Staff A-Z

Tony Swainson is a senior brass lecturer and Former Principal Tuba for the  BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He has seen many of his students go on to prestigious professional positions around the world. He is a graduate of the Royal Manchester College of Music, now the RNCM, where he studied tuba with the renowned tuba player, Stuart Roebuck, as well as piano and composition.

Iseabail is a lecturer on the Traditional Music course.

Ray has a background in cinematography and began his journey into education provision in 2008.

Born in Malta, Geoffrey Tanti studied piano with Cynthia Turner before moving to Glasgow to study at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he graduated with a Masters in Piano Performance with Distinction and a Masters in Répétiteur Studies. He studied with Jonathan Plowright and Julia Lynch and worked for a year as a Junior Fellow accompanist at the RCS. During his studies, Geoffrey won many solo and accompaniment prizes.

Betsy is a founder member of the highly acclaimed Glasgow String Quartet and is also an active member of the RSNO Chamber Music Series. She teaches at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland at both the Junior and Senior Departments. She has performed as Guest Principal Cello with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra, RSNO, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Manchester Sinfonia and the Northern Sinfonia.

Member of the Audit and Risk, Finance and General Purposes and Fundraising Committees

Jess Thorpe is a Lecturer in the Arts in Justice at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where she designs and delivers creative projects in prisons and with communities impacted by the criminal justice system.

Outside her work at RCS, Jess was the Associate Director (Engage) of Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre (2020-2024). She is Co-Artistic Director of Glass Performance, through which she also developed long-term initiatives such as young people’s performance company Junction 25 and Polmont Youth Theatre, the first youth theatre in a Scottish prison. In 2015, Junction 25 won a CATS Whiskers for an outstanding contribution to Scottish theatre. Jess has published several works on theatre including ‘A Beginners Guide to Devising Theatre’ (for Methuen) which won a Drama and Education prize in 2021.

MA (Oxon), MLitt

Julian has taught at the RCS for more than ten years. His students have won major scholarships to leading conservatories around the world, as well as going on to sing with companies such as the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, Scottish Opera, Gothenburg Opera, and National Theater Mannheim.

Julian’s approach to teaching is informed by his own experience as a performer and the need to equip young singers with the technical security and self-knowledge to allow them to achieve their creative potential. In 2018, Julian was invited to lecture and give workshops at the University of Performing Arts and Music in Vienna. He is currently working on a project which explores the musical milieu of Edward Clark and his teacher Arnold Schoenberg.

Pippa currently plays as Principal Harp with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and appears regularly with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

She is a Harp Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and has over 20 years of experience as a teacher at various institutions and privately at all levels. She is a regular coach for NYOS.

Amy Turner currently holds the position of Section Principal Oboe of the Orchestra with the Orchestra of Scottish Opera, a position she has held since 2015.

Dr J Simon van der Walt is a composer and Head of Taught Postgraduate Programmes in Music at the Conservatoire. His artistic research inhabits a broad span of work, ranging from score-based composition to installation, sound art, and devised musiktheater. Current preoccupations include Indonesian gamelan music, live coding in SuperCollider, and reconstructing the career of his fictional alter ego Edward ‘Teddy’ Edwards, unsung hero of British light music electronica.

Ruta is an active initiator of experimental music projects: she was director of the Druskomanija festival and workshop series the Process in Lithuania for several years, facilitator of New Music Incubator in Nordic and Baltic countries and across the EU, facilitator and tutor at ComposersPlus summer academy in Lithuania, and currently – initiator of CoMA, Contemporary Music for All, Glasgow branch.

Nadja works to empower the next generation of musicians, teaching Music Business on the Jazz course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

After graduating with distinction from Queen Margaret University College in Edinburgh he has worked as a Lighting Designer on productions in many genres, including devised theatre, stand-up, cabaret, corporate events, car and product launches and fashion shows.

After reading Music at Kings College, Cambridge, and Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, John held a variety of Trumpet positions in London Orchestras, and enjoyed a wide-ranging and successful solo career. In 2002, John returned to Scotland and became Principal of the RSAMD (now RCS) a position which he held until he retired in 2014 after a period of huge influence on the institution. John is now an Emeritus Professor of Brass at RCS.

Jan Waterfield read music at Girton College, Cambridge, where she was also a choral scholar. This was followed by postgraduate studies in harpsichord and piano with John Toll and David Willison at the RAM in London, where she won prizes for both Lieder Accompaniment and Continued Playing.

At the RCS, Jan teaches the wealth of keyboard music before 1750, takes sideways leaps into the Opera School (for baroque ‘style’) and to the Fair Access/Education departments for Coaching. She is also very interested in coaching as an aid to teaching; the questions we ask ourselves are vital for a musician’s progress. As a life-long meditator, Jan is also curious as to mental-emotional state when playing & how that can be developed best for each individual.

As Principal Cello in some of the world’s leading ensembles English Baroque Soloists, Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra David Watkin has played a key role at the heart of some ground-breaking performances.

He has conducted ensembles at the Royal Academy of Music, The Guildhall School of Music, the Royal Welsh College and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.