56th Wade Lecture 2026
Tuesday 6th October 2026
Tamsin Little CBE
No Pressure – It’s Only a Concerto:
Music, Travel and the People I Met Along the Way
After a career spanning more than 30 years giving concerts around the world, international violin soloist Tasmin Little stepped away from the concert platform in 2021 to devote her time to broadcasting, writing, teaching and mentoring. During her career, she performed in some of the world’s most prestigious venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre, Vienna’s Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Berlin’s Philharmonie, London’s South Bank Centre, Barbican Centre, Royal Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall. She released 45 albums to critical acclaim and won the Critics’ Choice Award at the Classic BRIT Awards in 2011 for her recording of Elgar’s Violin Concerto. She has received multiple other awards including BBC Music Magazine Personality of the Year Award and Chamber Music Award and, in 2023, she was awarded a CBE for Services to Music in the King’s Birthday Honours List.
Renowned for her gifts of communication and presentation, Tasmin’s 2008 ground-breaking project “The Naked Violin” drew a global audience of half a million in just weeks, resulting in a prestigious Gramophone Award for Audience Innovation. The London Southbank Show dedicated a television programme to the project, which garnered her a prestigious Gramophone Award for Audience Innovation. No stranger to television and radio, Tasmin made her first television documentary programme in 1997 titled “The Lost Child” which was broadcast on BBC2. In 2006, her week-long Delius Inspired Festival was broadcast live every night on BBC Radio 3. She has appeared on, and made, numerous other television and radio programmes, broadcasting regularly on BBC Radio 3. In 2021, her 3-week series, “Journeys with my Violin” was widely lauded and was ‘Pick of the Week’ in The Times newspaper. Tasmin is a regular contributor on Record Review and Building a Library and, in 2023, her series of 8 programmes titled “Backstage Pass” were programmed throughout the year including during the 2023 BBC Proms season. She has also written and presented four programmes for BBC Radio 3 Music Matters in early 2026.
She is President of the Yehudi Menuhin School, International Chair of the Violin at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London, as well as being an ambassador for many musical charities.