Jonathan Ayerst
Jonathan Ayerst is the principal pianist of Remix Ensemble, Casa da Música since 2000. With the ensemble he has performed at many major festivals such as Wien Modern (Austria), Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Musica Strasbourg, IRCAM Paris (France) and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK); and has worked closely with conductors Peter Rundel, Emilio Pomárico, Reinbert de Leeuw, Heinz Holliger, Peter Eötvös and Jörg Widmann. He appears regularly as soloist performing works such as Beat Furrer’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Vasco Mendonça’s Step Right Up, Olivier Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques, Anton Webern’s Variationen Op.27, and Alban Berg’s Kammerkonzert. In 2021, his concert performance of Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No.1 (Stephan Blunier with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música) was released as a CD, as part of the series Live Recordings by Casa da Música.
In parallel he has achieved an international reputation as organist and concert improviser. Having been awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (UK), he started a PhD in music psychology at the University of Sheffield. His thesis: Learning to improvise as a Western classical musician: a psychological self-study, was concluded in 2021. This study included lessons in Baroque improvisation with Jürgen Essl at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Stuttgart (Germany). As a result of this doctorate study Jonathan is increasingly in demand as a recitalist in which improvises in many different classical styles. In 2020-21, he filmed a cycle of organ recitals at the Casa da Música in Porto, each programme centered around a different improvisation – including a fugal improvisation which completed J.S.Bach’s unfinished Fantasie und Fuge BWV 562, and an improvisation based on Franz Liszt’s Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen. He has appeared in the Santarém International Organ Festival, the Temporada Música em São Roque (Lisbon), and more recently was invited by the Museum-Nicolaikirche and Luisenkirche in Berlin, to improvise an entire concert programme based on exhibition paintings. In 2023 he was appointed organist of the Reformierte Kirche Witikon, in Zürich, and in 2024 he was appointed Dozent für Partiturspiel at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (Switzerland).
2025
