RIAM announce new Head of Wind, Brass & Percussion and Head of Keyboard appointments

The Royal Irish Academy of Music has announced the appointment of Professor Ross Lyness as Head of Wind, Brass & Percussion and Professor Peter Tuite as Head of Keyboard at Ireland's National Conservatoire. 

Commenting on the announcement, Deborah Kelleher, Director of RIAM, said: "I am delighted that Ross Lyness and Peter Tuite have been appointed to these important leadership roles as Head of Wind, Brass & Percussion and Head of Keyboard during this exciting period of growth for RIAM. Both extremely experienced performers and dedicated pedagogues, I look forward to working with them on exciting new curricula and partnership developments under their leadership."

Professor Lyness and Professor Tuite take up their appointment from the start of the academic year 2024/2025. 

Professor Ross Lyness - Head of Wind, Brass & Percussion 

Ross Lyness is a professional musician, educator and facilitator. Following ten years of living and working in London and Barcelona, Ross moved home to County Down in 2010 where he now lives with his violinist wife and their two daughters. With a primary degree in Law and a Masters in Trombone Performance from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Ross has refined and channelled his diverse interests and strengths into a multi-faceted career combining professional performance at international level with holding key managerial roles within a variety of arts organisations, whilst continuing to teach and coach the next generation.

Ross was appointed the inaugural Head of Junior RIAM in 2020. He successfully led the Junior department through turbulent times brought about by the global pandemic and the transition to the new RIAM campus. During his tenure, Ross oversaw the development and implementation of several new aspects of the curriculum and wider programmes, including the flagship Young Artist Programme, which led to Junior RIAM being invited to join Young Music Talents Europe (YMTE), of which he has recently been elected to the Management Board. He has also led the department in promoting diversity, access, equality and inclusion across all areas. 

As a freelance trombonist, Ross performs across a wide variety of genres including solo and chamber music, contemporary and new music, jazz and big band, orchestral, opera and commercial work for television and radio. As a soloist, he has recorded for the BBC and, in 2022, premiered a new trombone sonata by jazz pianist Ethan Iverson. Ross travels to work joining the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Ballet, Orchesta Nazionale della RAI, Turin, Orquesta de Grand Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, Hong Kong Sinfonietta and the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, which Ross visits several times a year as Guest Principal Trombone.

Ross also appears with all of the professional orchestras in Ireland and has held the position of Principal Trombone with Wexford Opera Festival Orchestra since 2013 and Irish National Opera since 2019. He has also toured extensively with Irish orchestras, such as Camerata Ireland and the Irish Chamber Orchestra, including trips to South America, India, China, Europe and the USA. A keen chamber musician, Ross performs regularly with brass quintets and other ensembles. Ross is also a member of the Belfast Ensemble, a dynamic group pushing the boundaries of collaboration between music, theatre, art and dance. In August 2018, Ross was invited to join the European Brass Collective, an international ensemble of musicians, resident at the annual Brucknertage in Sankt Florian, Austria. Other chamber highlights include performances of Stravinsky’s ‘A Soldier’s Tale’ in the MAC Belfast and the Kilkenny Arts Festival with the Fews Ensemble, featuring Irish actor Ciaran Hinds as the narrator/devil.

As a teacher and coach, Ross draws on his own extensive performing experience and knowledge of the industry. Mentors have included his own teachers Eric Crees, Simon Wills and John Kenny at the Guildhall and David Rejano Cantero in Barcelona, as well as more oblique influences like Jesper Busk-Sørensen of the Berlin Philharmonic and breathing guru and international pedagogue, Kristian Steenstrup. Their combined teachings and perspectives have resulted in Ross taking an international and well-rounded approach to musical education.

Alongside his teaching at RIAM, Ross has recently been invited to give masterclasses in the USA and Spain and has worked as a low brass coach with the National Youth Orchestras of Ireland and the Cyprus Youth Orchestra. 

