SHEIDA DAVIS - VIOLONCELLO
Sheida began learning the cello at the age of four with Wendy Max and her teachers have included Joan Dickson, Florence Hooton, David Strange and Stefan Popov. In July 2000 she graduated with first-class Honours from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and was awarded the Peter Latham Leaving Scholarship. She has since completed a year of study at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne with Maria Kliegel and a Master of Music degree and Orchestral Studies Diploma (with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra) at the Eastman School of Music in the USA with Steven Doane and Rosemary Elliot. Her studies were supported generously by the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, the Eastman School of Music and the P.E.O. Sisterhood International Peace Scholarship Fund.
Sheida has taken part in international masterclasses in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Bulgaria with professors such as Robert Cohen, Gary Hoffman and Gerhard Mantel. The most recent were the Manchester International Cello Festival and the Festi-Val Gardena in Italy, where she also had the opportunity to perform chamber works with Norbert Brainin (violin), Clive Britton (piano) and Ferdinand Erblich (viola). In 2000 she won second prize in the Eastbourne Symphony Orchestra Young Soloists Competition and recently performed Elgar's Cello Concerto with Adrian Brown and the Bromley Symphony Orchestra. In 1999 she took part in the second performance of Giles Swayne's The Silent Land (1996) for solo cello and forty-part choir with the Oxford Pro Musica Singers.
As a chamber musician Sheida attended the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, Cornwall (Sigmund Nissel) and the Sándor Végh International Chamber Music Academy in Prague. She has performed in the BBC Martinu Festival, the Spitalfields Festival, the Conway Hall and Linbury Studio Theatre as part of the Park Lane Group Concerts. She has appeared at the Wigmore Hall, the Symphony Hall Birmingham and on BBC television as part of a lecture series on Beethoven by John Suchet. She also plays regularly for the charity Music in Hospitals.
Sheida was appointed principal cello of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain in 1996 and was a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra from 1998-99. Since 2001 she has participated in the Countess of Munster Musical Trust Recital Scheme and has recently appeared in the Warwick, Beaminster and Buxton Festivals, the Tilford Bach Society, the Cuffley and Bury St. Edmunds Concert Clubs, the Hoylake Chamber Concert Society, the Nicholas Yonge Society and the Derby Chamber Music Society. Recent performances include at the Alexander Music School in Spain, concertos in London and Suffolk and recitals with pianist Helen Reid at the National Portrait Gallery, St. James's Piccadilly, St. John's Smith Square and on BBC Radio 3's "In Tune" to celebrate the centenary of British composers Constant Lambert and Alan Rawsthorne.