Lunchtime Recital - Karena Tam (double bass) and Philip Howard (piano)

Programme Valse Miniature – Serge Koussevitzky

Edelweiss from The Sound of Music – Richard Rodgers

From the Start – Laufey

Kicho – Astor Piazzolla

Fly Me to the Moon – Bart Howard

Cello Suite No. 3: Bourrée I & II – J.S. Bach

Puttin' on the Ritz – Irving Berlin

Elegy No. 1 in D Major – Giovanni Bottesini

Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso – Ennio Morricone

Epilogue from La La Land – Justin Hurwitz

Biographies

Karena Tam is a double bassist and composer emerging as a solo performer. Her playing and creativity have built a close relationship between performance, improvisation, and composition. As a soloist, Karena has appeared in concerto and recital settings across Asia and Europe. She has performed Koussevitzky's Concerto Op. 3 with Roedean School Symphony Orchestra in 2023 and made her solo debut in the Strings Rhapsodia concert in Macau in 2024, performing Koussevitzky's Concerto as well as Bottesini's Grand duo concertante with violin and piano. Recent performances include a CoKee Morning Recital for Age UK and performances of Bottesini's Concerto No. 2 with Buxted Symphony Orchestra in 2025 and Burgess Hill Symphony Orchestra this year.

Improvisation lies at the heart of Karena's creative practice, serving as a natural bridge between performance and composition. At her CoKee Morning Recital, she improvised dialogue with the pianist, and made arrangement for double bass and piano in Fly Me To The Moon and Puttin’ On The Ritz.

As a composer, she was awarded First Prize for her orchestral work The Sneak Attack at the Hastings Musical Festival in 2023. Recent compositions include Dance Fight for Double Bass Quartet and My Tulips for voice and piano. Her interest in music for visual media has led her to arrange and adapt repertoire for double bass and short animated films, expanding the instrument's presence in contemporary multimedia contexts.

Karena is currently a third-year undergraduate at the Royal Academy of Music, supported by an Entrance Scholarship, where she studies with Thomas Goodman, Graham Mitchell, and Dominic Seldis.

Philip Howard studied composition and piano at the Royal Academy of Music where his teachers were Michael Finnissy and Graeme Humphrey. He won joint First Prize in the BBC Young Composer of the Year at the age of 15, as the youngest finalist, and later as a pianist was awarded First Prize at the International Gaudeamus Interpreters’ Competition in the Netherlands, becoming the first British winner in 35 years. He recently performed as soloist with the London Sinfonietta in a sold-out Queen Elizabeth Hall in their "Xenakis: Architect in Sound" festival.

Presented in association with the Royal Academy of Music.