Violoncello
2015
Dublin-born Miriam Roycroft studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester with Ralph Kirshbaum and Don McCall where she was awarded numerous prizes for cello and chamber music. Upon graduation she won the Muriel Taylor Cello Competition in London and the Worthing Young Musician Concerto Prize which led to many appearances as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Britain. She was a founder member of the Music Group of Manchester and the Janacek Piano Trio. Further studies included a period in Banff, Canada, at the renowned Banff Centre for the Arts with Aldo Parisot.
Miriam has performed as soloist with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland many times and has played most of the major concerti for cello with orchestras throughout the UK and Ireland. She has been a guest leader of the cello sections of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Sinfonia ViVa, the Northern Chamber Orchestra and the Northern Sinfonia. She has also guest co-lead the cello sections of the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Miriam is principal cello of Camerata Ireland with whom she has toured America, South America, China and throughout Europe. Having been a member of the Orchestra of Opera North in Leeds for many years, in September 2006 Miriam joined the String Faculty of the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin and in 2012 she was made Head of the String Faculty at the RIAM.
She has performed at the Manchester Mid-Day Concert Series, ‘Music in Great Irish Houses Festival’ with the American cellist, Steven Doane and in March 2010, she performed with her duo partner Réamonn Keary at the National Gallery of Ireland as part of the ‘Chopin 200’ bi-centenary celebration concert series. Film work has included ‘In America’, (featured artist) and ‘the Blue Tower’.
In February 2013 Miriam undertook a six-concert tour of Ireland with Réamonn Keary featuring the Cello Sonatas of Britten and Charles Alkan, both of whom had important centenaries and bi-centenaries during 2013. They have also premiered a new composition written by Nigel Morgan. Recent performances have included recitals, masterclasses and concerti at Festivals and Concert Halls in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery, Trinity Chapel, St. Barrahane’s Church Festival of Music, Castletownshend, UL, Derry, Belfast, CIT Cork and throughout the UK.
In June of 2014, Miriam played with John O’Conor and Michael d’Arcy at the National Concert Hall as part of the RIAM’s ‘Beethoven Project’. Miriam is in frequent demand as guest leader of the Northern Chamber Orchestra in Manchester and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and she was invited onto the faculty at the Apple Hill Summer Chamber Music Series in New Hampshire, USA, in July 2015.
Miriam plays on a modern American cello by Grubaugh and Seifert which she commissioned in 2004