Studies
He studied with Eileen Ralf and Keith Humble in Australia, Maria Curcio (the last and favourite pupil of Artur Schnabel) in England, and Theodore Lettvin in the USA. Eileen Ralf lived in Hobart, and the airline TAA flew Geoffrey to Hobart and back every week for lessons, free of charge. He later described Eileen Ralf's teaching as "the greatest musical gift given me". Aged fourteen years, he became the youngest semi-finalist ever at the Leeds International Piano Competition and soon afterwards made his European debut at a BBC Promenade Concert in the Royal Albert Hall, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis. He was the youngest person to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship.
In 1971, aged 16, he stayed with Benjamin Britten for several weeks. Britten invited him to perform at the Aldeburgh Festival, where he accompanied the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.
He performed at the inaugural concert of the Melbourne Concert Hall in 1982. In the early 1980s he taught at the University of Michigan. From 1983 he based himself in Canberra and briefly taught at the Canberra School of Music before his touring and recording schedules made this impractical. His early recordings were not commercially released; his first commercial recording, in 1986, was of John Ireland's Piano Concerto in E flat with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Measham, still considered by many the best recording of the work. In 1989 he worked with Peter Sculthorpe to record a disc of Sculthorpe's works for piano and strings.
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