Described by Gramophone as ‘hugely talented’ and by BBC Music as playing ‘with exceptional poise’, Sophie Yates began her early musical education at Chetham’s School of Music and progressed to the Royal College of Music and the Sweelinck Academie at the Conservatorium of Amsterdam. Having won the international Erwin Bodky competition at the Boston Early Music Festival, she toured and broadcast throughout the eastern states of America, and now performs regularly around Europe, the United States and Japan, having also visited Morocco, Syria and Western Australia. She has given recitals at the Wigmore Hall, London, and at the international festivals of Flanders, Biella, Utrecht, York and Mafra, as well as the Quincena Musical in San Sebastián and the South Bank and Lufthansa festivals in London. A passionate performer on original instruments, she plays regularly at the Royal College of Music Museum, Benton Fletcher Collection at Fenton House, Russell Collection in Edinburgh and Cobbe Collection at Hatchland’s Park, and has devised programmes in such historical settings as the Rubenshuis in Antwerp, Ingatestone Hall in Essex (former refuge of William Byrd), Bishop’s Palace in Basel, Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen and National Portrait Gallery in London. As an expert in early English keyboard music she has performed on most of the playable virginals surviving in Britain. Sophie Yates has taught and examined at the Royal College of Music, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Birmingham Conservatoire, University of Western Australia, Radley College, and King’s School, Canterbury. She also gives master-classes and coaches professional pianists in period performance practice. As a recording artist, she has worked with the BBC on a wide range of projects, and has made a series of solo CDs for Chandos, many of which have won international awards.