New TEMPO Ambassadors

New TEMPO Ambassadors

New Ambassadors join the team

We’re thrilled to announce our newest TEMPO Ambassadors:

  • Yazz Ahmed – Trumpeter and composer (left)
  • Louise Alder – Soprano (right)

Both of whom are also MMF alumni, turned world renowned professional musicians. It is such an honour to welcome them both back into the MMF family and we look forward to working closely with them to support our young musicians.

A woman with shoulder-length brown hair wearing a sleeveless black dress, one of the new TEMPO Ambassadors, holds a brass trumpet and smiles slightly against a plain grey background.
A woman with long brown hair, wearing a sleeveless rust-coloured outfit, smiles whilst leaning against a large stone pillar outdoors, celebrating the success of the Ticket Bursary Scheme.

From Alumni to Ambassadors – two exciting new additions!

Yazz Ahmed

Trumpeter and composer

Hailed as one of the most influential trumpet players of her generation, Yazz is an Ivor Novello award winning composer making sweeping epics, rich with storytelling, which depict evocative ancient worlds and mythological muses.

Her career is studded with high profile collaborations and commissions for Blue Note Records, Adult Swim and WOMAD. Yazz garnered multiple rave reviews and awards with La Saboteuse (2017) and Polyhymnia (2019), featuring her own brand of cutting edge psychedelic-Arabic-jazz

Her fourth studio album, A Paradise in the Hold, the latest chapter in the unfolding narrative of her works, dives deeper into her dual heritage, coming up with a treasure trove that draws on traditional music and stories from her childhood. The album introduces the voice into her compositional palate, with lyrics reflecting her own musings, daydreams and reflections on Bahraini folklore.

Louise Alder

Soprano

Louise was born in London into a family of musicians and graduated with First Class Honours from the University of Edinburgh in 2010 where she studied singing with Patricia MacMahon. The same year she joined the Royal College of Music, graduating in 2013 from the International Opera School as the inaugural Kiri Te Kanawa scholar. She continues to study with Dinah Harris.

Louise won the inaugural British Young Soloists’ Competition at the Wigmore Hall in 2015, the 2014 Glyndebourne Festival Opera John Christie Award and the 2013 Glyndebourne on Tour Donald Albert Anderson Award. Also in 2013, Louise won second prize in Kathleen Ferrier Award and an INDEPENDENT OPERA fellowship and became a Classical Opera Associate Artist. Other prizes include first prize and a Miriam Licette Award in the 2012 Maggie Teyte French Song Competition, and numerous prizes at the Royal College of Music including the 2013 Tagore Gold Medal awarded every year to two graduating students for outstanding representation of the RCM. Louise is a 2013 Samling Scholar and a Britten-Pears young artist almuni.

Concert highlights include Mahler 2 with Sir Simon Rattle and London Symphony orchestra at the BBC Proms, The Messiah at the New York Philharmonic and Musikverein Vienna, Szenen aus Goethes Faust and Canteloube Chants d’Auvergne with The Concertgebouw and BRSO, the title role in Semele with John Eliot Gardiner at Teatro alla Scala Milan, Philharmonie de Paris and Palau de la Música, Barcelona, Beethoven 9 with Tokyo Philharmonic, Mozart arias with Daniel Harding and Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Salzburg Mozartwoche, and recitals at Wigmore Hall, Graz Musikverein, Wiener Konzerthaus, Foundation Privada Victoria de Los Angeles, Barcelona and BBC Proms with Joseph Middleton, Gary Matthewman and James Bailieu.