Andrew West

Andrew West is known internationally as song-accompanist and chamber musician. 

His performances with Roderick Williams include the Aldeburgh, Lichfield and Nuremberg Chamber Music festivals, and the world premiere of a new cycle, Dark Days, by Alexander Goehr. Next month they will give recitals with Joan Rodgers as part of Yuri Bashmet’s December Nights Festival in Moscow.

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 Henze’s Six Songs from the Arabian at Wigmore Hall, Cite de la Musique, and, next year, at the Vienna Konzerthaus. In 2009 they gave staged performances of a new translation of Schubert’s Winterreise, interspersed with readings of texts by Samuel Beckett, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and in Aldeburgh

Andrew 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.

 

He is an artistic director of the Nuremberg Chamber Music Festival. This festival,  which celebrated its tenth season in 2011,  presents English music unfamiliar to local audiences as well as more traditional repertoire. This year's highlights included Robert Murray singing Winterreise, contemporary British chamber music by Thomas Ades and Huw Watkins, and  a fully staged production of Britten’s opera Owen Wingrave , with Marcus Farnsworth and Kitty Whately in the leading roles.

 

Andrew West has a longstanding collaboration with flautist Emily Beynon, with whom he has appeared at the BBC Chamber Music Proms, Edinburgh International Festival, and Wigmore Hall

As a duo pianist he has appeared at the City of London and Cheltenham Festivals with pianist Cedric Tiberghien. He was also closely involved with the Michael Clark Dance Company Stravinsky Project, performing the two-piano version of The Rite of Spring with Philip Moore in London, Paris and New York.

 

Andrew West read English at Clare College, Cambridge before going on to study with Christopher Elton and John Streets at the Royal Academy of Music, where he is now professor of Accompaniment and Chamber Music.