Nicholas Shardlow was born in 1986 and comes from Ashbourne, Derbyshire. He is in his second year reading Music at King’s College. He began playing the violin at the age of five and gave his first public performance aged twelve as soloist in Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’ concerto with the Newcastle Chamber Orchestra. In the same year, he was accepted at Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, where he studied for six years with Thomas Kemp, with whom he still learns. During this time he gave	Last year he was made the leader of the University Musical Society’s first symphony orchestra. He was also awarded an Instrumental Scholarship following university-wide auditions, and as a result has played in a piano quartet and is leader of a two successful string quartets, one of which was selected to perform in the scheme’s prestigious Showcase Concert. He has participated in numerous other productions and concerts; the University Opera Society production of The Rake’s Progress, the Handel Opera Society’s Tamerlano and led the orchestra in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of Offenbach’s ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’. He has also been involved in many smaller concerts, including those with the University Chamber Orchestra, the Dmitri ensemble and has been leader of the King’s College Music Society orchestra since joining the college in 2004.
many solo and chamber concerts, including a performance with orchestra of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. He has participated in many orchestral, solo and chamber-group courses including Pro Corda, the Bowdoin Summer School in Maine, USA, and twice in the International Musicians’ Seminar at Prussia Cove, Cornwall, most recently in the class of Andras Keller. He has also had masterclasses with Lewis Kaplan, Lorand Fenyves and Yair Kless, and performed with conductors such as Benjamin Zander, Ilan Volkov, Peter Stark and was the leader of the Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra under Yan-Pascal Tortelier (October 2003).