Key PeopleKey People
Kenneth Dempster - Conductor
Kenneth Dempster was born and educated in Edinburgh. He began his musical training at Edinburgh Napier University on piano and viola, before going on to study composition, conducting and piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Whilst at the RAM he was awarded many prizes for his compositions including the inter-collegiate Theodore Holland Award.
He also won a variety of scholarships which enabled him to travel to the United States to study at Yale University. During his two years at Yale he studied with many eminent composers such as Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Louis Andriessen, Earle Brown and Frederic Rzewski. He was also awarded 2 Yale University prizes for his music.
On returning to Britain he studied with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and James MacMillan on the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's Course for Young Composers and has since then received commissions from a wide variety of ensembles. In 2002 his orchestral work, Seven Fans for Alma Mahler, commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and performed by them under the Swiss conductor Thierry Fischer, was widely acclaimed by reviewers and audiences alike. A large-scale community opera on the subject of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, commissioned by the St. Magnus Festival to mark the 70th birthday of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, was premiered in Kirkwall, Orkney in June 2004 with Kenneth conducting.
More recently he has been composing new works for Mr. McFall’s Chamber, Edinburgh Quartet, the Scottish Flute Trio and solo guitarist, Simon Thacker. Other new works have been commissioned to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Orcadian writer, George Mackay Brown (St. Magnus Festival, 2006) and the 40th anniversary of the Scottish Chamber Choir in 2008. His music has continued to gain recognition and attract awards including the Cornelius Cardew Composition Prize and he was one of the first recipients of a prestigious Creative Scotland Award.
Kenneth is currently Composer in Residence at the Ian Tomlin Academy of Music at Edinburgh Napier University where he teaches composition and orchestration as well as conducting the Edinburgh Napier Chamber Orchestra and the Contemporary Music Ensemble. He has lived in Peebles for 13 years with his wife, Clare and two children, Mairi and Aidan.
Robert Dick - Conductor
Born in Edinburgh in 1975, Robert Dick studied violin and piano at the Royal College of Music in London where he graduated with Honours in 1997, and also gained the Associateship Diploma of the Royal College of Music in Violin Performance.
Robert’s interest in conducting began at an early age and in 1993 he was invited to conduct the Royal Scottish National Orchestra by its then Musical Director, Walter Weller.
Having conducted all of the youth orchestras of which he was a member, including the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, Robert is now a regular guest conductor of many groups including the Rose Street Ensemble, the Scottish Borders Community Orchestra and The Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra. Currently the conductor of the Dundee Symphony Orchestra, the Edinburgh Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Canongait, Robert has conducted much of the great symphonic repertoire including symphonies by Schumann, Dvorak, Sibelius, Mahler and Bruckner as well as productions of Julius Caesar, Carmen, Tosca, Die Fledermaus, Bittersweet, Don Giovanni, The magic Flute and numerous Gilbert & Sullivan operas.
In 2001, Robert came second in the British Reserve Insurance Conducting Competition in Cardiff and has also enjoyed success abroad having been invited to conduct the Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra in the final concert of the Vienna International Mastercourse Series, where he gained their Diploma. Additionally he gained the Diploma of the International Summer Academy at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, on this occasion conducting the Varna Symphony Orchestra and he recently participated in the International Masterclass with Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and the Thuringen Philharmonie in Gotha, Germany. He has also worked with orchestras in Belgium, Bulgaria, Spain and the U.S.A., and in 2007 he participated in the Fourth Lovro von Matacic International Conducting Competition in Zagreb, Croatia.
Highlights in recent years included Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra, The Merry Wives of Windsor with Fife Opera, the two Brahms Piano Concerti with Murray McLachlan in the Edinburgh Festival, his first ever appearance as a harpsichord soloist in Bach’s D minor Keyboard Concerto with the Gecko Ensemble, what is believed to be the Scottish premiere of Elgar’s ballet The Sanguine Fan and a BBC Radio 3 Broadcast with the Dundee Symphony Orchestra.
2009 saw special concerts commemorating the respective anniversaries of Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn including Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus and The Creation, performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Dundee and Edinburgh, Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony in the Edinburgh Festival, Brahms’s A German Requiem, conducting the final of the inaugural Watson Forbes International Viola Competition in St Andrews with the Rose Street Ensemble and his qualification for the Leeds Conductor’s Competition. In 2010, Robert will be paying particular homage to the bicentenary of the birth of Robert Schumann with numerous performances of his works.
As a violin and viola soloist, Robert has performed concertos by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bruch and Brahms and has extensively toured Europe as an orchestral player in venues including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, The Hofburg Palace in Vienna and the Royal Albert Hall in London. In addition, he has freelanced with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Scottish Concert Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Scotland.
Jean Noël Attard - Guest Leader
Jean Noël Attard was born in 1990 into a highly musical family in Victoria, Gozo, Malta. At a very early age he commenced his musical education studying the piano and the violin. He obtained the DipABRSM in violin aged 14, the LRSM aged 15 and the FRSM aged 16. At 16 he also obtained the DipABRSM in piano. Jean Noël is reading for an undergraduate music degree at the Ian Tomlin School of Music, Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland as an Ian Tomlin scholar. Currently in his fourth year, he is majoring in violin under the tutorship of Francis Cummings, Director of Music at Sistema Scotland, after having previously been tutored by Philip Burrin of the Edinburgh Quartet. After his initial year of studies Attard was awarded the University’s Alan Tait Memorial Prize for the most promising first-year music student. Jean Noël has also often attended master classes in both piano and violin given by international tutors.
Since a very young age he started appearing in public as soloist, regularly featuring in concerts and also giving solo recitals on both instruments, both in Malta and abroad. In 2010 he was the youngest debutant to feature with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra in the first-ever debutants' concert organized by the MPO.
Jean Noël was also the winner/finalist of several competitions in Malta. In 2010 he participated in his first competition abroad, placing 2nd in the Chamber Music category of the Edinburgh Festival of Music, Speech and Drama as part of a violin and guitar duo. In 2011 he was a finalist in the same competition’s Concerto Class category.
Playing in orchestras is another of his penchants. Since starting to play in several Gozo church orchestras at the age of 10 he never looked back, often playing with the Malta National Philharmonic Orchestra and other foreign-based orchestras even under top-notch conductors. Since 2008 he has been a full-time member of the European Union Youth Orchestra and the only Maltese, touring extensively throughout Europe and the Far East. In 2010 he was one of three musicians chosen to represent the EUYO at the Notte Bianca held in Valletta, Malta.