Cameron Richardson-Eames, aged just 15, from Tetney has won the international piano competition held in Newcastle Upon Tyne.


Cameron, son of David and Geraldine Richardson-Eames, has been playing the piano for eight years and, for the competition, played, amongst others, Beethoven's 5th Piano Sonata and Chopin's Fantasie-Impromtu.


He said: "I thought everyone else was more advanced than me and it was a strange feeling to win. I felt I had reached a milestone."

Cameron was awarded First Place and Gold Medal after the three day competition at the end of October, which attracted entrants from across the world as well as several from the UK.

His adjudications read that it was Cameron's empathy with the piano and music, combined with the tonal colours he extracted from the instrument, that led the international panel of judges to award him first place and the gold medal in the main category of the competition.

Cameron travels to the Junior Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester every Saturday where his main tutors are John Gough for piano and Ian Gray for voice.

During the rest of the day he has composition lessons with Emily Howard, who has just won the 2008 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for visual artists and composers, takes part in piano quintet lessons and performs in the Vocal Ensemble sections of the college.

Cameron has recently been approached by Pro Corda, the national school for chamber music, to be a pianist for their courses in Suffolk. The February course will place special emphasis on the music of Britten and Schubert. There are over 800 unpublished chamber music works by Benjamin Britten. Pro Corda students will be the first people ever to play this music and special concerts are planned in collaboration with the Britten-Pears Foundation.

His musical education started at the age of three with the guitar, followed by the piano at six and the cello and double bass at nine. Since September 2005 Cameron has also studied voice. He achieved grade 7 in Piano (aged 13), scoring the highest mark of the year and therefore being the recipient of the Lloyd Hartley Memorial Prize, and grade 8 in Singing (aged 14).

Cameron takes an active interest in the local music scene, being a member of the Grimsby & Cleethorpes District Youth Orchestra playing double bass, and frequently gives charity recitals throughout Lincolnshire and the rest of the UK.

He has enjoyed considerable success in music festivals across the north of England for piano, singing and drama which he continues to study locally.

The many organisations of which Cameron is a member include the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, Yorkshire Youth Choir, Humberston Singers and Yorchestra – held at York University.


His former teacher was Heather Lagusz from Stallingborough.


Cameron's ambition, hardly surprising, is to be a music teacher and a performer.