Internationally acclaimed violinist Tasmin Little will present a session designed to help musicians develop the resilience needed to navigate the unique set of circumstances associated with a career in music. Drawing on several decades of experience, Tasmin will explore topics such as establishing faith in your artistic identity, recognising your full skillset, staying motivated through difficult points in your career and personal life, handling failure and rejection, and maintaining a busy and demanding work schedule.

Senior arts manager Eibhlín Gleeson will draw on her experience as CEO of Cork Opera House and a former fellow of the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, to help musicians broaden their networking skills. Eibhlín says ‘Let’s face it, networking is hard! It really pushes us out of our comfort zone’. This session will explore our networking goals and how we might meet them. Eibhlín will look at some traditional networking techniques and ways to make networking seem less intimidating and more accessible, exploring the fundamentals of where we network; how we present ourselves and how we share our stories.

Award-winning international director, educator and writer John Ramster will explore techniques and exercises that musicians can use to maximize stage presence and communication. Delving into such topics as knowing the size of your performance space, using the energy of the room and clearly communicating your artistic intentions, John will help musicians find fresh ways to present their performances and connect with audiences.

Tasmin Little

OBE, FGSM, Hon RAM, ARCM (Hons)

"One of the supremely great violinists of our time" Music-Web International
"Little can justly be regarded as Britain's finest violinist" The Independent

For more than three decades, Tasmin Little enjoyed a multi-award winning and varied career as an international solo concert violinist, touring the globe as soloist with the most acclaimed international orchestras in the top venues of the world. She made 45 commercial recordings, gave many world premiere performances and received numerous accolades, including a Classic BRIT Award, Gramophone Award for Audience Innovation, BBC Music Magazine Personality of the Year Award, BBC Music Magazine Chamber Music Award, Gold Badge Award for Services to Music and a coveted Diapason d’Or.

Renowned for her gifts of communication and presentation, on and off the platform, during the early 1990s she pioneered verbal introductions during performance from the stage to audiences, and in 2008 her ground-breaking project “The Naked Violin” drew a global audience of half a million in a few weeks and resulted in The Southbank Show - the longest-running arts show on British television – dedicating a full hour’s programme to following the project as she toured. She has appeared on, and made, many television and radio programmes; in February 2021, her 3-week series for BBC Radio 3, “Journeys with my Violin” was widely lauded and was ‘Pick of the Week’ in The Times newspaper. During her 30 year career, she performed 20 times at the BBC Proms, including two concerts at The Last Night of the Proms to a global audience of 100 million, and at Proms in the Park to a live audience of 40,000. She performed twice for HM the Queen and in 2012 was awarded an OBE for Services to Music.

During the pandemic in 2020, Tasmin gave numerous interviews on BBC Radio 4 and was vocal in highlighting the issues faced by freelance musicians, to the extent that she was recently cited as one of the top 10 Classical Music Thought Leaders. She has a consistent track record of advocating music education and has twice been invited to speak in the House of Commons to members of both the Lords and the Commons regarding the importance of education and the arts in the UK. In 2019 she became Co-President of the Yehudi Menuhin School.

Tasmin is an Ambassador for many charities including Help Musicians UK, The Princes Foundation for Children and the Arts, Youth Music, Trees for Music, (helping to replant and sustain endangered Pernambuco wood, used for making violin bows, in the Brazilian rainforest), and she is Vice President of the Elgar Society.

In 2020 she stepped down from the concert platform in order to devote her time to her other passions: broadcasting, presenting, writing, teaching, mentoring, education and charity work. She gained her Certificate in Mentoring and Coaching from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in January 2021, and has a particular interest in communication, presentation and self-development skills in addition to supporting increased diversity in the workplace.

Eibhlín Gleeson

Eibhlin Gleeson has extensive experience as a senior arts manager over 20 years. Having started her career as a musician, she is now a key figure in Ireland’s artistic landscape.  She was the CEO of Ireland’s flagship professional choir, Chamber Choir Ireland where she implemented significant organisational and structural change.  Following this, she developed her own arts management company, EMG Arts Management, providing strategic planning, marketing, fundraising, and international touring services to arts organisations in Ireland. In 2015, she became CEO and Artistic Director of Cork Opera House, one of Ireland’s flagship producing and presenting houses, a position which she still holds today. Here, she has presided over a new phase of producing, major organisational change and increased funding revenue and audience figures.

Throughout her tenure at Cork Opera House, she founded the Cork Opera House Concert Orchestra, the Right Here Right Now Festival, established a concert series that has seen the Opera House produce in excess of 40 in house produced events and produced some of Ireland’s largest shows, including major productions of  Annie, the Wizard of Oz, ProdiJIG: The Revolution and many more.

Eibhlin has a BMus from UCC and is a former fellow of the Kennedy Centre’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management in Washington, D.C. She was instrumental in establishing a new Arts Management and Creative Producing Master’s Degree in University College Cork, Ireland where she teaches on an ongoing basis.

John Ramster

Born and raised in the east of England, John is an award-winning international opera director, educator and writer. After studying History at Cambridge University, he learned his operatic trade with the Glyndebourne Festival and Tour, assisting Deborah Warner, Peter Sellars and the late Graham Vick, among others. A renowned educator and director of young singers, John is currently Associate Head of the Vocal Department at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Recent productions include: Don Giovanni (Kilden Opera, Norway), The Weekend (Bloomsbury Opera), Eugene Onegin (West Green Festival), Albert Herring, Beginnings (Guildhall School of Music and Drama), Le nozze di Figaro (Icelandic National Opera), Der fliegende Holländer, Carmen, The Paper Bag Princess (Bergen National Opera), Don Giovanni (Merry Opera), Agrippina (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), Theodora (Royal Northern College of Music), Radamisto (GSMD); in previous seasons, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte (Turku Festival, Finland), Lucia di Lammermoor (Belgrade National Opera award for Best Direction), Don Giovanni, L'elisir d'amore (Opera Faber, Portugal). He has directed many shows for touring company Merry Opera including an acclaimed staged Messiah which has received over 100 performances in its 11-year run as well as self-penned "jukebox" opera, Kiss me, Figaro! which was nominated for Best Production at the Off-West-End Awards.

John’s novel, Ladies’ Man, has been translated into seven languages; he is currently writing a book on acting for opera singers, and may one day even finish an historical murder-mystery set in Handel's London called Da Capo. Future plans include L'elisir d'amore with Jyväskylä Opera in Finland, Cav&Pag with West Green, a new version of Cinderella with Merry Opera touring the UK, Giulio Cesare and continued teaching and management at Guildhall.