Board of Directors

Julian Simmonds | Chairman

Julian Simmonds joined Citibank in 1972 and spent several years in Consumer Finance and Financial Control before moving to Foreign Exchange in 1977. He has traded most of the major currencies and was appointed chief dealer in 1984 and head of trading in 1988. He took on responsibility for sales in 1990 and further expanded this role to include FX options. In 1992 he was promoted to Managing Director for European FX and Treasury activities. This included responsibility for the liquidity and balance sheet of Citibank in Europe. In 1994 he took on the additional responsibility of becoming Chairman of Citibank's Global Foreign Exchange Committee. In April 1996, Julian also took on the responsibility for the Derivatives and Warrants business and in 1997, prior to its transfer to Salomon Smith Barney, the Fixed Income business. Also in 1998, Julian was made Global Head of Citibank's Corporate Finance businesses. He retired in August 2001. At that time Julian was an Executive Vice President at Citibank NA and had business responsibility for Citibank's Trading, Sales and Corporate Finance activities for the OECD world. 

Julian has various directorships as well as being a Trustee of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and is involved with the Royal College of Music in bringing talented Russian musicians to study in London.

 

 

Shaun Bailey

Shaun Bailey is a co-founder and the Chief Executive Officer of My Generation, a charity which aims to break the cycle of poverty, crime and ill-health in struggling communities through people-centred sustainable change. He is the author of No-Man's Land, a 63 page pamphlet analysing the social crisis afflicting our inner-cities, which draws on case studies and personal experiences from Ladbroke Grove/West London. Published by the Centre for Policy Studies, excerpts were published in the Sunday Times, and Daily Mail and he has been a regular contributor to national press writing for papers such as the Sun, the Telegraph, the Mail and Standard. He has made numerous television appearances on terrestrial as well as satellite television programmes such as BBC news, Sky News, ITV news, News Night and The London Program (No Place like Home). He also been a copresenter for a BBC Radio 4 documentary called Street Solutions and made numerous radio appearances with Radio 5 Live, LBC and Radio 4. Shaun has also been a columnist for Youth Work Now as well as often appearing in articles in the Guardian and the programmes Moral Maze and The Today Programme.

Shaun grew up in the North Kensington area. He attended Oxford Gardens Primary School and then moved on to Henry Compton Secondary School. Shaun graduated in Computer Aided Technology from South Bank University and worked as a security guard in Wembley and Leicester SquareÍs Trocadero to put himself through university.

Shaun became a dedicated gymnast with the Childs Hill Gymnastic Club which he attended for over twenty years. He won many competitions both nationally and internationally. He was also a member of the army cadet force for fourteen years.

Shaun has been a youth worker for 18 years including 6 years in the drugs field at a variety of youth clubs. One of the key influences in his life was Barran Hulme, who served as his mentor when Shaun entered the youth work field; he encouraged Shaun to push his youth work beyond entertainment and develop something that young people could benefit from in the long-term.

 

 

Colin Lawson

Colin Lawson is Director of the Royal College of Music, London. He read music at Oxford and was subsequently awarded a Masters degree at Birmingham University for his work on the eighteenth-century clarinet. He taught at Aberdeen, Sheffield and London Universities before moving to Thames Valley University as Pro Vice-Chancellor (2001-5). 

Colin has an international profile as a period clarinettist and has played principal in most of Britain's leading period orchestras, notably The Hanover Band, The English Concert and the London Classical Players, with whom he has recorded extensively and toured world-wide. Described recently as 'a brilliant, absolutely world-class player' (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung) and ‘the doyen of period clarinettists' (BBC Music Magazine), he has appeared as soloist in many international venues, including London's major concert halls and New York's Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. His discography comprises concertos by Fasch, Hook, Mahon, Mozart, Spohr, Telemann, Vivaldi and Weber, as well as a considerable variety of chamber music. Among his most recent recording is a highly-acclaimed disc of basset horn trios by Mozart and Stadler, a recital disc entitled ‘100 Years of the Simple-System Clarinet' and a recording of Sonatas by Lefèvre in the original scoring for C clarinet and cello.

