Iwan Llywelyn-Jones

Iwan Llywelyn-Jones studied at Balliol College, Oxford and the Royal College of Music where he won the Chopin Prize, the Hopkinson Gold Medal, and the Instrumental Duo Prize. Success followed in many major international competitions in Britain, France, Italy and Spain, whilst continuing his studies with Noretta Conci and Cecile Ousset. He made his debut at the Wigmore Hall, London in 1987 to great acclaim in the national press. He has appeared as concert soloist with the Leipzig Radio Philharmonic, Turin Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Bach Orchestra and the BBC National Orchestra for Wales.

Many solo works have been written for him including Sonata No.11 (in memoriam William Mathias) by Alun Hoddinot and 'A Starlit Dome' by John Pickard. In the 1999 North Wales International Festival he gave the world premieres of John Metcalf’s 'Endless Song' and Lowell Liebermann’s 'Nocturne No.7'. He has immense experience as a chamber musician and in November 1996 he had his debut at the Sydney Opera House, Australia to a capacity audience in a concert of Maurice Ravel’s chamber music.

Iwan broadcasts regularly on Radio 3 and Classic FM and has appeared on Channel 4 performing solo works by Brahms, Liszt, Debussy and Messiaen. During the ’99-2000 season he broadcast recitals of works by Mendelssohn, Ravel, Chopin and Poulenc; in August 1999 he gave a live broadcast of Chopin’s 'Variations of Mozart’s “La ci darem la mano”' with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales before an audience of three thousand people. He appeared in his own television programme for Channel 4 Wales entitled “Iwan and the Piano” and a documentary film about him was broadcast on S4C.

In 1999 he was awarded an “Arts for All” grant from the Lottery Commission in association with the Arts Council for Wales, which enabled him to fund a series of concerts exploring the solo piano repertoire of Chopin. In conjunction with these concert series, Iwan visited several other schools to conduct workshops on the relationships between music and other art forms, and the importance of music in everyday life. The immediate success of their project has resulted in a continual stream of invitations from schools throughout Britain for the 2002-03 seasons.

During the last year, Iwan has given recitals in Bristol, Oxford, Aldeburgh, throughout Wales and the Wigmore Hall, London. He visited Rumania and South Africa in 2003 and gave a premiere of a new work for solo piano by Karl Jenkins at the Swansea Festival in 2001.