Conductor - Sungjoon Park
Sungjoon Park is a choral conductor and organist rooted in the English cathedral tradition. He currently studies at the Royal Academy of Music with Nicholas Chalmers and is the Westminster Cathedral Conducting Scholar, assisting the Cathedral’s lay clerks under the guidance of Assistant Master of Music Peter Stevens.
Previously an Organ Scholar at Exeter College, Oxford, he directed the college choir and led an international tour to Sweden and Germany, performing at venues such as Uppsala Cathedral, Katarina Kyrka, and Görlitz Cathedral. A former chorister of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, he combines vocal and keyboard experience in his approach to conducting. His conducting studies have included work with Benjamin Nicholas, Nicholas Cleobury, and Alexander Walker, and he also pursues singing with Alex Ashworth and organ with Jeremiah Stephenson.
Sungjoon has attended masterclasses with James O’Donnell, David Hill, and Eamonn Dougan, and has conducted at notable London venues including Westminster Abbey. He maintains an active freelance career directing services and concerts across the city, with a particular focus on early chamber music.
Keyboard - Luke Mitchell
Luke Mitchell is a prize-winning Harpsichordist, Organist and Conductor. As a Harpsichordist he took 1st Prize in the Harriet Cohen competition with music by François and Louis Couperin, the first winner in its history not to play an all-Bach programme, and recently enjoyed a Bach-centric series at New College, Oxford. He has appeared as a concerto soloist at the London Handel Festival, having formerly appeared as concerto soloist and director at the Keble Early Music Festival, and directed several of the Brandenburg Concerti at the Marylebone Festival. As a continuo player has performed with The Sixteen, The Academy of Ancient Music, Contrapunctus and Instruments of Time and Truth.
His organ recital work has seen him recently perform at St Paul’s Cathedral St. George’s Hanover Square, the University of St. Andrews and Trinity College Cambridge, with a forthcoming recital at Westminster Abbey. He read music at The Queen’s College Oxford, holding an Organ Scholarship, alongside scholarships with the University Schola Cantorum and New Chamber Opera as a conductor. Whilst at Oxford, he played in all the major recital series, and won the Boise Scholarship for Performance, and directed four productions with New Chamber Opera. Prior to this he was Organ Scholar of Worcester Cathedral, where he became a performance prize-winner of the Royal College of Organists.
He is currently a post-graduate Historical Performance student at the Royal Academy of Music, studying Harpsichord with Carole Cerasi, James Johnstone and Steven Devine, having formerly studied with Laurence Cummings and Penelope Cave. He is Assistant Director of Music at St. Marylebone Parish Church where he co-directs the St Marylebone Festival with Bertie Baigent. He is founder and Director of The Duke’s Consort, a prize-winning ensemble of players and singers, with whom he is about to embark on a ten-year project to perform the complete Odes and Ceremonial Musics of Henry Purcell.
Principal First Violinist - Sophia Mücke
Sophia Mücke is a Swiss baroque violinist, graduate from the renowned Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (CH) and scholarship holder of the prestigious Fridl Wald Foundation (CH). She has performed at festivals including the Festival Internationale Barocktage Stift Melk (AT), the Festival Varaždinske barokne večeri (HR) and the Forum Alte Musik Zürich (CH), working with directors such as Stefan Gottfried, Francesco Corti and Chouchane Siranossian. Her musical passion lies in 17th-century North German and Italian music. Besides performing all over Europe as a violinist with different ensembles and orchestras, such as the Zürcher Barockorchester (CH), Capriccio Barockorchester (CH), The Duke’s Consort (UK), Sophia is interested in musicology and music theory. To combine her interests in performance and research, she regularly organises her own thematic concerts, and she gives workshops on Renaissance solmisation and rhetoric in music. Together with South American oboist Laura Herzog Alvarado and harpsichordist Weronika Paine, Sophia is organising her own group, Musica Basiliensis, which focuses on 18th-century chamber music and participatory concert experiences for audiences. Her love for adventure and her wanderlust eventually led her to London where she is currently pursuing a Master of Music at the Royal Academy of Music with Pavlo Beznosiuk and Nicolette Moonen.
Baritone Soloist - John Johnston
John Johnston is a baritone from Belfast based in London. He started singing as a chorister in St. Peter’s Cathedral Schola Cantorum, Belfast, and later the chapel choir of Winchester College. He graduated from the University of Oxford with a first-class degree in Music, where he was an Academical Clerk in the New College Choir, and was taught by Bronwen Mills. During his time at Oxford John enjoyed working on numerous vocal projects with New Chamber Opera, Schola Cantorum, and the Oxford Opera Society; highlights of which include the roles of Figaro, Le nozze di Figaro, and Paris, The Judgement of Paris. John is now a master’s student at the RCM where he has covered the role of Harašta, The Cunning Little Vixen in November and Sid, Albert Herring (RCM Opera Scenes). He is studying with Russell Smythe and supported by the Jessie Sumner Scholarship and the Josephine Baker Trust.
