NORTH ALABАМА
INTERNATIONAL PIANO SERIES
JOSEPH LIONEL FLEETWOOD
March 13, 2026
7pm
Joseph Lionel Fleetwood comes from an extraordinary musical lineage. His first teacher was Katherine McLauchlan, a pupil of Tobias Matthay, whose students included Myra Hess, Moura Lympany, and Clifford Curzon. Joseph’s final teacher of seven years was the
Scottish pianist George Donald, who studied with Karl Ulrich Schnabel and Aube Tzerko. Both Schnabel and Tzerko studied under Artur Schnabel, himself a student of Leschetizky, who had studied with Beethoven’s protégé, Carl Czerny.
Joseph is descended from Russian Jews on his father’s side, his grandmother having been a refugee from the Pale of Settlement, and on his mother’s side his fourth great-uncle was Sir George Smart, the English conductor who was a friend of Beethoven and conducted the first London performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Joseph has performed throughout Europe and the USA in Vienna, Milan, Naples, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and many other places. As a concerto soloist Joseph has performed many of the great piano concertos including Tchaikovsky 1 and 2, Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Rachmaninoff 1 and 2, Beethoven 1–5, Mozart 21, Shostakovich 2, Grieg, Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue, and Mendelssohn 1.
Joseph has worked with many outstanding and celebrated musicians including Josef Swensen, Gianandrea Noseda, Artur Pizarro, Malcolm Martineau, Karen Cargill, Miranda Keys, Stephen Clark, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the orchestras of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Royal College of Music.
Joseph’s playing has been broadcast on BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC Radio Scotland, and regional stations throughout the UK as both live performances and CD recordings. His debut CD featured some popular and lesser-known works by Edvard Grieg. In 2020 his recording of J.S. Bach’s Partitas was released on Sheva and has sold a staggering 750,000 downloads. Joseph is currently working on a new recording of Rachmaninoff ’s Sonata No. 1 and the Preludes Op. 23 for Roithman Recordings.
In 2016 Joseph was commissioned to compose a short piece of music for Piano Restorations Ltd in the UK, and the resulting piece was filmed and made into a TV advertisement for the company. The video, which was posted on Classic FM’s Facebook page, has received over 750,000 views and became the most viewed video on their page. Outside of the world of classical music, Joseph was invited by Sotheby’s on behalf of the Freddie Mercury estate to advise them on the sale of Freddie’s piano in 2023.
Joseph holds degrees from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Royal College of Music, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Alabama, and has taught at the University of St. Andrews, the University of Aberdeen, and Alabama Center for the Arts.