Colin has published widely, especially for Cambridge University Press. He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet and author of Cambridge Handbooks to Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and Brahms's Clarinet Quintet. He is co-editor of a series of Cambridge Handbooks to the Historical Performance of Music, for which he has co-authored an introductory volume (1999) and written a book on the early clarinet (2000). He is also editor of the recent Cambridge Companion to the Orchestra (2003) and co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of Musical Performance.

Itzhak Rashkovsky | Artistic Director

Itzhak Rashkovsky, internationally renowned Russian-Israeli violinist and pedagogue, was awarded a Master's Degree by the Samuel Rubin Israeli Academy of Music, Tel Aviv, where he studied with Professor Yair Kless. He has appeared as a soloist and chamber music player in many countries.

As Professor of Violin at the Royal College of Music, London, Itzhak has come to be one of the leading and most sought-after teachers in the UK. His students, who come from all over the world to study with him, have been winners of many national and international competitions. He has given masterclasses worldwide and has been juror of numerous international competitions, notably Vice Chairman of the jury of the 12th Henryk Wieniawski, Poland and Sion Valais, Switzerland, Hannover, Germany, Lipizer, Italy and Yampolsky, Russia, International Violin Competitions.

Itzhak is one of the founders and Music Director of Keshet Eilon Violin Mastercourse, Israel, an international summer programme for exceptionally talented young violinists, located in Kibbutz Eilon, as well as Artistic Director of the LMM Awards. His articles and editions of violin pieces were published by The Strad magazine. In 1998, in recognition of his outstanding services to music, Itzhak Rashkovsky was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal College of Music by The Prince of Wales. He plays an 1831 J.F. Pressenda violin, generously loaned from the Elderberry Foundation.

Victoria Sharp | Chief Executive

Victoria Sharp was educated in the US at Phillips Academy, Andover and at Wesleyan University in Connecticut where she gained a BA in the History of Art. In 1982, she joined the Mergers and Acquisitions department of Goldman Sachs moving with them in 1984 to London initially to help establish the Capital Markets Group and ultimately working in Corporate Finance. In 1987, she joined Russell Reynolds Associates, one of the leading international executive search firms.

In 1991, Victoria returned to post-graduate studies in 18th century British Art at the Courtauld Institute, subsequently joining the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. There she worked with John Ingamells, formerly the Director of the Wallace Collection, collaborating on two books: A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers to Italy, 1701-1800 and Allan Ramsay: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, both published by Yale University Press.

Victoria is currently a Trustee of the Foundling Museum and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and is on the Council of the Royal College of Music.

Dennis, Lord Stevenson of Coddenham CBE

Lord Stevenson spent his first 20 years post-university as a serial entrepreneur; he subsequently spent 15 years chairing large companies, including Pearson plc, GPA plc and HBOS plc. He has now reverted to his entrepreneurial roots mainly through a venture capital company, Loudwater Investment Partners.

Lord Stevenson is a Non Executive Director of The Western Union Company and The Economist.  He is Chairman of Aldeburgh Music, a Director of Glyndebourne Productions, Chancellor of the University of the Arts London and on the Advisory Board for Rare, a recruitment organisation which focuses on promoting diversity. He was Chairman of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery in the 90s and has recently stood down after eight years as Chairman of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. In 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship at the Royal Academy of Music.

 

 

Timothy Walker

Timothy Walker was appointed Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in November 2002 and commenced work with the Orchestra in March 2003.

He was formerly the founder and CEO of World Orchestras, a company established to present an annual International Orchestras Season at the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Concert Hall and prior to that General Manager of the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) for ten years, between 1989 and 1999. Prior to taking on the head position at the ACO he was Marketing and Development Manager for two years and prior to that Concert Manager of the Canberra School of Music at the Australian National University from 1981 to 1987.

He has served a six year term on the Board of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) where he served as Secretary, Treasurer, member of the Executive Committee, Chair of the Development Committee and Chair of the Organising Committee of the 15th International Congress of ISPA held at the Sydney Opera House in 2001. 

He was an inaugural member of the Australian International Cultural Council, a director of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and a member of the External Advisory Board of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He has also been Deputy Chair of the Music Council of Australia for six years and served on the Board of the Orchestral Network of Australia.  He is currently Chair of the Association of British Orchestras.