Peter Tuite – Head of Keyboard

Praised for his '“astonishing technical facility” (Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Massachusetts), “engaging self-assurance” (The Washington Post) and “extraordinary calculation and tonal refinement” (The Irish Times), Peter Tuite has garnered international acclaim for his recital and concerto appearances throughout the world. From acclaimed performances of Beethoven Concertos to his joint traversal of the complete fifty-two Sonatas for Keyboard by Joseph Haydn, his engagement with the music of the 18th century in particular has been widely praised.  

In May 2020, concurrent with the completion of a new film of the Goldberg Variations (recorded in the Long Room Library of Trinity College Dublin) he was named Founding Fellow of the Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship awarded by the City of Weimar. As the joint creator of the Fellowship, he was appointed Founding Fellow in order to establish the Fellowship parameters, and through direct experience, to set its project milestones. He has since completed a series of innovative recordings and films exploring different perspectives on the late works of Johann Sebastian Bach - with the complete collection presented in September 2021 at a special exhibition featured in the Kessler Rooms of the State Museum of Weimar. He was afterwards named Custodian of the Fellowship in 2021. 

As a concerto soloist, he has worked with many renowned conductors from Andrei Boreyko to Courtney Lewis, from Colman Pearce to Gerhard Markson – with classical concerti forming a key part of his repertoire. At the same time, as a devoted chamber musician, he has collaborated with numerous artists, from Hakan Hardenberger to the Vanbrugh String Quartet, from Pekka Kuusisto to singers such as Robin Tritschler and Claudia Boyle. He was one of the regular artists that attended the International Piano Week in Montepulciano, Tuscany, and continues to engage in innovative projects that explore the repertoire in unique and path-breaking ways. Notable amongst these, is his recent project around the Art of Fugue, scheduled for completion next year, which involves multiple kinds of technical innovation. 

With the Canadian composer and pianist Douglas Finch, he co-founded the New Lights Festival in London in 2018 – a festival devoted to contemporary currents in music. The festival explores ideas of newness – from unique collaborations to new compositions, from innovative performance approaches to improvisatory works. The festival has continually expanded since its inception; with performances taking place at both the historic King Charles Court at the Old Royal Naval College and the Cutty Sark in Greenwich. 

In 2023, he also started the New Lights Forum – which involves in-depth interviews with artists and intellectuals and for which he has served as principal curator. Arising from his engagement with documentary form, he released Fugal Travels in 2020 – a contrapuntal radio documentary work which weaves together the voices of six eminent experts speaking about the music of JS Bach. The structure of the work was inspired by the six-part ricercare from the Musical Offering, using some of textures as an model for its construction. 

In 2020 he became a Loubser Fellow - joining a small number of internationally acclaimed artists. While in 2022, he was appointed Lead Curator of the new digital exhibition space, PLF Projects & Artefacts. The design-faze for this new initiative has just been recently completed and is set to be unveiled this year. The projects and artefacts on the site are presented in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional formats; with the latter presented as a digital gallery space, where people can explore the projects in a more interactive way. 

Educated at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Oxford and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, he subsequently went on to become Head of the Keyboard Faculty of the Royal Irish Academy of Music - one of the youngest such appointments in its 175-year history. Between 2015 and 2018, he was Head of Piano and Keyboard Instruments at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London and while continuing to serve on the faculty of both these institutions, was appointed Full Professor of Music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in June 2021; and in 2024 was appointed once again as its new Head of the Keyboard Faculty. 

He has given master classes around the world – from the United Kingdom to China, from Italy to Japan, from the United States to South Korea, and many other countries besides. Whilst, since 2016, he has served on numerous occasions, as External Specialist for the Royal College of Music in London and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. 

From his longstanding interest in literature, he produced his first poetry collection which was highly commended in the 2015 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Awards. In more recent years, he has developed new hybrid works, featuring poetic declamation and drama accompanied by ancient instruments. The first of these was completed in 2023 and is scheduled to be recorded at the Greenwich Studio Theatre in London on June 22nd, 2024.