Since its formation in 2021, the award-winning Astatine Trio has emerged as one of the UK’s most exciting young ensembles, most recently being named BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists for 2025-27. They were awarded second prize and the special prize for best performance of the prizewinning work of the composition competition at the 2025 Franz Schubert and Modern Music Competition in Graz, becoming the first UK-based ensemble to win a main prize in the competition’s history, and their other accolades include first prizes at the Birmingham International Piano Chamber Music Competition, Virtuoso&Belcanto International Chamber Competition (Lucca, Italy) and Senior Intercollegiate Piano Trio Competition in 2022. The trio have performed extensively across the UK and abroad, including at Wigmore Hall, The Glasshouse (as part of the BBC Proms), St George’s Bristol, Aldeburgh’s Jubilee Hall and the Harrogate Sunday Series, and as Britten Pears Young Artists for the 2023/24 season they made their debut appearance on BBC Radio 3 ‘In Tune’ in February 2024. They are current Hans Keller Chamber Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and are a resident ensemble at ProQuartet – Centre Européen de Musique de Chambre (Paris) for the 2025-2027 seasons. The trio have also been selected as Kirckman Concert Society artists for 2025/26.

From 2022-25 the trio benefited from the mentorship of legendary pianist Alfred Brendel, at his personal invitation. They have undertaken residencies at Snape Maltings and at the University of Cambridge, as part of ChamberStudio’s inaugural Hans Keller Forum, and attended the 2025 IMS Prussia Cove masterclasses in the class of Thomas Adès. Currently, they are being mentored by Anthony Marwood through ChamberStudio and are a member ensemble of the European Chamber Academy.

They are also grateful for the guidance of Richard Ireland, John Myerscough, Prach Boondiskulchok, Michał Kaznowski, Luc-Marie Aguera and Riccardo Cecchetti and have worked with Alasdair Beatson, Alina Ibragimova, David Waterman, Thomas Hoppe, Yovan Markovitch, Patrick Jüdt, Minna Pensola, Indre Baikstytė, Tim Horton, Donald Grant, Adrian Brendel, Peter Nagy, Krysia Osostowicz, Christoph Richter, Bruno Giuranna, Robin Ireland, the Gould Trio and the Busch Trio, among others.

Passionate advocates for new music, the trio received the SEAM Prize for contemporary music at the 2023 Lyon International Chamber Competition, in which they were the youngest finalists. They also gave the premiere of a new piano trio by Timothy Salter in June 2025, written especially for the group.

The trio is thankful to ChamberStudio, the Piano Trio Society, Maggie Grimsdell (Music at Longhill Road), Philip Carne and the Nicholas Boas Charitable Trust for their generous support.

Susan Tomes has won numerous awards as a pianist, both on the concert platform and in the recording studio. She grew up in Edinburgh and was the first woman to take a degree in music at King’s College, Cambridge, when co-education arrived at the college after 400 years. Her career encompasses solo, duo and chamber playing. She has performed in 29 countries (some of them many times) and has been at the heart of the internationally admired ensembles Domus, the Gaudier Ensemble, and the Florestan Trio, winners of a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. In 2013 she was awarded the Cobbett Medal for her services to chamber music.

She has made over fifty CDs, many of which have become benchmark recordings. Her recordings with Domus and with the Florestan Trio have won ten international awards and thirty-three ‘Best of the Month/Year/Decade’ designations from critics. She has served on many international competition juries and chaired the Piano Trio jury at the ARD International Competition in Munich in 2023.

Susan is a writer as well as a pianist. For her these activities are intertwined. In both playing and writing she is fired by a wish to understand music, explore its context and convey its meaning to listeners and readers. Her lecture-recitals have given listeners new insight into the music she performs.

She has written five acclaimed books about performing: Beyond the Notes (2004), A Musician’s Alphabet (2006), Out of Silence (2010), Sleeping in Temples (2014) and Speaking the Piano (2018). Her books are studied on performance practice courses around the English-speaking world and have inspired several PhDs. Her appeal to a diverse readership was demonstrated by her appearances at the Edinburgh International Book Festivals in 2016, 2019 and 2024.

Her sixth book, The Piano: A History in 100 Pieces, (Yale University Press, 2021) was a Book of the Year in The Spectator and the Financial Times, a Scottish Book of 2021 in The Scotsman, and won a Presto Music Award. Her seventh book, Women and the Piano – a History in Fifty Lives (Yale, 2024) was one of the New Yorker’s ‘best books of 2024’; the Wall Street Journal described it as ‘delightfully provocative and consistently informative’ and the Financial Times made it one of their Best Summer Books of 2024. It won a Presto Music Award for a ‘Book of the Year’. To raise awareness of the women featured in the book, Susan has been giving recitals of piano music by female pianist-composers whose music has delighted audiences.

Susan’s eighth book, Nocturnes and the Fascination of Night Music, will be published by Yale University Press in March 2026.

In 2023, Susan was one of fifty women chosen to be photographed for a special exhibition of portraits by award-winning photographer Jooney Woodward to mark 50 years of female undergraduates at King’s College, Cambridge. The portraits have now been permanently installed outside the Dining Hall in the College.