About Fedora Strings: Roger Stimson & Joanna Borrett
We have been working together since 2011 and have a shared love of string sound. Our founding principle is to expand the string duet repertoire and focus on character,making use of the wide range of tone colours and special effects string instruments can achieve.
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.
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 album Four Famous Opera Arias arranged for Two Cellos has just been published by SJ Music https://www.sjmusicpublications.co.uk/sheet-music/composers.cfm/product/borrett-opera-arias complete with a duet cd. She plays a cello made in 1855 by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume.
