Alastair Edmonstone

Los Angeles–based Scottish pianist Alastair Edmonstone has performed as a collaborative artist, chamber musician, and soloist throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Africa. He made his New York recital debut in 2015 at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, performing the Brahms Horn Trio with hornist David Jolley. Other notable appearances include recitals at Columbia University, the Ghent Conservatorium, Boston’s Jordan Hall, the University of Maryland, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Seattle Art Museum, Birmingham Conservatoire, and the University of Edinburgh.

As a chamber musician, Edmonstone has collaborated with members of the Baltimore and Boston Symphony Orchestras, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Orpheus Orchestra,  and Canadian Brass. In great demand as a vocal coach and collaborative pianist, he works regularly with singers in recital, opera, and concert repertoire. He is featured with soprano Louise Toppin and countertenor Darryl Taylor on the 2025 Albany Records release Dear Gentle Hearts and Minds: African Art Song Essentials. He also performs on A Chaos of Light and Motion, a March 2025 Neuma Records release featuring contemporary vocal works by Grammy-winning composer Jack Van Zandt and performed by longtime collaborator Stacey Fraser.

A committed interpreter of contemporary music, Edmonstone has worked with composers including Jonathan Harvey, Lee Hyla, Huck Hodge, Gunther Schuller, and Yii Ka Hoe. He gave the Seattle premiere of Luciano Berio’s Sonata per pianoforte solo and the Boston premiere of Schuller’s Grand Concerto for Percussion and Keyboards, which he later recorded for Naxos Records. He has also performed Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus more than a dozen times across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Since 2016, Edmonstone has served as Keyboard Collaborative Artist and Music Director of Opera Theater at California State University, San Bernardino, where he has music directed, coached, and prepared a wide range of operatic, theatrical, and staged vocal works. Recent productions include The Aids Quilt Songbook (premiere staging), Kurt Weill’s The Next Whisky Bar (U.S. premiere), Philip Glass and Leonard Cohen’s The Book of Longing, John Adams’s I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, Missy Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar (West Coast premiere), Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias, Koji Nakano’s Spiritual Forest, Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach (the first university performance ever approved by the composer), Robert Xavier Rodriguez’s Tango/Monkey See, Monkey Do, staged Schumann song cycles, and Maury Yeston’s December Songs, for which he created the musical arrangements. His work has also included an interdisciplinary staged reimagining of Schubert’s Winterreise.

Edmonstone holds a DMA from the University of Washington and MM and Graduate Diploma degrees from New England Conservatory. He earned a BMus (Hons) from Birmingham Conservatoire, where he later served as Principal Répétiteur, and pursued additional studies at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. From 2021 to 2022, he served as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.