Seaton Music – “Rising Stars”

(Eric Nan, Ashleigh Turley & Rachel Mi)

Seaton Music has a remit under its constitution to support music in education. To that end, all of our Classical Season concerts and some Fringe events are free to attend for under 19’s and those in full time education. Where possible, we also fund masterclasses and workshops for music students with some of the professional artist who come to perform for us in East Devon.
The “Rising Stars” programme aims to go further than that and actively encourage live performance by giving young aspiring professional musicians the opportunity to perform in a formal concert setting. This gives them valuable experience and will boost their chance of career progression.

(Joh Fujita, Samuel Gleave & Alma Dobrescu)

Our first concert in the programme, which took place in October 2025 was a great success, featuring talented piano students of extremely high quality. We now hear from a variety of instrumentalist as well as our pianists. With further support and if we can secure additional funding, we are hoping to stage these very important concerts at least twice a year.
Seaton Music is very grateful to Alex Wilson for all the work he puts into this project, from defining the programme and coaching the students to hosting the concerts themselves. We are also grateful to the Gateway Theatre Company for supporting this initiative and for their continued collaboration with Seaton Music.

Alex Wilson

Exeter resident Alex Wilson was born and raised in Gloucestershire. He studied at York University and for a Masters in piano performance with Andrew Ball at the Royal College of Music, from which he graduated with distinction in 2011. As a concert pianist he has performed around the country, in venues including Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Cadogan Hall, and has performed in France, Spain and at the Rachmaninov Hall, Moscow.
Alex Wilson is a musician with a passion for the unusual, new and unexplored: a versatile pianist with interests ranging from cutting edge new music to fascinating repertoire by forgotten composers. Alex is renowned for his performances of the piano music of composer, pianist, rower and war hero F.S.Kelly: a CD of first recordings of the solo piano music was released in 2020, with a second recording – featuring Kelly’s works alongside new music by composer Sadie Harrison – released in 2023.