A Dubliner, John Prendergast studied English Literature and Music at Trinity College Dublin after winning the Gerald Victory commission for his choral composition, The Windhover. The work was based on the poem by Gerald Manley Hopkins. After graduation, he specialised in piano pedagogy under Brian Beckett at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and graduated in 2012 with a first class honours Diploma in Music Teaching and Performance. John has won various awards in Ireland over many years of piano playing; in recent years, he won the Esposito Cup at the Feis Ceoil, was Very Highly Commended in the Mabel Swainson Pianforte Award, and was a finalist in the Nordell Cup. He also won the Emerald Cup for the best performance of a work by a contemporary Irish composer at the National Festival of the Piano Academy of Ireland, for a performance of Fantasie Variations by Brian Beckett. Since September 2012, John has been studying accompanying in Angers, France, with Anne-Yvonne Bertholet, and is playing with various local French chamber music groups, choirs, and a jazz trio. His French continues to improve!