Join us for a Free Friday Recital. Edward Picton-Turbervill presents
The Art of Variation.
Ed Picton-Turbervill presents a diverse collection of piano variations, from Beethoven and Schubert to the St Louis Blues Boogie. The concert will include some compositions by Ed himself, including ‘Silent Spring’, where he duets with an extinct bird, the Kauai O’O’.
Ed is a Junior Fellow in the Keyboard department at Guildhall, where he continues to study the piano with Caroline Palmer. He completed a Master's in Piano Accompaniment at Guildhall in July 2023, and now works as a freelance pianist, organist and composer in London. He was the Organ Scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read Music, graduating with a First. He toured and broadcast regularly, and his third CD with the choir, Deo, was awarded BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Choral Disc of the Year’ award. Following his Undergraduate studies, he was awarded funding by St John’s to pursue a Master’s in Environmental Policy, and then spent a further year as an exchange student at the University of Heidelberg.
Whilst studying for his Master’s, he wrote Talking Through Trees, which was published in 2017 by the Old Stile Press, with 35 woodcuts by Angela Lemaire. From 2018-2021, he was Head of Music at Atlantic College, where he oversaw a major refurbishment of the music buildings, and steered the department through the pandemic. He is committed to music education and outreach, and he works as organist at St John the Divine, Kennington, where he assists with the church's renowned youth programme.
In his first year at Guildhall, he founded Pipit, a company which exists to bring song recitals back into people’s homes. He composes for singers and choirs, and tries to include a new work in every concert he performs. He has premiered works written for him by Michael Finnissy, Nico Muhly, Francis Pott, Daniel Saleeb and Alex Groves, and his own work, It is Here, from his cycle Songs for A won first prize at the inaugural UK songSLAM. He has appeared as Benjamin Britten at the Royal Opera House in a newly-commissioned play, A Letter from Ben, and toured Europe in November 2022 as part of Open Your Eyes, an environmental song project curated by Iain Burnside. He was a Leeds Lieder Young Artist in June 2023, and I performs regularly on BBC Radio 3, most recently with Carolyn Sampson, Eldbjørg Hemsing and Esther Abrami.
Dates for the next few concerts are: 16 August, 20 September and 18 October.
Free Friday Lunchtime Recitals at St Mary’s have been made possible by a generous legacy left by Denise Antenen.