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Gold medallist
in the 1984 Royal Over-Seas League Competition in London, Nicholas Cox established his international reputation winning prizes at the 1987 Jeunesses Musicales International Clarinet Competition in Belgrade. After reading music at Cambridge University, he studied at the Musikhochschule in Hanover with Hans Deinzer on a DAAD scholarship.
Nicholas has since played Principal Clarinet with all of the UK's orchestras and appeared as soloist at festivals in the UK and abroad. He was Principal Clarinet of the Liverpool Philharmonic for 22 years during which time he also re-established a professional series of chamber music concerts in Liverpool and founded the RLPO’s new music group, Ensemble 10/10. He has played quintets with some of the finest quartets including the Brodsky, Danel, Endellion, Chillingirian and Skampa and concertos with several orchestras. Commissioned works include Hugh Wood, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, David Horne, Adam Gorb, Antony Powers, Yuri Kasparov and Benet Casablancas. In 1999 he gave the première of the Clarinet Concerto by Adam Gorb. In 2007 he premiered Dove of Peace a Concerto written for him by Benet Casablancas with Ensemble 10/10. He has also premiered works by Giya Kancheli and Nikolai Kapustin.
His recording of Mozart's Concerto & Quintet (ClassCD1502) was Record of the Week on Classic FM on its release in 2003 and has become one of the most frequently broadcast recordings of the Concerto. His recording of Richard Strauss's Duet Concertino (Avie 2071) is equally highly regarded. Other recordings include the Sonatas by Brahms and Reger (United:Cala 88012), works for Clarinet by Bliss, Rawsthorne and Routh (Redcliffe 010) and an album juxtaposing works dedicated to the English clarinettist Frederick Thurston and those he has premiered(The Thurston Connection re-issued on Naxos 8.571357 in 2015).
He has been Senior Tutor, Clarinet at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester since 2003. In 2022, he took up the post of Visiting Professor of Clarinet at Széchenyi István University of Györ, Hungary. In 2023, he was appointed Senior Lecturer in Wind Chamber Music and Orchestral Studies at the Musikhochschule in Graz. In 2006, his former student Mark Simpson became the first musician to win both BBC Young Musician and Young Composer titles. Since 2012, he has visited several countries giving classes and recitals. As a researcher, he has contributed to the Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet (CUP 1995), edited some of Mieczyslaw Weinberg's late works (Peermusic Hamburg) and lectured in several countries on Brahms and his editions of Sonatas by Francois Devienne and Jean Xavier Lefèvre (Edition HH). He has also recently collaborated with the composer Roger Purcell writing piano parts for a set of teaching pieces Homages (Emerson Edition E 780) and a Jazz Suite soon to be published by Emerson Music.
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