Nicola Eimer

Winner of the 2005 Royal Overseas League Piano Competition, the British pianist Nicola Eimer received her Master’s degree from the Juilliard School in New York in 2001, where she had a Fulbright Scholarship to study with Joseph Kalichstein. Since then she has enjoyed a busy career as a soloist and chamber musician.

Beginning her studies in London with Danielle Salamon, Nicola then went on to the Royal Academy of Music to study with Christopher Elton, where she received a First Class Bachelor’s Degree, as well as graduating with the Dip. RAM. During her studies she received generous support from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust as well as the Delphine de Martelly Trust. In the two years following her graduation, Nicola held both the Hodgson and the Meaker Fellowships, and she was recently nominated an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.

Nicola has given concerto performances at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Purcell Room and the Barbican; as well as at Wigmore Hall, in a performance of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto, with the Royal Academy Soloist’s Ensemble led by Clio Gould. She has also performed with the City of London Sinfonia, English Sinfonia, European Union Chamber Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Swan. Her performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto at St. John’s Smith Square, was described by Robert Matthewman in Musical Opinion as being ‘Beethoven playing of some distinction’.

Nicola has given numerous solo recitals at music societies and festivals across the United Kingdom, including for the Chopin Society, at Fairfield Hall, and at the festivals of Harrogate, Hampstead and Highgate, Buxton, Honiton, Presteigne and Stratford-Upon-Avon, where she gave the premiere of ‘Limehouse Nocturne’, a work written for her by the composer Judith Bingham. She made her Cheltenham Festival Debut in July 2006, where her programme included the premiere of a work by the composer Charlotte Bray. She has been invited to be the pianist for the ‘Festival Academy Ensemble’ in the 2007 festival, and she will be performing a programme of contemporary works including John Adams’s Clarinet Concerto with Michael Collins, as well as giving a piano-trio recital. Nicola’s interest in new works, led to the recent recording of Cecilia McDowall’s ‘Dance the Dark Streets’ for piano and string orchestra, under the baton of George Vass, which was issued on the Dutton-Epoch label.

Nicola is a founder member of the Eimer Piano Trio, formed in 1997. They won the chamber music award of the Royal Over-seas League Competition in 2002, as well as the Bärenreiter Prize in the ARD Competition in Munich. Nicola regularly performs with other musicians and ensembles, including Remus Azoitei, Alison Balsom, Thomas Carroll, Maurice Hasson, Guy Johnston, Gemma Rosefield, the Carducci Quartet and the London Concertante. As a chamber musician, she has performed in Europe, America, Australia and Japan, and was invited to perform in the closing concert of the Saint-Saëns festival at Wigmore Hall in 2004. Nicola has participated in the International Musicians’ Seminar masterclasses at Prussia Cove, as both a student and class pianist, and was also recently invited to participate in the Open Chamber Music Session.

Nicola was also a major prize-winner at the 2003 Dudley International Piano Competition and the John Lill Piano Competition, finalist at the 2003 Young Concert Artists’ Trust auditions, and winner of the Tillett Trust Young Artists Platform Award. In 2004 she was also selected to take part in the Kirckman Concert series.

Future engagements include a series of recitals with trumpeter Alison Balsom and a concert with the Carducci Quartet at Wigmore Hall in March.