The Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation Award is a full scholarship for a young pianists of all nationalities at the start of their professional careers
Robert Turnball previous winners
2025 Archie Bonham
Archie Bonham is the Adami Award for Collaborative Piano Fellow at the Royal College of Music in London, and a specialist in chamber music and song repertoire. In 2024 he was a Young Artist at Britten Pears Arts and Shipston Song Festival and was official pianist of the Wigmore Hall French Song Exchange – a year-long programme culminating in two Wigmore Hall recitals, and a recital at the Salle Cortot in Paris. In Summer 2024, he was the New Horizons Fellow in Collaborative Piano at the Aspen Music Festival and School, working for eight weeks in the vocal studio of Renée Fleming. Recent competition prizes include the pianist prize at the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards at Wigmore Hall, and first pianist prize and best duo prize at the Ashburnham English Song Awards 2024. Archie is also a Senior Piano Tutor at Gresham’s School in Norfolk. He studied at the University of York and the Royal College of Music in London with Simon Lepper, Roger Vignoles, and Danny Driver.
2024 Firoze Madon and Emily Hoh* (joint)
*Emily was sadly unable during the week of the course, however we celebrate her achievements and legacy.
We thank the Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation for their support of this important opportunity for a young pianist.
Robert Turnbull (1957 – 2018)
Robert Turnbull was born in Warwickshire in 1957, son of the distinguished industrialist Sir George Turnbull and his wife Marion. Educated at Oundle and Kingsway-Princeton College, he went on to read music at Goldsmiths College. Following further piano study under Patricia Hancock, he was awarded an LRAM with both a Teacher’s and Performer’s Diploma.
Alongside his work as a solo pianist and accompanist, he had a busy career as a freelance journalist specializing in opera, classical music and East Asia (his articles were published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, The Tatler, and Opera Now among many others). In 1988 his reference book The Opera Gazetteer was published in the UK and USA.
A constant traveller, Robert had homes in the UK, France, Hungary and Cambodia. In collaboration with Fred Frumberg, he spent a decade helping to restore Cambodia’s classical arts after the fall of the Pol Pot regime, as well as co-producing a pioneering performance of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte in Phnom Penh. In 2013 he established En Blanc et Noir, a unique al fresco summer festival for young pianists from all over the world in Lagrasse, a village in the Aude region of France.
Robert died from lymphoma in 2018.
To learn more about the foundation click here