The Finely Tuned Musician team consist of three of Europe’s most celebrated string performers and pedagogues.
Daly
Diane is currently Head of Strings at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, a qualified Dalcroze Eurhythmics teacher and recently became Europe’s first accredited string playing Body-Mapper.
Diane is in demand as a chamber musician, director and improvisor at home and abroad. She enjoys devising her own work, and has been invited to perform world premieres of works by leading Irish composers including Sam Perkins, Linda Buckley and Deirdre Gribbin. In other genres she has performed and recorded alongside many of the biggest names in rock and leads her own gypsy jazz trio.
Passionate about education, her teaching focus is on the development of the whole musician as a creative artist, fostering joy-filled music making, autonomy and self-expression.
In 2022, her doctoral research was awarded the inaugural Aloys Fleischmann prize for outstanding practice based research, developing the concepts of embodiment, presence, creativity and connection in string playing.
Ásdís Valdimarsdóttir comes from Reykjavik, Iceland, and is now based in Amsterdam. She is on the faculty of the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague for viola and chamber music and is currently the only violist in Europe who is Licensed to teach Body Mapping.
Her musical education took her at a young age to the Juilliard School in New York where her main teachers were Paul Doktor, Felix Galimir and the Juilliard Quartet. She then continued her studies in Germany with Nobuko Imai. Ásdís was a founding member of The Miami String Quartet, with whom she won the first prize of the Fischoff Competition. She returned to Europe and became the principal viola of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen for several years before joining The Chilingirian String Quartet in London, with whom she travelled internationally and made several acclaimed recordings. When her family grew she relocated to The Netherlands, where she enjoys a mix of chamber music, solo work and teaching with occasional visits with orchestras such as The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, The Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Concertgebouw.
Recently she has made several recordings for the Dutch label Zefir Records; a double CD titled ‘The Voice of the Viola in times of oppression’ with the pianist Marcel Worms; the complete String Trios by Beethoven for his 250th birthday with the Brunsvik String Trio and a CD called ‘Stolen Schubert’, with her own arrangements. In 2024 her arrangement of Telemann’s Gamba Fantasies for viola was published by the French publisher Billaudot, and a recording followed for the Spanish label HR Records. Ásdís has previously been on the faculty of The Royal College and the Trinity Laban in London and at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and has been invited to music festivals around the world, including The Kuhmo Festival, Marlboro Music, Prussia Cove and many more. She teaches every summer at The HIMA festival in Iceland and at the International Masterclasses in Cividale Del Friuli, Italy.
Alison Wells is on the faculty of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and is the only cellist in Europe Licensed in Body Mapping.
She has had a varied career as a chamber musician that has taken her throughout Europe, North America, Asia, and to East Africa. As a founding member of the Pirasti Trio, her performances were described as “absolutely incandescent” (The Strad) and “eloquent, unfailingly stylish” (Gramophone), and recordings on ASV were recommended
by BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, International Record Review, and Fanfare. She has broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM, Dutch National Radio, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, North German Radio, and WQXR in New York. She was also featured in a British Channel 4 TV documentary on the Chamber Music of Penderecki, working alongside the composer.
She studied at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music studying with Ralph Kirshbaum and David Strange, and holds a doctorate from Yale University, where she studied with Aldo Parisot as a Harkness Fellow. Upon graduation she joined the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle. The following year she gave her London recital debut at the South Bank, sponsored by the Maisie Lewis Young Artists’ Trust and was elected Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.
Alison is a sought-after cello teacher who has given masterclasses worldwide. She is a former faculty member of the Peabody Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music in the USA, and of Trinity Laban, the Purcell School, and Wells Cathedral School in the UK. Regular US summer festivals included the Heifetz Institute, Encore School for Strings, Madeline Island, ARIA. She now teaches every summer at Green Mountain Festival in the USA, and Encore Music Projects in the UK.
The Finely Tuned Musician 