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Lowri
Blake
MA Cantab, ARCM (Performers), LRAM
(Teachers)
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Latest news
Lowri returns to teach at Dartington International Summer School
in 2010. The dates: 31 July to 7 August.
Cello teaching
Learning how to
teach, and teaching how to learn, are skills that have greatly informed my
own cello playing, and teaching has always played a significant part in my
musical life. I learned as much about teaching as I did about performing
from my own teachers, Prudence Ashbee, Christopher Bunting, Jacqueline du
Pré, Johannes Goritzki, and from composer Hugh Wood with whom I studied
Music at Cambridge University.
Until my move to the south of
France in 2005, I was Professor of Cello at both the Royal College of
Music and Trinity College of Music in London. I maintain close links with
RCM and Trinity, visiting regularly to examine degree and postgraduate
recitals. I still have a busy private practice of students in London and I
am building up a French practice too, as well as acting as a jury member
for exam panels at the Toulouse Conservatoire and in the Tarn region,
where I now live.
Professor of
Cello at the Royal College of Music and Trinity College of Music,
London
My involvement at the Royal College of Music and
Trinity College of Music has been wide-ranging. At RCM, in addition to
giving individual lessons each week, I regularly took string faculty
classes and Art of Teaching classes for cellists and double bass players,
and I set up a contemporary music faculty class entitled ‘Strings 20-21’.
I enjoyed chamber music coaching and I started the RCM Cello Ensemble,
Benvenuti, with whom I gave a
recital of music for eight cellos at the Cheltenham International Festival
in 2000. I was a member of the RCM Board of Professors from
2004-2005.
My life at Trinity has been just as fulfilling as at
RCM, with masterclasses and workshops (usually scales workshops, much in
demand before the exam season!), plenty of examining and auditioning, and
a busy class of motivated cello students. I enjoy going back each year to
do some examining – last summer, to listen to a varied diet of voice, oboe
and percussion recitals.
At both RCM and TCM I listened to and
assessed a number of student concerts every week, offering written
feedback to the performers. At RCM, I piloted a concert reporting scheme,
for students themselves to write feedback on their peers’ performances,
thereby encouraging students to listen to, and learn from, their fellow
students. I participated in new ventures into peer assessment processes
via video-conferencing, a collaboration between the RCM and the University
of Ulster. Each year I took part in careers seminars, offering advice and
insights into getting into the ‘business’ and how to manage a ‘portfolio’
career.
At the invitation of the then Director of the RCM, Dr
Janet Ritterman, I represented the College at a series of conferences
concerning the assessment of practical performance at colleges and
universities, hosted by Dr Desmond Hunter of the University of Ulster. I
subsequently contributed a chapter about assessment at the Royal College
of Music to Dr Hunter’s book, How Am I
Doing?.
Examining
Examining has always
been a major part of my work at the conservatoires. At the RCM, I chaired
final recital and postgraduate recital panels each year, also acting as a
member of the undergraduate Board of Examiners for six years. In addition,
I regularly sat on entrance audition and concerto audition panels. My
interest in practical assessment led to an invitation to speak on Fairness and Objectivity in Practical
Examining at the first RCM Professors’ Conference in 2002.
Whilst a large proportion of my examining work is, of course,
listening to cello recitals, I have had the privilege of listening to
music performed on just about every instrument at RCM and TCM. My
favourite recitals have been the percussion finals of Owen Gunnell and
Oliver Cox at RCM a few years back, and Nick Reed’s stunning performance,
also on percussion, at the 2007 RCM Finals. Elsewhere, I have acted
as external cello specialist at the Birmingham Conservatoire and Royal
Welsh College of Music and Drama on many occasions. I was cello and double
bass examiner for six years (until spring 2007) at the Royal Northern
College of Music, and the Chief External Examiner for Strings at the Royal
Scottish Academy of Music and Drama for four years. Outside of the
conservatoire field, I have regularly been on the jury for the Chamber
Music in Schools Competition and the Park Lane Group Young Artists Series,
the BBC Young Artists Forum and BBC Young Musician of the Year, and I act
as a diploma examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of
Music.
