Royal Academy of Music
![[Byron Piano Trio]](images/2004/byron240.jpg)
Kaoru Yamada, violin
Amelie Mabire, cello
Tadashi Imai, piano
THE BYRON PIANO TRIO was formed in September 2002 at the Royal Academy of Music. It quickly established itself as one of the Academy's up-and-coming ensembles. In May 2003, they were invited to Strathgarry House in Scotland, where, in conjunction with the Tunnell Trust for Young Musicians, they gave several concerts to high acclaim. They have been invited to perform again at Strathgarry House later on this year. Recently, the Trio was awarded the Marjorie Lemfert Award at the Academy.
KAORU YAMADA (violin) graduated from the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo before taking up a scholarship to the postgraduate course at the Royal Academy of Music. As well as many solo and chamber recitals, she has taken part in the Saito-Kinen Chamber Music Course for young musicians.
She has taken masterclasses from, among others, Lewis Kaplan, Mauricio Fuks in Salzburg and Boris Belkin in Siena. In 1998, she was a prize-winner in the 49th All Japan Music Competition for young musicians and in the Eighth Japan Mozart Competition.
Kaoru continues her studies at the RAM with Richard Deakin.
AMELIE MABIRE (cello) was born in 1982 in Caen, France, where she studied on various music courses at the Conservatoire National de Region until 2002. She began learning the cello at the age of 5, studying with Aldo Ripoche, Florian Lauredon, Roland Pidoux and Mark Drobinsky. Since the age of 13, she has performed regularly as a chamber musician (in the Fluvio Quartet) and her first solo performance at the age of 15 was of Haydn's C major Cello Concerto.
In 2002, Amelie won the First Prize in the European Competition for Young Musicians in Lempdes, France and went on to win the Vatelot-Rampal Cello Competition in Paris. In the same year she entered the Royal Academy of Music to study with Mats Lidstrom and Colin Carr. In 2003, she won second prize at the May Muykle Elgar Cello Concerto Competition in London.
With her preference for chamber music, she studied with a number of different ensembles coached by Michael Dussek and Sigmund Nissel before becoming a member of the Byron Piano Trio.
Amelie plays on a Nicolo Gagliano cello (1764) on loan from the Royal Academy of Music.
TADASHI IMAI (piano) is 28 and made his debut in Tokyo in 1997 under the auspices of the Japan Committee of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. As a prize-winner of several competitions in Japan and the United States, he has performed Chopin's Piano Concerto no. 1 with the Osaka Symphoniker and Tchaikovsky's Concerto no. 1 with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and as a Grand Prize-winner of the Grand Prix International Chopin Competition, he made his New York debut in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall.
His piano teachers include Hidemitsu Hayashi, Mieko Nakagawa, Kazuyo Ueda, Hiroshi Tajika and Tamas Ungar and he has studied chamber music with Kazuoki Fujii, Shuku Iwasaki and Andrew West. Tadashi is a graduate of Toho Gakuen College of Music and of Tecas Christian University. At present he is a post-graduate student at the RAM studying piano with Christopher Elton and chamber music with Michael Dussek.