Angela Zanders
Angela Zanders was born in London and started piano lessons with her father, New Zealand pianist and composer, Douglas Zanders. She went on to study at The Purcell School, Trinity College of Music and Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. At Trinity College, where she studied with Joseph Weingarten, Angela won many competitions and awards, including the Lady Maud Warrender Prize and the John Halford Prize for piano. She also won an Austrian Government Scholarship for study at the Hochschule für Musik, Vienna and it was in this city, once the home of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, that Angela developed her great love of these composers and their music.
Angela has always particularly admired the playing of pianist Murray Perahia and his masterclasses and solo and chamber music coaching have proved to be a huge source of inspiration. It was her love of chamber music which led to further coaching from cellists William Pleeth and Raphael Wallfisch.
Angela has performed all over the UK, including venues such as London’s Wigmore Hall, South Bank, St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields and at St. David’s Hall in Cardiff. She has broadcast for BBC Radio 3 and has given performances throughout Europe and in Australia and New Zealand, both as soloist and accompanist and as pianist in the Solarek Piano Trio, which she formed in 1992. For ten years Angela was accompanist at the Centre for Young Musicians in London where she coached especially talented young instrumentalists and singers. She does a great deal of freelance accompanying and has worked with many internationally acclaimed singers and instrumentalists.
Teaching piano since she was in her mid-teens, Angela has taught privately as well as at Trinity College of Music Junior Department, The Royal Academy of Music and several schools in London, Hampshire and Surrey.
Angela has a passionate commitment to promoting the accessibility of classical music to everyone, no matter what their background, and began giving lectures and courses in Music Appreciation for adults in 1990. Since then she has lectured at Birkbeck College, University of London and for the WEA and U3A and has been running her own courses in Music Appreciation in Hampshire and West Sussex for many years.
Angela has been a lecturer at the University of Chichester since 2010 and is an adjudicator for The British and International Federation of Festivals.
Angela continues to perform widely as soloist, lecture recitalist, accompanist and chamber musician throughout the UK and abroad, while pursuing a busy teaching and lecturing schedule.