The Chamber Ensemble
The ASMF Chamber Ensemble was formed in 1967, drawing its membership from the principal players of the internationally acclaimed orchestra the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (ASMF).
Founded in 1958 by Sir Neville Marriner and led today by Music Director Joshua Bell, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields has evolved into a musical powerhouse, an orchestra renowned across the world for its commitment to the musical freedom of its players and the sharing of joyful, inspiring performances. The Chamber Ensemble, led now by ASMF Director/Leader Tomo Keller, was formed to perform the larger-scale chamber music repertoire with outstanding musicians who have a history of working and collaborating closely together.
The Chamber Ensemble now performs in multiple configurations from wind trios to string octets. Its touring commitments are extensive and include regular tours of Europe and North America, whilst recording contracts with Philips Classics, Hyperion, and Chandos have led to the release of over thirty albums.
Our Musicians – Chamber Ensemble 2026/27
Tomo Keller
Tomo Keller
VIOLIN
One of the most admired violinists of his generation, Tomo Keller performs as soloist, chamber and orchestral musician, leading groundbreaking performances and recording projects. He regularly performs with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and other major orchestras around the world.
Amendment suggestion: He is the director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and regularly performs with other major orchestras around the world
The 24/25 season saw Tomo perform the Beethoven Triple Concerto with Jan Lisiecki and Daniel Müller-Schott at the Berlin Konzerthaus and Hamburg Elbphilharmonie as well as in Munich, Köln and Frankfurt. Other highlights will include chamber music at IMS Prussia Cove with Kim Kashkashian and friends, as well as concerts in London with Alexandra Dariescu and Timothy Ridout alongside directing the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. H will perform the Bach Double Concerto with Joshua Bell at the 40th edition of the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival as well as concerts with the Chamber Ensemble of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. With Simone Dinnerstein he will perform at Festum Pi on Crete.
2025 marks the release of a recording featuring works by Kurt Atterberg on the Ondine label. Tomo is the soloist in the Suite for Violin and Viola as well as the director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Over the last few seasons Tomo has been directing new initiatives with various orchestras with great success, leading as soloist and from the concert master’s chair. These orchestras have included string and chamber orchestras (Amsterdam Sinfonietta), symphony and opera orchestras (City of Birmingham Orchestra, Wuppertal Sinfoniker) as well as festival and youth orchestras (Grafenegg Akademie Orchester, Pyeong-Chang Festival Orchestra).
During 2021/22, Tomo was artist-in-residence at the Loh-Orchestra Sondershausen in Germany, appearing as soloist, director and conductor, and premiered a new piece written for him by Christoph Ehrenfellner. Wiener G’schichten also received its UK premiere in London with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in 2022 and was heard again at the New Year’s Concert 2024 in Wuppertal.
In 2020 a DVD/CD box set with all the Beethoven piano concertos was released by Deutsche Grammophon to great critical acclaim, featuring pianist Jan Lisiecki and Tomo Keller directing the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Since his debuts at the Musikverein and Konzerthaus Vienna at the age of 17, Tomo Keller has performed at major concert halls all around the world and has been invited both as soloist and chamber musician to music festivals including the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, Edinburgh Festival and Bravo! Vail Colorado. He has also been a frequent guest on radio and television broadcasts on ARD, BBC, NHK and ORF.
As a soloist Tomo has performed with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Beethovenhalle Orchestra Bonn, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, St Petersburg Camerata, London Symphony Orchestra, Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Concert tours have led him all across Europe, as well as Russia, Asia, America and the Middle East.
As a chamber musician he regularly appears with the Chamber Ensemble of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields as well as alongside Joshua Bell, Benjamin Grosvenor, HK Gruber, Håkan Hardenberger, Janine Jansen, Denis Kozhukhin, Murray Perahia, Lawrence Power, Timothy Ridout and members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Tomo Keller is a much sought-after orchestral leader and director, having led the London Symphony Orchestra (2009-2015) and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (2014-2019) and has also appeared with more than 30 orchestras as guest leader all over Europe, the US and Asia. In 2016 Tomo was appointed Director and Leader of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Tomo’s recordings include solo works by Bach, Bartok and Ysaye, orchestral recordings including Stravinsky’s Apollon musagète with Sir John Eliot Gardiner/LSO and Grammy Award winning Avant Gershwin with Patti Austin and the WDR Big Band.
Tomo Keller was born in Stuttgart to German-Japanese musicians, and started playing the violin at the age of six. At ten years old he gave his first performances with orchestra. He studied at Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts and New York’s Juilliard School of Music. Numerous top prizes and awards followed, at the Fritz Kreisler Competition, the Johannes Brahms Competition and the German Music Competition Berlin where he was awarded the Grand Prize. He was also one of few instrumentalists to receive the Aalto Stage Prize for young musicians.
He has given violin, chamber music and orchestral master classes at all major London Music Colleges as well as at Yale university, San Francisco Conservatory and numerous other schools in the US and the Far East.
In 2022 he was appointed Professor of violin at the HEMU Sion in Switzerland.
Tomo plays the ‘Braga-Bell’ Stradivari of 1726, kindly loaned through the Beare’s International Violin Society.
Martin Burgess
Martin began playing with the Academy in 1992, taking up the position of Principal Second Violin in 1998. Having studied with Emanuel Hurwitz and the Amadeus Quartet he brought with him the love of chamber music. He leads the Grammy nominated Emperor Quartet (winners of the prestigious Evian International String Quartet Competition). The Quartet has released critically acclaimed CDs of music by Britten, Walton, Martinu and James MacMillan. They have also performed on several film soundtracks, notably There Will Be Blood and Norwegian Wood (both written by Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead).
