About Fedora Strings: Roger Stimson & Joanna Borrett
We have been working together since 2011 and have a shared love of string sound. Few composers have written original works for string duet – despite its flexibility and potential. Our aim is to expand the string duet repertoire. Click on the pull down tab on this page to see five YouTube videos of us performing our arrangements.
Roger Stimson – Violinist
Roger studied at The Royal Academy of Music where he was awarded the Orchestral Prize and joined the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in 1969. He has worked as a principal with the Welsh National Opera Company and as co-principal with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and has played in most of the major concert halls in the UK and toured in America, Canada, Quatar, Hong Kong, Istanbul and Norway.Roger has a wide taste in music. He’s led the orchestra of the Vienna Festival Ballet, played palm court at the Sheraton Hotel, Doha and been a solo violinist with the London Balalaika Ensemble. In recent years Roger has become increasingly interested in composition and he’s arranged many of the pieces in our music sales shop.His 15 Insect Songs have just been published by Spartan Press.
Joanna Borrett – Cellist
Joanna studied with Christopher Bunting in London and at the Moscow Conservatoire. She toured North America as principal cellist with the Scottish Baroque Ensemble and shortly afterwards made her solo debut at the Wigmore Hall, where the Daily Telegraph commented on her “bright impetuous personality” and “ardently responsive style”. In 1983 she formed the Peterborough String Orchestra, a twelve piece ensemble reviewed in The Guardian as having “the sort of responsive precision you expect from a string quartet. The real emotional stuff of music making”. She has commissioned many new works for solo cello, trio and string orchestra and recently recorded Bach’s first and third unaccompanied cello suites. Her Four Famous Opera Arias arranged for Two Cellos has recently been published by SJ Music with a duet cd and her recording of Bach’s 5th cello suite is about to be released. She plays on a cello by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume made in 1855.
