Dr Aidan Thomson

Aidan Thomson was born in Glasgow in 1975 and began playing the violin aged five. In 1989 he began studying with Clive Thomas at the Junior School of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where he co-lead the First Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra; more recently he has studied with Diana Cummings. He won a place at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1992 to read music, won a demyship (scholarship) the following year and graduated with a first in 1995. Subsequently he gained an M.Mus. at King's College, London, before returning to Magdalen, where he completed his D.Phil. on English and German reception of Elgar before 1914. In 1997 he led the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, of which he had been a member for many years, when they made a recording of Elgar's First Symphony. In Oxford he has been leader of the Christ Church Festival Orchestra, the Orchestra at St. Mary Magdalen, with whom he performed Beethoven's Violin Concerto in February 2000, and for New Chamber Opera. He also plays piano, organ, has taught for the Faculty of Music in Oxford and at the University of Leeds, and is now a Lecturer at Queen's University Belfast.