Featured Performers:
Raffaella Smith, Pianist

Raffaella Smith is eighteen and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. She began piano and guitar as a young child and music has long been one of her main interests.

Her tastes are wide-ranging – she has played keyboards and bass guitar in school jazz bands, has performed a guitar concerto and sings in the school choir – but they centre chiefly on classical piano, for which she has the ABRSM Diploma.

She is taught by Sheila Piper and has also studied piano at the Sage Gateshead's Weekend School and the Oxford Philomusica Summer Course.

She is harpsichordist / pianist with the Newcastle-based St Paul's Youth Ensemble and, in December 2005, was the pianist in the premiere of Howard Goodall's A Winter’s Tale at the Sage. She performs regularly at regional festivals and competitions, most recently with success at the Edinburgh Competition Musical Festival and the Tynedale Festival.

Raffaella is currently juggling her musical activities with the demands of A-levels but hopes to take up invitations to play next April in London at the Emmanuel Piano Competition, and to play a Mozart piano concerto at her school. She wants ideally to take a gap year studying piano in London or Germany before going to read Classics – and continue playing music – at University.

Raffaella performs Brahms' St. Anthony Variations in How Music Works.