Melanie Spanswick
Key details:
- Department:
- Junior Guildhall
- Role:
- Piano Teaching Staff
Biography
Melanie Spanswick is an award-winning, best-selling piano author, teacher and composer. She graduated from the Royal College of Music in London with a Master of Music degree in Piano Performance Studies. At the RCM, scholarships and awards include the prize for the most ‘outstanding postgraduate pianist’. Her professors include Patricia Carroll, Tatiana Sarkissova, and John Lill.
As a pianist, Melanie has performed worldwide and has given recitals as a soloist, chamber musician, and accompanist at numerous music festivals and major concert halls. Broadcasts include appearances on Classic FM, BBC Radio, CBC Radio, and Swedish and Spanish television, and performance venues include Wigmore Hall, St. John’s Smith Square, South Bank Centre (Purcell Room and Queen Elizabeth Hall) in London, St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, and CBSO Centre and Symphony Hall, Birmingham. Abroad, Melanie has toured Canada several times, most notably, at the Guelph Festival, and the Great Romantics Festival in Hamilton, held in conjunction with the American Liszt Society. She has also performed in Russia, at Tchaikovsky’s house in Klin (near Moscow), and at a series of recitals around the Netherlands for the Anglo-Dutch Piano Platform.
As an educator, Melanie has examined and adjudicated widely and has given master classes, workshops, and presentations throughout the UK and abroad, extensively touring the Far East, as well as Italy, Germany, USA, Dubai, Oman, and Australia.
She is currently a piano faculty member at Junior Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Eton College. Melanie has taught on a wide range of piano courses; Jackdaws Music Education Trust, the Overseas Masters Winter Piano Academy, held at the Yehudi Menuhin School, and, in 2021, she directed the piano teachers course at Chetham’s International Piano Summer School.
Melanie has written and edited piano books for the international market to critical acclaim. Her work is published by some of the world’s leading music publishers. She has written over 25 publications. A regular contributor to Pianist Magazine, Piano Professional (EPTA), and Music Teacher Magazine, her three-book piano course, Play it again: PIANO (Schott Music), has become an international best-selling series. More recent publications include a two-book series, First Repertoire For Little Pianists (Willis) and several editions of music highlighting female composers for the Schott Student Edition. The three-book series Women Composers – A Graded Anthology for Piano (Schott) won a Presto Music Award for best ‘New Series of The Year.’
As a composer, Melanie has written works for students and professionals. Her music has been performed and recorded in Japan, Germany, Serbia, Italy, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and the UK. Melanie’s music is featured in the Edition Schott series and is published in both music festival and examination syllabuses.