Teaching positions before
RCM and TCM
I taught for several years at the Royal College
of Music Junior Department, where I was myself a student until I was
seventeen years old. I also taught at The Yehudi Menuhin School from 1987
until 1989, and at The Royal Academy of Music between 1988 and
1990.
Private
teaching
I started teaching privately at the age of 16, and
I have maintained an active private practice throughout my professional
life, with students coming from all over the UK and now France. My
students range from talented teenagers, diploma students, keen amateurs
and university students, to busy professional players: orchestral
musicians in need of technical and postural advice, or chamber musicians
and soloists working towards major recitals.
Former students - where are they
now?
Many of my students are now professional musicians,
active as soloists, chamber musicians, and as orchestral players, working
with the English Chamber Orchestra, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC
National Orchestra of Wales, the Academy of St.Martin-in-the-Fields, City
of London Sinfonia, The Philharmonia, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, to
name just a few. Quite a number have taken the period instrument route, a
path which I have always strongly encouraged; some are playing with the
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and one is now Professor of Baroque
Cello at the RCM. One of my hugely gifted cello pupils at the Yehudi
Menuhin School is now building a very fine reputation as a composer, as
are two other former private pupils. Other students are freelance
musicians, session players, combining the orchestral life with chamber
music, and often, also to my great delight, teaching. A former TCM student
is Head of Music at King’s School, Canterbury, another is head of Strings
at Thames Valley University, and I have students playing and teaching as
far afield as New Zealand and Australia, Brazil, Finland, the USA and the
Czech Republic.
Masterclasses
To name a few:
Hochschule für Künste, Berlin at the Symposium for double bass players
1998, Eton Cello Course, Gathering of the Clans, London College of Music,
annual masterclass at Lauderdale House in Highgate, Trinity College of
Music, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, National Youth Orchestra
of Spain, Birmingham Conservatoire, Summer Music, University of Ulster,
University of Huddersfield, contemporary music masterclasses for the
Goldberg Contemporary Music Festival at the RNCM and the Leeds New Music
Festival 2001, Ryedale Festival, Ribchester Festival, Dartington
International Summer School since 1998.
At Dartington, as at many
festivals, I combine concerts with a period of masterclasses. I spent a
week there in 2007, performing contemporary multi-tracked music for cello
and voice, and teaching each day. My
2008 programme juxtaposed new music by Cheryl Frances Hoad and Kurtág with
baroque sonatas by Geminiani, Barričre and Boccherini, and in 2009 I
played a solo recital of music by Telemann, Bach, Imogen Holst and
Carl Vine. See my blog for pictures of the 2007, 2008
and 2009 classes at www.busyline.blogspot.com. I’ll be there again in
Summer 2010 from 31 July to 7 August, so keep an eye out for the DISS news
on their website www.dartington.org/summer-school and do come along.
Advanced students, amateurs and professionals are all welcome in my
class.
Tutoring
I have tutored chamber music at Pro Corda, and in Martel, France
with violinists Malcolm Layfield and the late
Christopher Rowland, and pianist Ian Brown. I also tutored the cello
section of the National Youth Orchestra of Spain and, for many years, the
National Youth Orchestra of Wales.
Talks
In addition to speaking at
the RCM Professors’ Conference, I have offered hot tips at the Oxford
Cello School for cellists auditioning for a place at the RCM, presented a
talk on practice-based research to professors at the Leeds College of
Music, and spoken about Taking
Responsibility for One’s Own Learning at the 2002 European String Teachers'
Association (ESTA) Conference in Denmark, at which bass player Peter
Buckoke and I also performed our classical cabaret A Man, A Woman and a Double
Bass.
Published work in
education
For Faber Music, I wrote The Really Easy Cello Book with my
brother, composer Ian Blake, and prepared a new edition of Busoni’s Serenata for cello and piano, which was
chosen for inclusion in the Associated Board Grade 8 syllabus.
My
talks at the RCM and ESTA conferences were published in the ESTA journal
News and Views, and I have written many book and music reviews for The
Strad and Sheet Music Review. Personal memories of my former teacher, the
cellist Christopher Bunting, appeared in the obituary in The
Guardian.
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