Tim Watts

Tim Watts has been a Fellow of St John’s College since 2014 and holds the post of College Lecturer in Music. He is an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Music where he lectures in Tonal Skills. He also supervises courses in Composition and Analysis.

Tim is an active composer and pianist. His music has been performed across the UK in venues including Wigmore Hall, the Purcell Room, the King’s Head Theatre and Ely Cathedral, as well as internationally in Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore. His opera Kepler’s Trial was commissioned by St John’s College, Cambridge, and premiered there in 2016, before coming to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum in 2017 as part of the acclaimed Opera: Passion, Power and Politics festival.

Other recent works include a new ballet score for Southbank Sinfonia, a touring show based on Michael Foreman’s War Game for Britten Sinfonia, song cycles for Andrew Kennedy and Cerys Purser, as well as several vocal, chamber and choral works for St John’s College.

In 2013 he was the featured composer at the King’s Lynn Festival and in 2016 he was invited to become Vice-President of King’s Lynn Music Society. In 2014 he was the joint winner of the Horniman Museum Composition Competition. In addition to his current roles at St John’s College, he is a professor at the Royal College of Music in London.

Tim studied composition with Jeffery Wilson, Hugh Wood and Robin Holloway. He also trained as a piano accompanist at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he had lessons with Norman Beedie and participated in masterclasses with Iain Burnside, Graham Johnson, Martin Katz and Malcolm Martineau. His studies there were supported by an award from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust.