Roy Howat is internationally renowned as both pianist and scholar whose concerts, broadcasts and lectures regularly take him worldwide.  A graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, he made a special study of French music in Paris with Vlado Perlemuter, and is one of few British artists repeatedly invited to teach and play French music at major French-speaking Conservatoires and on French radio.  He is specially known for his lively lectures and masterclasses, which he has given worldwide at venues including the USA’s Juilliard and Eastman Schools.  In a wide-ranging career he has also conducted professionally, played violin in major London chamber orchestras, and held University posts in several countries.

A Steinway Artist, Roy Howat knows much of his concert repertoire from the composers’ manuscripts, and was one of the editors invited by the late François Lesure, along with Pierre Boulez and others, to found the Paris-based Complete Debussy Edition (Œuvres Complètes de Claude Debussy), for which he has edited much of the piano music.  Among his other publications are numerous Fauré Urtexts for Peters Edition, two seminal books (Debussy in proportion and The Art of French piano music), an English edition of Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger’s classic Chopin, pianist and teacher, and chapters in numerous other books on Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Bartók and other topics.  His championship of Chabrier has led to recordings and a Dover edition of  Chabrier’s marvellous piano music.  He hold the posts of Keyboard Research Fellow at London’s Royal Academy of Music, and Research Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.