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Nathan Williamson
Author Biography:
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Neil Georgeson is a pianist, writer, composer and director from the Shetland Islands. He appears regularly and widely as a solo pianist and chamber musician, and has performed as a soloist all over the world, and at UK venues such as King's Place, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Barbican, St David's Hall in Cardiff, the Colston Hall in Bristol and the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh, as well as more unconventional venues like the Glastonbury Festival and the Village Underground, and at London contemporary music nights Kammerklang and Nonclassical. He has appeared at festivals such as 'Soundings' at the Austrian Cultural Forum, the York Late Music Festival, Sounds New in England and France, and the Johnsmas Foy in Shetland, for which he was commissioned as a composer. He has worked with a great many illustrious composers on their music such as Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Martin Bresnick, Diana Burrell, Bent Sørensen and Jonathan Harvey. ​ Neil has performed with the Kammerklang Ensemble, the Arcomis Ensemble, the Continuum Ensemble, the Riot Ensemble and the London Contemporary Orchestra. He also performs in a piano duo with James Young, giving their London debut at The Forge in Camden in 2014 for the Park Lane Group. He enjoyed a prize-winning academic career on scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Patsy Toh, Joanna Macgregor and Ian Fountain. He completed a Masters degree with a highly-acclaimed thesis on the role of the performer in classical music, which became the exemplar dissertation for Masters students, then became a Fellow at the Academy working with composers on new music. Also having a theatre background, Neil has written three opera libretti: KETTLEHEAD for Darren Bloom, Angela, an inverted love story for Corin Buckeridge, and Njogel for James Young, with whom he also created the improvised music-theatre show Event001. He has directed, produced and written music and text for "Piano Theatre", a cross-disciplinary tour of Taiwan with Veronica Yen. Neil is Artistic Director of new-music group the Ossian Ensemble, for whom he plays the piano as well as curating concerts, directing new chamber opera and creating site-specific promenade events incorporating theatrical elements and multimedia. ​ Neil joined Piano Circus in 2015.
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Leo Nicholson studied at the Purcell School, the Junior Royal Northern College of Music, and with Douglas Finch and the late Yonty Solomon at Trinity Laban. He was a consistent prize-winner at Trinity, winning both the John Longmire Beethoven Competition and the Alfred Kitchen Chopin Competition, and graduated with First Class Honours, the TCM Silver Medal (Keyboard) and a Silver Medal awarded by the Worshipful Company of Musicians. He continues to work as a soloist and performs with the Birmingham based contemporary group Thumb. Leo is also a much sought-after accompanist, and has returned to Trinity as a faculty member, primarily accompanying singers and wind players. Five years ago he formed a flute and piano duo with Rosanna Ter-Berg, and their critically acclaimed Purcell Room début (under the auspices of the Park Lane Group) in January 2012 led to performances at the Wigmore Hall and the Bridgewater Hall. More recently Leo started working with saxophonist Anthony Brown, who he met through the Worshipful Company of Musicians, and they have since played together all over the country. ​ Leo has a fondness for Musical Theatre, and has worked on everything from small fringe shows (Belle Canto’s Opera Hour, and the Crowd (wept) and Hamlet! The Musical) to large commercial productions (Jekyll & Hyde UK Tour). ​ Leo joined Piano Circus in 2015.
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Pianist and composer Nathan Williamson studied with Joan Havill, Malcolm Singer, Martin Bresnick, Ezra Laderman, Robert Saxton and Joan Panetti at the Guildhall School, Oxford University and Yale University, where he also held a prestigious teaching fellowship. Nathan is involved in a wide range of concert activities, including solo recitals both at home and abroad, and concerto and chamber music collaborations with a wide range of artists, including James Gilchrist, Mariko Brown and Julian Jacobson, NOW Ensemble, Charles Watt, Guy Johnston, David Chivers, the Allegri and Sacconi Quartets, and orchestras in Europe, USA and Korea. ​ 2017 will see CD releases of solo American piano music on SOMM label, and 20th Century British violin and piano works with violinist Fenella Humphreys on Lyrita. Nathan’s debut disc Brahms & Schubert: Late Piano Works was released in 2013, and his own compositions can be heard on recent releases by NOW Ensemble and Piotr Szewczyk on New Amsterdam and Navona records. Nathan lives in Southwold, on the Suffolk coast, where he founded the Southwold Concert Series in 2008 and more recently the Southwold Music Trust, which aims to place music at the centre of the town and the surrounding community. Nathan is also director of a new concert series, ‘Music at Wardens’, held at Ness House, Sizewell. He also leads outreach projects with students from the Yehudi Menuhin School and is involved in various education projects at Aldeburgh Music. Nathan joined Piano Circus in 2016.
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Dawn Hardwick hails from the small town of Mountain Ash, in the Welsh valleys where she began her piano studies. Dawn attended the prestigious Chetham's School of Music studying with Alicia Fiderkiewicz followed by the RWCMD with Richard McMahon and Philip Martin, and continued her performance studies at the Royal College of Music under the tutelage of Julian Jacobson. ​ Dawn is an experienced concerto soloist, with a varied repertoire from more traditional piano concertos to contemporary collaborations and experimental music. Most recently, she performed John Psathas’ double concerto ‘View From Olympus’ with percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie and the British Sinfonietta to great acclaim, and was subsequently invited to perform with Dame Evelyn at the Southbank Sky Arts Awards, broadcast on the Sky Arts channel, and also on BBC One’s ‘The One Show’. ​ One of her great loves is orchestra/ensemble playing, and she regularly works as an orchestral pianist/celeste/keyboards player with many of the UK's top orchestras both at home and on tour. ​ Dawn regularly performs as an accompanist for various musicians, and has been involved in many radio and television broadcasts such as James May’s ‘Man Lab’, BBC One's ‘The One Show’ and the Southbank Sky Arts Awards. She was the pianist for English Touring Opera’s production of Tippett’s ‘King Priam’ for which they won an Olivier Award and has recently been working with animator Gregoire Pont in his performances of ‘Cinesthetics’ – live animation to the solo piano music of Ravel, in association with Maestro Arts.
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