The Sue Aston Ensemble | The Band

Sue Aston: Composer and professional violinist Sue Aston has appeared on classical recordings, radio and television, both nationally and internationally, and worked with eminent musicians such as Rattle, Kennedy, Donohoe, Yehudi Menuhin, Sir Charles Groves, Esa Pekka Salonen, Gordon Giltrap and Chris De Burgh. She has also supported the folk legends Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick. The BBC1 ‘Heaven and Earth Show’ interviewed Sue about her composition work on one of their episodes about the Cornish landscape.
Sue’s solo videos have been shown on Classic FM TV and are currently being broadcast daily on the Sky classical music channel ‘OMusic’. ‘The Home Coming’ is one of Sue’s most popular pieces, and has been viewed over 960,000 times on YouTube. As a teacher, she has hosted violin master classes, which have been attended by students from around the world. Sue has released three solo CDs and a DVD, which have been described as 'Celtic music for the classically appreciative’ by Cornish World Editor Nigel Pengelly. These are available from Amazon.co.uk and directly from www.sueaston.com ‘The Forbidden City’ is an original work by Sue, and was commissioned by a youth theatre group in London. This piece was composed for unaccompanied solo violin, and has been arranged for this performance with piano accompaniment. www.sueaston.com www.myspace.com/sueaston
Vocals : Maria Heseltine graduated from De Montfort University, Leicester, with an Honours Degree in Fine Art. She then worked at the Verrochio Centre of Art in Casole d'Elsa, Italy, where she saw a local girl give a recital of Puccini arias and felt compelled to learn the craft as a result. After returning to England Maria embarked on some interesting vocations including working for The Guardian newspaper, modelling for Eduardo Paolozzi and performing in a Peter Greenaway installation at the Hayward Gallery.
Meanwhile, she took singing lessons with Peter Medhurst, later applying to Trinity College of Music where she recently completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Vocal Performance as well as a Licentiate (LTCL) to support her work as a singing teacher.

While at Trinity Maria studied under the tutelage of Teresa Cahill and Robert Aldwinkle. Her roles studied on the Opera Scenes course included Dryad in Ariadne by Strauss, 3rd Nymph in Rusalka by Dvorak, Laura in Iolanthe by Tchaikovsky, Annio in La Clemency de Tito and Dorabella in Così Fan Tutti, both by Mozart. She also sang the part of Hansel in The Runaway Opera's production of Hansel and Gretel, by Humperdinck.

Since moving to Cornwall Maria has enjoyed working with composer Douglas Cook, performing with the Aston String Quartet and singing film soundtracks for artist Andrew Lanyon. Maria teaches Music, Art and Design Technology as supply at Mounts Bay School, and the number of her private singing and piano pupils is growing steadily. Maria lives in Penzance with her husband and two children.