Volkava, Shini Mehrabzadeh
Yeva Volkava (violin) was born in Minsk, Belarus, in 200l. She started playing violin when she was 5 and entered the Republican Music College at the age of 9. Her debut as a soloist with the Belarusian State Symphony Orchestra took place when she was just 11.
Yeva holds multiple awards from international competitions for violinists: the EuroAsia Competition in Tokyo, Japan (First Prize, 2021), the Malta Violin Competition (First Prize, 2015) and the ’Accordy Khortytsya competition (Gran-Prix, Zaporyzhe, 2019).
She has taken part in masterclasses in Latvia, Ukraine, Singapore, Poland, United Kingdom and Belarus, where she experienced coaching from Evgeniya Chugaeva, Dora Schwarzberg, Dima Tkachenko, Alexander Trostyanski, Qian Zhou, Takashi Shimizu, Itzhak Rashkovsky, Jerôme Pernoo, Pavel Vernikov, David Takeno, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and others.
In her home country, she regularly appeared as a soloist with the Belarusian State Symphony Orchestra, the Belarusian Ensemble of Soloists «Classic-Avantguarde» and the State Chamber Orchestra of Belarus until she and her family faced reprisals from the Belarusian Government.
Yeva is regularly invited to perform outside the UK — among the countries she has recently visited with concerts are Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Singapore (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall), Japan (Suntory Hall) and the USA (Weill Recital Hall of the Carnegie Hall).
Roxanna Shini Mehrabzadeh (piano) is an accomplished, British-Iranian performer and teacher from Cambridgeshire, now based in London. She has performed at distinguished venues across the UK and Europe, including the Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square, West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge University, Yamaha Studios, Sala Michelangeli (Italy), The Arlberg 1800 (Austria), Konzertsaal des Augustinum (Germany), Auditoria Joaquin Rodrigo (Madrid) and Nafplio Vouleftikon (Greece).
She has performed in international festivals and competitions, performing for acclaimed pianists such as Nikolai Demidenko, Pascal Rogé, Leon McCawley, Artur Pizarro, Kathryn Stott, Graham Scott, Martino Tirimo, Julian Jacobson, Giorgia Alessandra Brustia, Peter Tuite, Charles Owen, Peter Nagy and Sergio De Simone.
Roxanna was a finalist in the 2017 John Longmire Beethoven Piano Competition, and, in 2017 and 2018, she was a consecutive prize-winner of the Musical Odyssey Summer School.
She has been a finalist in the Alfred Kitchin Chopin Competition 2020 and 2022 and the 2023 Schumann Competition.
As a chamber musician, Roxanna regularly performs alongside other instrumentalists and vocalists. She was recently named a 2023 Song Easel Young Artist, reaching the finals of the Lilian Ash French Song Competition, English Song Competition, and the Elizabeth Schumann Lieder Competition with high recommendations. In 2020, she graduated with First Class Honours from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, studying under Yekaterina Lebedeva, where she is also now undertaking her Masters’s degree under Peter Tuite and Martino Tirimo.