Jeremy Pike – piano

Jeremy Pike studied piano with Christopher Elton and violin at the Junior Department of the Royal Academy of Music whilst taking composition lessons with Bryan Kelly and Sir Lennox Berkeley. At the age of seventeen he went to read Music on an open scholarship at King’s College, Cambridge, where he studied piano with Phyllis Palmer and composition with Gordon Crosse. He continued his studies in composition and conducting on a postgraduate scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1979 he won the annual Polish government scholarship to study composition with the celebrated Polish composer Henryk Górecki at the Katowice Academy of Music.

He has directed the electro-acoustic music studios at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of Warwick and held the positions of Head of Piano at Bedford and Stamford schools. Since 1989 he has taught at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he has been Head of Composition since 1993. In 1998 he was awarded a Churchill Fellowship, enabling him to undertake research in the USA and France into the application of new technology to the arts. He gained a PhD from London University in 2000.

He regularly gives recitals with artists including his violinist daughter Jennifer, including broadcasts on BBC Radio 3. His extensive list of compositions includes orchestral, instrumental and vocal music, and major commissions include “The Crossing Point”, premièred by the City of London Sinfonia in November 2005 and new chamber works for the 2017 and 2018 William Alwyn Festivals in Suffolk. Recent performances of his music have included “Processions” for violin and piano, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 from the Wigmore Hall, “Aphelion” for violin and piano, broadcast on Radio 3 from the Bridgewater Hall and premières during the first three New Music North West Festivals. Recently he was a panel member in the BBC Radio 4 series “Tales from the Stave”, talking about the original manuscript of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending. Three of his recent works have been nominated for BASCA (British Academy of Songwriters, Composers & Authors) awards, and his String Quartet No. 5 was runner up for the highly prestigious Carl Maria von Weber International Composers’ Competition in 1985.