Neil Georgeson

Neil Georgeson, from Shetland, read music at Edinburgh University, under the tutelage of Peter Evans.  He performed frequently in venues throughout the city and played concertos with several orchestras.  During this time, he won various prizes including the Sir Donald Francis Tovey Prize and performed for Her Majesty the Queen.  In 2001, he moved to London to study for his Masters degree and Postgraduate Diploma at the Royal Academy of Music, studying under Ian Fountain and Patsy Toh.  He has also benefited from masterclasses with Irina Zaritzkaya, Victor Rosenbaum and Joanna MacGregor.

Neil has received awards from various sources, including the Sir James Caird Travelling Scholarships Fund, the EMI award and the Scottish International Educational Trust.  He is very much involved in new music, appearing on the South Bank Show playing the music of Gyorgy Kurtag and working with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies on several occasions towards performances of his works.  Neil is the Artistic Director of the Ossian Ensemble, which specialises in theatrical concerts with new music.  He also teaches piano in London.  Also active as a composer, Neil recently gave the premiere, to great critical acclaim, of his work Simmermill for violin and piano. 

His performances in Shetland are always hugely appreciated.  In his Lerwick programme, he intends to include Bach preludes and fugues, works by Schubert, Chopin and Prokofiev and contemporary pieces by Skye composer Alasdair Hamilton and ‘Macrocosmos’ by American composer George Crumb.  Also featured will be Patrick Nunn’s ‘Music of the spheres’; it’s a piece for piano and tape, which uses sounds recorded by NASA of the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn and other planets, interacting with the sounds of the piano.