John Paul Ekins

Increasingly in demand as a recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician, John Paul Ekins has given performances throughout the UK and Northern Ireland, and overseas in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Spain and the Czech Republic, and his playing has been broadcast on the BBC. In 2009 he graduated from the Royal College of Music (where he had been since the age of eleven, and was a prize-winner) with First Class Honours, studying with John Barstow, MBE. In the same year he was awarded the James Anthony Horne Scholarship by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama to begin postgraduate study with Charles Owen on the Artist in Performance course. He was also the recipient of a Music Education Award from the Musicians Benevolent Fund, and receives support from the Concordia Foundation.

He has performed at a number of prestigious venues in the UK and abroad, including Birmingham's Symphony Hall, London's Fairfield Hall, Steinway Hall, Victoria and Albert Museum and St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Oxford's Holywell Music Room, Bath's Pump Room, Zurich's Tonhalle, and Prague's Martinu Hall. He has participated in masterclasses and performed with many renowned musicians and ensembles, such as the Brodsky String Quartet, Levon Chilingirian and the Chilingirian String Quartet, Bernard Greenhouse, Leonid Gorokhov, David Dolan, Ani Schnarch, David Ward, Salvatore Accardo, Peter Donohoe, Martino Tirimo, Leslie Howard and Joan Enric Lluna. As a concerto soloist he has performed works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Gershwin with orchestras throughout the UK.

International Competition successes include 2^nd Prizes in the Amy Brant International Piano Competition, the San Sebastian International Piano Competition, and the Oxford International Piano Competition. Along with this, in past years he has been named the Kingston, Woking and Croydon Festivals' Young Musician of the Year, and the Richmond Festival's Pianist of the Year, receiving an award from Hanna & Sons Pianos Ltd. in the process. In 2007 he performed to acclaim Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto with the Hillingdon Philharmonic Orchestra, courtesy of the Ruislip and Northwood Festival, where he was awarded the Adjudicator's Prize. This consisted of a scholarship from the pianist Andrzej Pikul to attend his Summer Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland, and he was invited back in the same year to give recitals in Katowice and Zakopane.

This season’s highlights include recitals in London, Bath, Bognor Regis, Harting, Belfast, Cardiff, Woking, Cadiz, Woodbridge and Warminster. With orchestra he performs Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto (Wandsworth Symphony Orchestra), Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (St. Bartholomew's Orchestra and Ealing Youth Orchestra) and the Grieg Concerto (Woodbridge Symphony Orchestra). He also travels to Iserlohn Music Festival in Germany, where he has been awarded a scholarship by the European Union of Music Competitions for Youth to particpate in a masterclass given by the renowned pianist Bruno Leonardo Gelber.

An avid chamber musician, John Paul has an extensive repertoire of piano and string works, from duos to trios, quartets and quintets. He is a member of the Erato Piano Trio, past winners of the Anglo-Czechoslovak Trust Competition, and performs regularly with them in concerts in the UK and abroad. They are also currently recording the complete Haydn Piano Trios in Paris, the first disc of which will be released this Autumn.