Andrew West BA ARAM
Andrew West has developed partnerships with many of the country’s leading singers and instrumentalists.
He appears regularly with tenor Mark Padmore. Their concerts together have included Mark Padmore’s debut Wigmore Hall recital, repeated at the Frick Collection in New York, and performances of the Six Songs from the Arabian as part of the South Bank’s Henze Festival. In 2009 they gave staged performances of Schubert’s Winterreise at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and in Aldeburgh, and at Lincoln Center, New York.
He has given recitals and recorded with Emma Bell (a CD of lieder by Strauss, Marx and Bruno Walter), Emily Beynon (music by Les Six for Hyperion), Florian Boesch, Alice Coote, Lesley Garrett, James Gilchrist, Emma Johnson, Christopher Purves, Hakan Vramsmo and Roderick Williams.
Andrew West received the inaugural Gerald Moore Award for Accompanists, and for several years he acted as official accompanist to the Steans Institute for Singers at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago.
Andrew West is one of the artistic directors of the Nuremberg International Chamber Music Festival, now in its eighth year, which presents English music unfamiliar to local audiences as well as more traditional repertoire. Highlights have included Tippett songs with Mark Padmore, and Britten’s opera Noye’s Fludde, which was performed in a circus tent at Nuremberg Zoo.
Andrew’s partnership with flautist Emily Beynon led to their Hyperion recording of the complete works for flute and piano by the French composers Les Six, and they have also given trio recitals with cellist Paul Watkins at the Purcell Room and the BBC Chamber Music Proms. Emily Beynon and Andrew West have appeared at the Edinburgh International Festival and played at the Wigmore Hall in December 2008.
As a duo pianist he has appeared at the City of London and Cheltenham Festivals with pianist Cedric Tiberghien. He is also closely involved with the Michael Clark Dance Company’s Stravinsky Project, performing the two-piano version ofThe Rite of Spring with Philip Moore in its original Barbican production, and then on tour in Paris, Seoul and Lincoln Center, New York.
Andrew has worked with violinist Sarah Chang in Britain and Ireland, and performed with cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras at many of the major European halls. His piano quartet Touchwood released their first CD, of works by Chausson and Saint-Saens, in 2000, and this was subsequently chosen as CD of the Month by the Daily Telegraph.
Andrew West won second prize at the Geneva International Piano Competition in 1990. He has since made solo tours of South Africa, South America and the United States, and has given numerous recitals at the Purcell Room and Wigmore Hall. He performed the solo part in Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques under Mark Wigglesworth at Snape Maltings.
Andrew read English at Clare College, Cambridge before studying under Christopher Elton and John Streets at the Royal Academy of Music. He was Pianist-in-residence at Lancaster University from 1993-99 and is now a professor of Piano Accompaniment at the Royal Academy of Music, and vocal coach at the Guildhall School.