Guy Button has played the violin since the age of 6. He attended the Purcell School of Music from the age of eleven, where he studied with Maciej Rakowski and Erik Houston. He led the school symphony orchestra and won several prizes for chamber music which led to performances at the Wigmore Hall. Guy made his concerto debut with the Solent Symphony Orchestra, aged 17, performing the Mendelssohn concerto as a prize for his performances in the Portsmouth Music festival. He has also achieved success in the Wessex String Prize, North London, Three Rivers and Lincoln Haydn festivals. Guy read music at Robinson College, Cambridge, studying the violin with Yossi Zivoni. He was a Cambridge University Instrumental Award holder and principal second violin of the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra (CUCO). For the academic year 2007-8, Guy was president of Cambridge University Music Club. He was lucky enough to receive a BBC Fame Academy Bursary which enabled him to fund his degree studies. The violin which he plays was also bought as a result of this prize and is by Hippollyte Silvestre, 1860s. Since graduating in 2009, Guy has been performing widely, and has become a member of the London Chamber Players, a chamber orchestra of young virtuoso string players with a year-round home season in London’s St. Giles-in-the-Fields. Guy will be returning to Cambridge, not for the first time, in March 2012 to perform the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Cambridge Graduate Orchestra, at West Road Concert Hall. Photograph by Marie Dullaghan