In order to deliver a personalised, responsive service and to improve the site, we remember and store information about how you use it. This is done using simple text files called cookies which sit on your computer. These cookies are completely safe and secure and will never contain any sensitive information. They are used only by The Sampler or the trusted partners we work with.
Violinist Mandhira de Saram is a founding member and leader of the Ligeti Quartet, who specialise in contemporary and experimental music. The quartet has residencies at Sheffield University, Goldsmiths University of London, and Cambridge University, which involves numerous workshops with emerging composers and performers and outreach work.
She is also a busy soloist, chamber musician, improviser, and collaborator, and works regularly with musicians including Steve Beresford (piano, objects and electronics), Benoît Delbecq (prepared piano), TableMusic, Riot Ensemble, Chineke!, Wadada Leo Smith, Laura Jurd, Alex Ward, Shabaka Hutching, Ethan Iverson, and Trish Clowes.
International solo and chamber music tours have taken her around Europe, as well as the USA, India, China and her country of origin, Sri Lanka. She has performed at prestigious venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre, Southbank Centre and St Johns Smith Square in London, and Carnegie Hall in New York. She has broadcast on BBC Radio 3, featuring on programmes such as In Tune, Jazz on 3, Hear and Now, and Late Junction.
Mandhira is currently a mentor for the Young Music Leadership Programme in association with the Royal Academy of Music and Kuumba Youth Music. She teaches at home and regularly leads performance workshops and masterclasses.
A Leverhulme Scholar at the Junior Royal Academy of Music, she went on to study Music at Worcester College, University of Oxford. Her violin teachers have included Igor Petrushevsky, Howard Davis and Levon Chilingirian, and she currently plays a 1735 Sanctus Seraphin violin kindly loaned to her by Derek Clements-Croome.
