Robert Wallace Laird is a Scottish/Filipino pianist, composer and teacher born in Chingola, Zambia 1987. In 1994 he moved from Zambia to his father’s birth place in the Scottish Highlands where he began his musical journey with formal piano lessons under Rosemary Kennedy. Robert received the Tracey Lawson music award during his studies at Grantown-On-Spey Grammar School. He also gained a place on the Sound Inventors Programme for composition, which saw his quartet performed live at the Inverness Town House by the Glasgow String Quartet.

In 2005 he moved to Edinburgh to study music at Edinburgh College with Laurie Crump and Hilary Saunders. In 2007 he continued his studies at Edinburgh Napier University’s Ian Tomlin School Of Music. His principal teachers were Simon Coverdale (piano), Kenneth Dempster (composition), and Nicolas Ashton.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Music with Honours in 2011, Robert moved to Perth, Western Australia to start a music school. He also accepted the post of Honorary Representative for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) in Western Australia.

Robert has performed at the University of Western Australia (UWA) for the world premier of his string quartets and piano quintet with Australian renowned violinist, Paul Wright and string quartet, Sartory. He was joined on stage by fellow composer Stuart James (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts,WAAPA). Robert also worked for the publishing company Fintage House Publishing (Hague), where he published film music and other commercial music. He later worked with the international publisher Kobalt before leaving the commercial publishing world to focus on his own teaching and self-publishing. Robert has recorded his string quartets with Stuart James (WAAPA) at Soundfield studio and has recorded his own piano works at his home studio.