Following a highly competitive recruitment process, multiple award-winning saxophonist and composer Laura Macdonald has been appointed Head of Jazz at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Announcing her appointment, Professor Aaron Shorr, Director of Music at RCS, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have secured such a wonderful artist and teacher as Laura to lead the Jazz Programme at RCS.

“Laura has a distinguished international performance and recording career and has also been a highly valued member of teaching faculty here at RCS since 2022.

“We look forward very much to the development of the Jazz programme under her leadership.”

Born in Prestwick in Ayrshire, Laura began playing alto saxophone at the age of sixteen at school.

She was given full scholarship to Berklee School of Music in Boston where she studied with Bill Pierce, formerly a saxophonist with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

She graduated from Berklee winning the institution’s annual Excellence in Performance award.

In 1997, Laura was the first winner of the Scottish Young Jazz Musician of the Year award becoming lead alto player in the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra the following year.

She released her first album, Laura, on Spartacus Records in 2000. Recorded in New York with a heavyweight American trio comprising David Budway (piano), James Genus (bass) and Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts (drums), it featured Laura’s own compositions alongside well-known pieces by Charles Mingus and Pat Metheny.

Her second album, Awakenings, featured Laura’s International Sextet playing music she composed.

In 2012, Laura was commissioned by the European Jazz Network to celebrate their 25th anniversary. In 2014, she was commissioned as part of the 20 for 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and also commissioned at London Jazz Festival to write a duet piece to coincide with the release of her fourth CD, Duets, with David Berkman.

Laura is a double nominee for the Paul Hamlyn Composition Award and was the Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year at the Scottish Jazz Awards 2021.

The following year, Laura became RCS’s first female jazz saxophone lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She takes up her new appointment next month (March).