Thomas is now currently on a Masters of Music year at the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of Hamish Milne. He is gaining recognition for his thoughtful and searching recital programmes, having presented a string of critical successes, as well as being a quick and sensitive accompanist and collaborator. He has won prizes for his performances of Beethoven, Frederick Delius, Arthur Bliss and the contemporary piano repertoire.
Thomas performs as part of several contemporary-music ensembles, including playing John Cage at the Purcell Room in 2013 and two programmes of Boulez’s music at the 2015 Aldeburgh Music Festival. With his piano duo he recently performed the complete non-sonata piano works of Boulez, including the two books of Structures, in London as well as various concerts in Australia and around the UK. In other chamber groups he maintains a strong interest in unusual repertoire of the late Romantic, as well as mid-20th-century British music. In addition, he is a specialist in the music of Nikolai Kapustin, having played several local and world premieres of his works.
He has worked with conductors such as Susanna Mälkki, Clement Power, Sian Edwards and Jonathan Berman as well as composers Oliver Knussen, John Adams and Nikolai Kapustin in playing their music. He has also played in classes by Stephen Hough, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Imogen Cooper, Kathryn Stott and Yevgeny Sudbin among others.
Off the concert stage, Thomas works as a répétiteur, most recently playing for the first-ever Wagner production in Singapore (Die fliegender Holländer). He also accompanies and improvises for silent film, having performed at the Barbican Cinema in Erotikon by Gustav Machatý. Thomas also plays the violin, which he studies as a second instrument at the Academy with Diana Cummings, and writes poetry and piano transcriptions of songs and symphonies.
Free recital (retiring collection)