Oliver Coates attained the highest degree result in the Royal Academy of Music's history and went on to complete an MPhil with distinction at New College, Oxford. He studied the cello with Colin Carr.
He plays regularly with the London Sinfonietta (guest principal cello on 2008 summer tour); mira calix (warp records electronic artist); The House of Bedlam (BMIC Cutting Edge 2008); the Ossian Ensemble (2008 Junior Fellows in chamber music at the Royal College of Music); the Linden Trio (with Danny Driver); Sound Intermedia; the London Contemporary Orchestra (principal cello); and RADIUS (founding member).
Oliver is also artistic director of Sounds Underground, a new music organisation in London promoting collaborative projects with distinctive young composers. He performs concertos and recitals around the world and has given three solo tours of Japan. He was a winner of the 2006 Philip & Dorothy Green Award for Young Concert Artists, awarded by Making Music and at the 2007 Kirckman Concert Society Auditions. He has been awarded a Myra Hess Trust Award, and in both 2005 and 2004 he was given a 'Star Award' by the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. Whilst at the Royal Academy, he won the Sir John Barbirolli Memorial Prize, the Douglas Cameron Cello Prize, the May Mukle Cello Competition for his Elgar Concerto, the Montefiore Prize, the S & M Eyres Scholarship, the Louise Child Prize, a Foundation Award and a Vice-Principal's Special Award.
He has worked with Birtwistle, Adès, Gubaidulina, Harvey and Lindberg on their music and last summer he performed chamber music with Angela Hewitt. New cello music is being written for him by Emily Hall, Larry Goves, Elspeth Brooke and Gabriel Prokofiev.
Oliver splits his time equally amongst his passions: concerto work, this season particularly Elgar, Dvorak and Finzi; classic chamber music genres (duos, trios, quartets), this season all Sonatas by Beethoven, Brahms, Britten, Rachmaninoff; work in the field of contemporary classical music, building a wide repertoire in the avant-garde since 1950; fostering collaborative relationships with young composers from a variety of backgrounds; and experimental performance work, in conjunction with visual media, dance, live electronics, even total improvisation. In these last instances he has collaborated with ArrayUK (Darren Johnston), Flat-e and Sound Intermedia. He gave the premiere of a work for cello and choir by Matt Rogers in the Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Aldeburgh – a work commissioned by the Education Department of Aldeburgh Music and performed in conjunction with the children of Elm Tree Primary School, Lowestoft, which has one of the country's few remaining specialist units for deaf and hearing impaired children.
Danny Driver first attracted attention in the United Kingdom by winning both the Royal Over-Seas League Competition Keyboard Award and the BBC Radio 2 Young Musician of the Year Competition in 2001, also making his debut at Wigmore Hall during the same year. He subsequently went on to distinguish himself at the Honens (2003), Brant (2004), Scottish (2004), and Dudley (2005) International Piano Competitions, and to establish himself in Britain with acclaimed recitals at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, and Wigmore Hall in London, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, and Symphony Hall in Birmingham, also appearing at numerous universities, music festivals, and concert societies.
In 2007 Danny Driver made his debut CD for Hyperion Records' Romantic Piano Concerto Series, recording English composer York Bowen's 3rd and, for the first time, 4th Piano Concertos with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor Martyn Brabbins. Supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, this recording has been the subject of an extensive feature in International Piano Magazine and is available from November 2008. Danny has since continued recording for Hyperion with a complete survey of Bowen's Piano Sonatas (to be released next year), and will give the USA première of his 3rd Piano Concerto, more than a century after its composition, with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in 2009.
Danny Driver has also collaborated with orchestras such as the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Tel-Aviv Soloists, the American Symphony Orchestra, and the New Professionals, occasionally directing Mozart and Haydn concertos himself from the keyboard. He is a founding member of the Linden Trio with which he has performed in central Europe and Scandinavia, and has otherwise enjoyed collaborations with artists including the Linos Wind Quintet, clarinetist Sarah Williamson, violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky and 'cellist Oliver Coates, with whom he has performed regularly for almost a decade.
Trained by Alexander Kelly and Piers Lane whilst simultaneously gaining a first class degree at Cambridge University, Danny was subsequently the recipient of a Fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the recipient of an Associated Board Scholarship for postgraduate study with Irina Zaritskaya at the Royal College of Music in London, where he distinguished himself as a prizewinner and later as an Amerada Hess Junior Fellow. He completed his studies privately with renowned pedagogue Maria Curcio.