JUNE CLARK: (pianist and composer)

After gaining her LRAM diploma at the age of eighteen as a student of piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London, June began a two-fold career. As a composer, having studied with Dorothy Howell and Alan Bush, several works for piano and song were published, and she won many prizes at Festivals all over England for her compositions. The ‘Toccata Brillante’ and the ‘Two Pieces for Piano’ were written whilst at the RAM and published then. As a pianist she studied with Cyril Smith, the renowned English concert pianist, and there followed an international career as a duo-pianist with Joan Ryall, with regular broadcasts for the BBC which were relayed worldwide on the Overseas Service, and appearances at concerts and major festivals. In 1967, against 41 competitors, the duo won the First Prize in the International Competition for Interpreters of Contemporary Music held by the Gaudeamus Foundation in Utrecht, playing works by Lutoslawski, Malipiero, Andriessen, Widjeweld and the Stravinsky Concerto for Two Solo Pianos. The duo was also awarded the prize for the best performance of a contemporary Dutch work by Louis Andriessen, and appeared on Dutch TV.

Recitals at the Wigmore Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, the Cheltenham Festival, Bayreuth Wagner Festival, a BBC broadcast to celebrate the 50th Birthday of Benjamin Britten, a BBC recording of Arthur Benjamin’s ‘Jamaican Rumba’ together with the percussionist James Blades, as a signature tune for a weekly Caribbean record programme, and the London revival of the Concerto for Two Pianos by the Master of the Queen’s Music, Sir Arthur Bliss, with the composer himself directing, and numerous BBC broadcasts, one memorable one which was shared with the Amadeus Quartet, when two of the members turned the pages for us!… these were but a few of the highlights of a long and exciting career.

Joan was killed in a tragic accident in 1990, thus ending the 33-year partnership, since when June now accompanies her son and plays the occasional solo and makes arrangements of songs for the counter-tenor voice. In 1995 she founded the group Pennine Parnassus which tours England and America giving concerts of piano duet/solo music, songs and poetry readings. In recent years June has revived her career in composing, and is a partner in the newly created Charlemagne Music.

(For critiques see Joan Ryall and June Clark in Concert (LP)
(For composition reviews see Products (piano), (voice), (choral)

June & Joan BBC recording 'Ivory Magic' 1961

June with Russian violinists Dana & Yuri Mazurkevitch St. Albans International Organ Festival 1985