Nicholas Cox

Senior Tutor Clarinet at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester since 2003, Nicholas Cox graduated from St Catharine's College, Cambridge and studied clarinet at the Musikhochschule in Hannover with Professor Hans Deinzer on a DAAD scholarship.

A prizewinner at the 1984 Royal Over-Seas League Competition in London and the Jeunesses Musicales International Clarinet Competition in 1987 in Belgrade, he has appeared at most festivals in the UK and in many other countries and has worked with the finest quartets such as the Brodsky, Danel, Endellion, Chillingirian and Skampa and has performed concertos with several orchestras including the RLPO where he has been Principal Clarinet for 21 years. His recording of Mozart's Concerto & Quintet (ClassCD1502) with the RLPO and Roy Goodman 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 in recent times.

Several composers have written for him including Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Hugh Wood, Peter Fribbins, David Horne, Adam Gorb, Anthony Powers, Emily Howard and Andrei Eshpai. In 2010 he gave the premiere of Dove of Peace, a Concerto for clarinet and ensemble by the Catalan composer Benet Casablancas. His performance of this work can be viewed on YouTube. For five years he founded and ran the Liverpool-based contemporary music group
Ensemble 10/10 and he single-handedly revived Liverpool's Rodewald Chamber Music series.

In May 2006, his pupil Mark Simpson from Junior RNCM became the first musician to win both BBC Young Musician and BBC Young Composer titles. Several of his former students are now in professional orchestras.As a researcher he has edited the final work of Mieczyslaw Weinberg and 6 Sonatas by
Francois Devienne, 2 of which have appeared in the ABRSM sylllabus. His other recordings regularly played on Classic FM include Brahms/Reger Sonatas(Cala 88012) and Bliss's Quintet(Redcliffe010). His most recent new CD of British clarinet music including works by Arnold Bax, Roger Fiske, Iain Hamilton, Richard Rodney Bennett and Hugh Wood was released on the British Music Society label (BMS440) in December 2011