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Hello Cellists! I do hope you are having some time to rest this summer. I find that when I step aside and change gear, I make room for new ideas to come into view to refresh me and help me re‐think and reshape. I am looking forward to next year’s Summer School as people are enquiring in order to make plans. I have had requests from freelancers too and what has come out of this is that

Hello Passionate Cellists! The days are getting longer and lighter and I am thinking more about what the year holds for us cellists here at Cello Courses. I am thrilled by the success of the new online course, All About My Bow, and its very new sibling, the Bow Primer which launched just two weeks ago. In order to bring music alive, we need a skill set that is both intellectual, aural and physical. Our technique is a big subject

Dear cellist, As we come to the end of the year, I just wanted to make contact with you and to let you know that there are courses and workshops for 2023, both in-­person, and online now up on my website. I love presenting this year’s new series All About My Bow which is attended by players from around the globe. This infinite subject is a constant source for us to explore together, enabling you to

Please tell us more about your online cello courses. Well, they came out of COVID. I had always intended to open myself up to teaching one-to-one online, but when COVID struck, and we all had to swing around and reinvent ourselves, I’d had to cancel all of my in-person courses, in particular the summer course, and thought, “So what am I going to do?” Because I was already doing some one-to-one

Hello Cellist! At last, we are going to be together again, in-­person, playing, learning and growing. We have all had a long, unnatural break in our musical lives and I’m so glad to be able to tell you that the 1-­day Unsung Heroes Cello Ensemble workshops start on February 19th, here in Lewes, East Sussex. More will follow through the year. I love these days when we immerse ourselves in fabulous music, explore and

It’s lovely to have you onboard. What a year this has been on so many levels for all of us and I do hope all is well with you and yours. So many of us instrumentalists swung round at the start of lockdown and started a teaching practice online. I have found that I see, think and teach differently in this new, unforeseen scenario. Many exciting ideas have come out of these strange times. As I could no

We like to think that our progress and development is more linear than may be the case. I see progress where sometimes a pupil doesn’t. In fact, this week a student I was teaching, felt she was going backwards. She sounded almost as if she was, to some extent, in crisis. Perception is a thing that needs closely looking at. What we see, because we inhabit our own world and thoughts, our vision and dreams that we hold

I have been teaching cellists online for a few months now, and on Saturday I launched the new Online Time Line series. It is another arm of the Unsung Heroes Cello Ensemble workshops and courses I have been running since 2005. This online project had been quietly going round my head for a while, and then was brought into focus by the idea of restriction from our state of lockdown. Limitation can be seen as a gift and makes it

I have been working for a year now with a lady, in her 70s, with Parkinson's. Normally I would cross town to teach her as it’s difficult for her to travel and we need to work when her drugs create the best situation for her. Now though, I’m teaching online and I’m seeing new things, thinking differently and changing habits. As I played the piece to her that we are now learning

Listening and hearing… what a subject! As teachers and players, we are doing them both all the time. It’s absorbing and can be tiring. This last week I have noticed two pupils have suddenly “heard” what I’ve been saying for a long time. They have acted and I can see the enlightened looks on their faces, of the surprise and pleasure of having shifted themselves into a new state of awareness and new

I intend to be sharing thoughts and ideas here and hope we can start some conversations whether you are a teacher or student. We all learn from each other. At the moment I have a private teaching practice with a wide mix of children, teenagers and adult students. I love having a mix. It keeps me on my toes. Over the years I have taught players with Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Asperger’s and one person, with part of a finger