Martin enjoys a wide variety of playing away from both these ensembles, a highlight including touring the world with Peter Gabriel.
Amanda Smith
Amanda Smith was born in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk and is the youngest of a family of six. She studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Royal College of Music. She has been playing with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields since 1994, also working as a freelance violinist with other orchestras such as City of London Sinfonia and London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Katie Stillman
Described as playing with ‘panache and authority’ by The Strad, Canadian violinist Katie Stillman enjoys a multifaceted career as a chamber musician, soloist and now as Opera North’s new Leader. During the past season, Katie has directed the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Manchester Camerata and Northern Chamber Orchestra as well as directing and performing as a soloist with the City of Birmingham Symohony Orchestra.
Fiona Bonds
Fiona Bonds completed her studies at the Royal Academy of Music and in Berlin. As well as being Associate Principal Viola of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and a member of their Chamber Ensemble, Fiona is also Principal Viola of the City of London Sinfonia, which presents her with frequent opportunities to appear as a soloist. Passionate about chamber music, Fiona was a founder member of the Grammy nominated Emperor String Quartet, and has recently running her Marriner Project – a chamber music series in her home town of Hertford. She loves helping young musicians, coaching the viola section of the National Youth Orchestra, and returning to the Royal Academy of Music to give performance classes, sectionals and as an examiner. Fiona is in demand as a guest principal viola in many of the London symphony and chamber orchestras and enjoys working in the studio, recording numerous soundtracks for film and television.
Ian Rathbone
Ian has played with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields since 1995. He enjoys a busy and varied career in London, performing as a chamber musician, soloist and guest principal with the Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, as well as in West End shows and film scores, including the latest Mission Impossible. Ian started playing at the age of three with the London Suzuki Group, was later awarded a scholarship to study with David Takeno at the Guildhall, Milan Skampa in Prague and Thomas Riebl in Salzburg. Ian plays on a Boullangier viola from 1879.
Richard Harwood
Since his concerto debut at the age of ten, the English ‘cellist Richard Harwood has performed in major venues throughout the world including the Royal Albert, Wigmore, Carnegie and Suntory Halls, NCPA Beijing, Musikverein, Concertgebouw and Alte Oper. As concerto soloist, Richard has worked with conductors such as Mark Wigglesworth, Vasily Petrenko, Case Scaglione, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Okko Kamu, and Yehudi Menuhin, and with numerous orchestras including The Philharmonia, RTÉ NSO, Auckland Philharmonia and Ural Philharmonic. As chamber musician, he has collaborated with the Jerusalem and Endellion Quartets, Joshua Bell, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Olivier Charlier, Benjamin Schmid, Alena Baeva, Murray Perahia, Martin Roscoe, Peter Donohoe and Julius Drake, among others. Richard’s discography includes a debut disc (EMI Classics) with pianist Christoph Berner, Composing Without The Picture (Resonus); a solo album of concert works written by film composers, Christopher Gunning’s Cello Concerto and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, both on Signum and with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He is regularly featured as a soloist on movie soundtracks, one of the most prominent being Patrick Doyle’s score to Kenneth Branagh’s Murder On The Orient Express. Richard was appointed principal cellist of the Academy of St Martin of the Fields in October 2024. He was previously principal of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (2018-2024) and a principal of the John Wilson Orchestra, and regularly appears as a guest principal at the Royal Opera House, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, BBC NOW and RTÉ Concert orchestras. He began his studies with Joan Dickson, before continuing with other eminent teachers such as Steven Doane, David Waterman, Heinrich Schiff and Ralph Kirshbaum. He complemented his studies by taking master classes and lessons with Mstislav Rostropovich, Janos Starker, Steven Isserlis, Boris Pergamenschikow, Miklós Perényi, Bernard Greenhouse, Valentin Erben (Alban Berg Quartet), William Pleeth, Zara Nelsova and Ferenc Rados. Richard was appointed professor of cello at London’s Royal College of Music in September 2024. He plays a cello by Francesco Rugeri, dated 1692.
Will Schofield
Will Schofield was born in London to Australian and Italian parents. He read music at Edinburgh University and went on to study with Radu Aldulescu in Rome and at the Menuhin Academy in Gstaad, Switzerland.
Will has been cellist with the Grammy nominated Emperor String Quartet since the group was formed in 1992. He started playing with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields the following year, and membership of these two groups has been the primary focus of his playing career ever since. With the Quartet he has played throughout Europe, North and South America and in Africa, appearing at all of the major festivals in the UK and at numerous festivals abroad including Prague Spring Festival, ‘Mostly Mozart’ New York, Flanders, Monte Carlo, Montpelier/Radio France and Kuhmo in Finland. The Quartet records for BIS, the latest project being a complete cycle of Britten. He has also played as a guest with the Allegri and Maggini Quartets and with the Schubert Ensemble of London.
With the Academy Will has had the opportunity to play the key repertoire for Chamber Orchestra at the highest level, working and recording with musicians such as Murray Perahia, Joshua Bell, Janine Jansen, Julia Fischer and, of course, Sir Neville Marriner.
As a freelance cellist Will has played as Guest Principal Cello with many of the country’s top orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic and the English Chamber Orchestra, and with orchestras in Ireland and Spain. He has played on numerous film soundtracks, and with the Emperor Quartet has collaborated with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood on several projects, most notably the soundtrack to the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood.
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