Directory

Duo - Instrumental

Instrumentation

• Cecily Ward - Violin
• Jill Rose Morton - Piano

Repertoire

Our recital repertoire is aimed to create a musical journey for the listener - combining the familiar, with the less well known, with the brand new.

Sample Programmes

An American Road Trip

Copland Violin Sonata, John Adams Road Movies, Gershwin Preludes, Amy Beach Berceuse.

Salon Style

Debussy Sonata, Lili Boulanger Nocturne & Cortege, Saint-Saens Sonata

A Spring Thing

Boulanger D'un Matin de Printemps, Elena Ruehr the Hermit Thrush, Bridge Spring Song, Beethoven Spring Sonata

Additional works by Handel, LeClair, Mozart, Dvorak, Kreisler, Sarasate, Prokofiev.

We delight in creating programmes and welcome thematic suggestions.

Biography

Jill & Cecily began playing music together during the pandemic. Having found an immediate rapport and a shared love for discovering neglected repertoire, their online recitals for Jill's series "Encore" led to a new collaboration - the Peregrine Duo.

American violinist Cecily Ward was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and began studying violin and piano at the age of four. She was the founding first violinist of the San Francisco based Cypress String Quartet, a position she held for twenty years until the quartet disbanded in 2016. With the Cypress Cecily performed throughout the United States and Europe, and recorded 16 critically acclaimed albums including the complete Beethoven Quartets. Praised for her “lithe finesse,” “charm,” and “rhapsodic violin,” she has collaborated with esteemed musicians including cellist Gary Hoffman, pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher, pianist Walter Ponce, and cellist Zuill Bailey.

Now residing in London UK, she is on the violin faculty at the Royal Northern College of Music and can be found freelancing in chamber orchestras including the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and the Aurora Orchestra.

Cecily enjoys the use of two violins: the “Fleming” Stradivarius (1683), and a contemporary violin by American violin maker Anthony Lane, made for her in 2015.

Jill Morton enjoys a highly successful career as soloist, chamber musician and teacher. Her performances have taken her throughout Britain and across Europe and have received critical acclaim. Since making her professional debut, she has performed in all the major concert halls throughout Britain and has been heard on BBC Radio 2's Friday Night is Music Night as soloist with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

In addition to her performing career, Jill is a Principal Tutor for the Piano Teachers' Course UK, the country's leading professional course for piano pedagogy, and has a successful YouTube channel showcasing the syllabus repertoire on the ABRSM and Trinity graded music syllabuses. She has given masterclasses at universities and specialist music schools throughout Britain and is recognised as a competition adjudicator. She also teaches at the Perse School in Cambridge and is Pianist in Residence at the British Isles Music Festival. Jill is the founder of the monthly concert series "Encore! Concerts for all, big and small" bringing live music to preschool children and their carers in a relaxed environment.