Oscar Perks

Key details:

Department:
Music | Chamber Music
Role:
Classical Improvisation Coach
Oscar Perks, staff at Guildhall School of Music & Drama

Oscar Perks enjoys a varied career as a violinist, chamber musician and teacher. After beginning his studies at the Yehudi Menuhin School, Oscar went on to read music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway. He then gained his masters at the Royal College of Music under Lutsia Ibragimova.     

For five years Oscar was a member of the Dante String Quartet with whom he gave numerous concerts around the UK and abroad, including the complete Beethoven and Shostakovich Quartet cycles. With the Dantes, Oscar also made recordings of all eight string quartets by C.V. Stanford, many of which were previously unpublished and unrecorded. Since leaving the quartet in 2019, Oscar has devoted more time to his recently formed duo partnership with his wife, Ayaka Shigeno.

Alongside his work as a performer, Oscar teaches Chamber Music and Improvisation at the Guildhall school of Music & Drama; and teaches violin at the Yehudi Menuhin School. He also directs the Langvad Jamboree Chamber Music Festival held annually at the Kirsten Kjaers museum, Denmark.