Inis Oírr Asano and Alexia Daphne Eleftheriadou formed viola/recorder and piano duo, Clio Duo at the beginning of 2023 at the Royal Academy of Music. Inis Oírr and Alexia are both members of the Young Artist Programme of The Worshipful Company of Musicians and perform recitals regularly around the UK alongside delivering music composition and creativity workshops in primary schools in London. The Duo reached the Final of the String Duo Prize at the Royal Academy of Music earlier this year and receive regular guidance from Martin Outram, Colin Stone and Yuko Inoue.
Inis Oírr Asano is a violist based in London. Previously working as a Junior Fellow in Chamber Music at the Royal Northern College of Music, she currently holds the position of Hans Keller Chamber Fellow at the Guildhall School with her quartet, Elmore Quartet. They were recently awarded Third Prize at the 2024 Reggio Emilia ‘Borciani’ International String Quartet Competition and are Kirckman Concert Society Artists.
Inis Oírr is the 2022 recipient of the Biddy Baxter and John Hosier Trust Award and a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied under the tutelage of Martin Outram, Yuko Inoue and Paul Silverthorne. She is a member of the Musician’s Company Young Artist Programme, a scheme which allows her to pursue delivering workshops in primary schools around London.
Alongside her love for chamber music, Inis Oírr regularly plays with the London Mozart Players, Glyndebourne Touring Orchestra, and pioneering unconducted string orchestra 12 Ensemble. She was a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra from 2019 – 2021, an experience which brought her on tour to over 10 different countries over the three years.
Alexia Daphne Eleftheriadou is an award winning Greek pianist in high demand as a soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. Her affinity with the music of J.S Bach has won her the Royal Academy of Music’s Harriet Cohen Bach Prize, as well as the RCS Bach Prize for Harpsichord, Piano and Organ. Additionally, she was the winner of the RCS concerto competition, culminating in a performance and recording of Beethoven’s 3rd piano concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
Performance highlights include solo appearances at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, the Greek National Opera recital hall in Athens as part of the GNO Piano Festival and recitals at the Thessaloniki Piano Festival. Alexia has also worked with such renowned artists as Leif Ove Andsnes, Dame Imogen Cooper, Yevgeny Sudbin, Pascal Roge, Grigory Gruzman, Steven Osborne, Piers Lane, and Roy Howat amongst others.
Her other competition successes include top prizes at the Ramsay Calder Debussy Prize for Keyboard, the Philip Halstead Prize for Piano, the Musicians’ Company Prince’s prize and the Edinburgh Concerto Competition Festival.
Collaborative playing and diverse creative projects are also an important part of Alexia’s musical identity. Regular collaborations with violist and recorder player Inis Oírr Asano saw the birth of Clio Duo, with which she enjoys an active concert schedule. She has also been involved in several interdisciplinary projects at the RCS Piano Festival including a project with modern ballet dancers, string orchestra and piano, performing Hindemith’s “The Four Temperaments”, as well as a recording of Saint Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals in collaboration with ballet dancers. In 2021 Alexia performed in the world premiere of Waulking Songs, a work by Elise Haller-Shannon for 6 pianos and electronics.
Alexia is a recent graduate of the Master of Arts course at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She studied in the class of Ian Fountain and was awarded a distinction and the diploma for exceptional performance in her final recital. She also holds a Bachelor of Music from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland where she studied with Jonathan Plowright, Aaron Shorr and Fali Pavri. She is a member of the Musicians’ Company Young Artists’ Programme and her studies were kindly supported by a RAM scholarship, the Munster Trust Derek Butler Award, Help Musicians, the Craxton Memorial Trust and Zetland Foundation.