Yeo Yat-Soon

On 21 October we look forward to hearing Follia, the Baroque ensemble led by harpsichordist Yeo Yat-Soon.

Ticket information here.

Yeo Yat-Soon was born in London of Chinese parents. Between the ages of 5 and 18 he lived in Tunbridge Wells, where for many years his father owned the Hoover Chinese Restaurant in Calverley Road. He attended Claremont Primary School and then the Skinners’ School.

As a teenager he began harpsichord studies with the distinguished harpsichord maker Malcolm Rose who was then based in nearby Mayfield and was given significant encouragement in early music performance by Richard and Katrina Burnett at Finchcocks in Goudhurst.

Yat-Soon went on to study music and historical musicology at King’s College London. He continued with postgraduate studies in harpsichord and conducting at the Guildhall School of Music, during which time he won the prestigious Raymond Russell Prize for Harpsichord.

He performs widely as a soloist, specializing in concerts in historic buildings. Recent venues include Handel House Museum, Craxton Studios, the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court, Strawberry Hill House, Holywell Music Room in Oxford and the Kammersaal Friedenau and Musikinstrumenten-Museum in Berlin. Yat-Soon also specializes as a baroque opera conductor and has worked with London Baroque Opera, City of London Festival and Opéra de Baugé, for whom he conducted Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea in 2016. He plays with the ensembles Follia, The Stanesby Players and Camerata Berolinensis (Berlin), and has performed regularly at the South Bank and St John’s, Smith Square. He has broadcast for BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM radio, and BBC1, BBC 4 and Channel 4 television.

Yat-Soon has had a long association with education, and has been Director of Music at The Lady Eleanor Holles School and St Paul’s Girls’ School, where his predecessors included Gustav Holst and Herbert Howells. He currently teaches harpsichord and chamber music, and lectures on historical performance practice at the Centre for Early Music Performance and Research at the University of Birmingham.

Yat-Soon still very much regards Tunbridge Wells as a spiritual home-town. He first performed at King Charles the Martyr Church in 1988 and has returned on numerous occasions since. He is delighted to be coming again on 21 October with his group Follia with a programme commemorating the 250 th anniversary of the death of the German Baroque composer Georg Philipp Telemann, with works by Telemann and his French contemporaries.

Discounted tickets available here.