Piano Duo Eaton-Young Duo CONTACT: EMAIL & WEBSITE

In 2005, the Eaton-Young duo were selected to take part in the 50th Park Lane Group Young Artists' Series for their South Bank debut. In this concert on the 10 January 2006 they will be joined by the UK's most exciting percussion duo, O DUO, for music by Bartok and Berio.

Uniquely combining the disciplines of a composer and a conductor, the Eaton-Young duo makes a speciality of orchestral and operatic transcriptions and contemporary music. In their Purcell Room concert they will be giving the world premiere of the party scene from Kenneth Hesketh's new opera /The Overcoat /in a transcription for two pianos, dedicated to the duo.

Having met as students of Yonty Solomon at the Royal College of Music in 1998, David Eaton and James Young immediately realised their musical and personal similarities over enthused conversations about Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Soon they were honing their ensemble skills, winning classes at the Blackheath Festival and playing/ The Rite of Spring/ on one piano for Edwin Roxburgh’s conducting classes: cementing an enduring fascination with Stravinsky’s masterpiece and marking the first of many varied and fruitful Roxburgh collaborations. The pair then spent nearly five years of no-duo exploring an incredibly diverse range of musical experiences, before reforming in 2004.

Between them they have worked and made music with Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Roger Norrington, Danielle Gatti, Vernon Handley, Lionel Friend, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Paul Patterson, Michael Berkeley, Errollyn Wallen, Jonathan Harvey, Honour Blackman and José Carreras; made a world premiere recording (James’ performance of Roxburgh’s Introduction and Arabesques — available on Warehouse Records later this year) and recorded with Nu Metal band Kill II This; performed countrywide from the Edinburgh Fringe, Hackney Empire and the Bath Festival to St. John’s Smith Square, the Purcell Room and Buckingham Palace; broadcast on BBC Radio 3; won prizes for piano and organ playing, composition and accompaniment (David was the first recipient of the John Hart Accompanist’s prize from the Ferrier Bursary Committee) and conducted performances of Schoenberg, Poulenc and John Adams as well as musicals and operettas by Sondheim and Gilbert and Sullivan.