the
wild
stage
biographies
Dean Austin
Dean trained at the University of Hull, gaining a BMus(Hons).
As Musical Director he has worked in the West End, national & international tours, regional and fringe theatre, TV, drama schools and numerous pantomimes and workshops of new musicals, working with composers from here and abroad. He is increasingly in demand as a pianist/MD for cabaret.
Ben Chappell
Ben’s career began as a member of the McCapra String Quartet, who gave their debut at London's Southbank Centre. They recorded for the Decca and Chandos labels and appeared on TV and Radio 3. The quartet met while studying at the Guildhall School of Music, where Ben won the Bach Toussaint Prize and the Chamber Music Prize. His career playing for West End shows began when he joined the orchestra for Les Miserables at the Palace Theatre. He also became a regular performer at Sadler’s Wells Theatre as principal cellist of the Rambert Dance Company.
Around this time his fascination with tango was inspired by tours with the “Oxford Concert Party”, a band that juxtaposed early Western classical music with tangos from Argentina and Cuba. He was also invited to work with the larger symphony orchestras; the Philharmonia, the BBC Symphony and the Royal Philharmonic. He was invited to join the London Mozart Players and has been playing with the Britten Sinfonia and the Aurora Orchestra from their earliest beginnings.
Touring the concert halls of the world, he has performed at all the major venues, including the O2 in London, the Lincoln Centre in New York, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the NCPA in Beijing and the Musikverein in Vienna. Most recently he performed with José Carreras in Al Ula in Saudi Arabia, a World Heritage site with an extraordinary new concert hall completely faced with mirrors to reflect the surrounding desert.
Ben’s playing on Peter Gregson’s “Bach Recomposed” album features on the soundtrack of Bridgerton. As a session musician he has recorded for many celebrated artists; Robbie Williams, Adele, and Billie Eilish to name but a few, and his film credits include the Harry Potter Film franchise, the latest Bond films and many Hans Zimmer scores such as Batman. These sessions usually take place at studios like Abbey Road but during lockdown he has made recordings from home including a live broadcast for Radio 4 of a duet written for Ben and his wife, Beatrix.
Beatrix Lovejoy
Canadian-born violinist, Beatrix Lovejoy, started performing at the age of 5. Her musical studies took her first to Cleveland, USA, where she won the Concerto Competition with Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 1 and then to Berlin, where she completed her "Solist mit Konzertexamen" degree after winning the Hanns Eisler Hochschule Concerto Competition with the Sibelius Concerto.
Since moving to London, she has performed in countless concerts at the Barbican, Royal Festival Hall and Wigmore Hall under the batons of Gergiev, Ashkenazy, Masur, Gardiner and Salonen, to name but a few. Internationally, she has played at the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, the Wiener Musikverein, the Philharmonie and Schauspielhaus in Berlin, the Philharmonie in Cologne and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall among many others. She has always been drawn to Piazzolla’s music and in 2008/9 was a featured artist performing ‘Autumn’ from his ‘4 Seasons of Buenos Aires’ with the Britten Sinfonia on a floating stage at Latitude Festival and at a concert in Poznan, Poland, in aid of Greenpeace.
As a recording artist, Beatrix has featured on hundreds of soundtracks, including the scores for the Harry Potter films, The Da Vinci Code, News of the World, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Secret Garden, Wonder Woman, Blood Diamond and the recent Star Wars films. Her TV soundtrack credits include Downton Abbey, Mr. Selfridge, Doctor Who, Call the Midwife, Inside No. 9 and A Discovery of Witches, among others. She has accompanied Kylie Minogue, Will Young, Shirley Bassey, Celine Dion, Ed Sheeran, U2, Coldplay, Robbie Williams, Ellie Goulding, Annie Lennox, Snow Patrol, Skunk Anansie and k.d. lang, among many others, both in recordings and live concerts.
Beatrix is passionate about collaborating in small ensembles; she has co-led the St Paul’s Quartet for the last decade, recently founded the St Paul’s Trio with her husband, Ben Chappell and Pianist/MD Michael Reed and has regularly featured in chamber performances with musicians from both the Aurora Orchestra and Britten Sinfonia. Upcoming engagements include concerts at the 2021 BBC Proms and a tour to the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, London’s Southbank Centre, the Paris Philharmonie and Tokyo Opera City with music by Steve Reich.
Beatrix plays on an Antonio Gragnani violin made in Livorno, Italy, in 1789, thanks to the generous aid of The Stradivari Trust.
William Ludwig
William Ludwig was born in Wuppertal, Germany, and completed his acting and singing studies in Germany and London. His debut on the musical stage was in the revue It's Showtime in Wuppertal. William played the lead in a European tour of the pop musical Hot Stuff before returning to London to play an alien in the new musical Into Thin Air at the Charing Cross Theatre. He also appeared as Jack the Ripper (Jermyn Street Theatre) and Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun at the Union Theatre. He then created the part of Damon Runyon in Kampf des Jahrhunderts at the Tribüne Theatre in Berlin and performed with Sara Kestelman in Coco at the Lilian Baylis Theatre/Sadler's Wells.
In theatre his credits include Loevborg in Hedda Gabler (Greenwich), DeLevis in Loyalties (Finborough Theatre), and a site-specific production of dreamthinkspeak's In The Beginning Was The End at Somerset House. In 2018 he played Colonel Pickering in a major new production of My Fair Lady at the Luisenburg Festival in Germany and in 2020 he performed in a new production of Fidelio at the Royal Opera House with Lise Davidsen and Jonas Kaufmann and conducted by Pappano.
William's concert and cabaret projects have taken him to prestigious venues throughout Europe, including the Gewandhaus in Leipzig and the Munich Philharmonie. Together with West End MD Dean Austin he toured Germany with a highly-acclaimed evening of the songs of Kurt Weill, Youkali. London's Vortex hosted an evening of Berlin Cabaret Songs and Ports Of Call, a programme of German and French cabaret songs, took him to the Grec Festival in Barcelona, a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Festival and London's Drill Hall. William also appeared together with Broadway singer Anne Kerry Ford at New York's Cafe Sabarsky, with Karen Kohler at The Cutting Room and Don't Tell Mama NYC and with Brett Kahr for an evening of Brett's cabaret songs in London. In 2012 William, together with MD Vanessa Williams, reached the finals of the Oltner Kabarett-Tage, Switzerland's largest cabaret festival and competition. William and Dean have performed at London's Crazy Coqs, The Pheasantry and The American Bar at the London Coliseum and with the premiere of The Last Drink at the Ruhrfestival in Germany. He has recorded German cabaret songs with the Pasadena Roof Orchestra. In 2019 William and Dean performed Weimar Cabaret Songs at a charity concert for Bono and Chris Martin and also a series of concerts at the Barbican Art Gallery in London as part of the exhibition Into The Night - The Art of Cabaret.
In film, his credits include Culture Shock (Steve Balderson), Queen And Country (Andrew Faure), Brothers of War (Mike Carter) and The Honourable Rebel (Mike Fraser). 2017 saw the release of Another Mother's Son, starring John Hannah. He has appeared on television in The Spy Next Door (Sky), The Christmas Truce (BBC) and Escape From Sobibor (PBS). William played a lead in the BAFTA-winning short film Dancing In The Ashes, Kaiser Wilhelm in a controversial music video for BBC WW1 Uncut and Louis XIV in a prequel for TV series The Strain for Fox.