Phil Hopkins & John Lenehan

Phil Hopkins
Phil was a music scholar at King’s School Canterbury, graduated from Oxford University and studied chromatic harmonica with the great classical harmonica player, Tommy Reilly.

Since then, Phil has played harmonica for the BBC Concert Orchestra, London Sinfonietta at St John Smith’s Square, and for West End musicals such as The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (Savoy Theatre), Sir Tim Rice’s From Here To Eternity (Shaftesbury Theatre), the London premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, and Sir Trevor Nunn’s Gone With The Wind (New London Theatre).

Phil has played percussion and/or harmonica for more than 140 London theatre productions spanning over 4500 performances across the West End, Royal National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe and Royal Shakespeare Company. Phil has toured the USA many times with various artists including performances at Carnegie Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center and Symphony Hall, Boston and has performed for many TV and CD recordings.

Phil has recently released an album, Harmonica Paradiso, available online from Bandcamp.

John Lenehan
In a career of unusual diversity, with an extensive discography of more than 80 albums of music ranging from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, John Lenehan has performed in concerts worldwide and his breadth of repertoire has led to his popularity on Spotify and Apple music with over a million monthly listeners globally. Praised by the New York Times for his “great flair and virtuosity” and the (London) Times – “a masterly recital”, John Lenehan has also collaborated with some of the leading instrumentalists of our time.

As soloist he has appeared with LSO, RPO and LPO amongst many other orchestras and his recordings include piano recitals and concertos as well as duo sonatas, chamber music and jazz. A four-disc survey of John Ireland’s piano music received great critical acclaim including a Gramophone award, and other solo recordings include three discs for Sony Classical of minimalist piano works and a disc of Erik Satie (for Classic FM). Most recently he has recorded albums with the Rossetti Ensemble as well as concertos by Mozart (K.467) and Beethoven (Emperor) with the National Symphony Orchestra.

John Lenehan also composes, with works published by Faber, Novello, and Schotts. His Fantasy on Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker has been recorded by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and his 2023 piano concerto “The Legend of Maritime Silk Road” (commissioned by the Silk Road International Arts Centre and premiered in Beijing) has been performed in China several times since then. He has written and arranged for a long list of soloists and orchestras including Lang Lang, Nigel Kennedy, Yuja Wang, Tasmin Little, Nicola Benedetti and the BBC Concert Orchestra, RPO and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. In 2021 his work was heard in the Bastille Day celebrations in Paris (Orchestre de Paris) and the last night of the proms (BBCSO). A collaboration during lockdown with Dame Joanna Lumley and the Philharmonia created a reading of “The Night before Xmas” with incidental music. His recent reworking of Malcolm Arnold’s concerto for 2 pianos (3 hands) as a piece for one soloist was premiered by him in 2025 at the Malcolm Arnold festival. John’s interest in the combination of music and film has been long-standing. As well as performing on several more recent soundtracks (such as Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings) he has, as director of “Sounds for Silents” written and arranged more than 20 scores for silent films, and continues to present film and music programmes, reviving the art of the improvising pianist – the most recent being a tribute to the roaring twenties.