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Committed to contemporary music, he has been the pianist in Ensemble 10:10 since the group’s inception, and his piano duo with Richard Casey specialises in music from the last and current centuries. He frequently collaborates with former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion performing recitals of piano music and poetry, and he is a member of both the piano-and-wind ensemble Zephyr and the Elysnan Horn Trio, formed when the group were students at the Royal Northern College of Music. He regularly plays piano in the RLPO and the John Wilson Orchestra, and teaches at the Universities of Leeds and Liverpool.