A pianist and one of Brirain’s foremost composers, Huw Watkins was born in Wales in 1976. He studied piano with Peter Lawson at Chetham’s School of Music and composition with Robin Holloway, Alexander Goehr and Julian Anderson at Cambridge and the Royal College of Music. In 2001 he was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, and he now teaches composition at the Royal Academy of Music. His own compositions have been commissioned and performed by the Nash Ensemble, Belcea and Elias quartets, BBC Symphony Orchestra, LSO, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, amongst others. As a pianist, Huw Watkins is in great demand with orchestras and festivals including the London Sinfonietta, Britten Sinfonia, the BBC orchestras and Aldeburgh, East Neuk and Cheltenham Festivals. He has performed globally at concert halls including at Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, the Library of Congress in Washington, the Lincoln Center, the Smithsonian Institute in NY, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit, Kristiansand Orchestra in Norway, Columbus (USA) with ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Domaine Forget and Toron- to Summer Music Festival and in Italy, France, Germany, Hungary and Portugal. Strongly committed to the performance of new music, Huw has had a few piano concertos written for him by Philip Cashian, Helen Grime and Tansy Davies. He won the Chamber Music of Lincoln Center’s 2016 Elise L.Stoeger Prize in recognition of his significant contributions to the field of chamber music composition. He was composer in the house with the Orchestra of the Swan and Composer in Association with BBC NOW He performs regularly with his brother Paul Watkins, as well as Tamsin Waley-Cohen and has featured as both Composer in Residence and pianist at festivals including West Cork Chamber Music, Presteigne and Lars Vogt’s ‘Spannungen’ Festival in Heimbach, Germany. Huw Watkins is regularly featured on BBC Radio 3, and has recorded for labels such as Sig- num, Chandos, Nimbus, BIS and NMC.
