Tutors

Here at Highland Music Holidays we have some fine tutors, all of whom have vast experience and the ability to share their knowledge, technique and enjoyment...

Anne Macdearmid

Anne Macdearmid was born and educated in Aberdeen. She studied Concert harp with Sanchia Pielou at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and graduated in singing, harp and piano. Later she found that her true love was the clarsach both as a solo and accompanying instrument. She has presented countless recitals and workshops all over the world. She has gained international recognition for her composing and arranging having published twelve books which are in constant demand by players and teachers because of the musicality and imaginative presentation. Anne is a frequent and popular tutor at the yearly International Harp Festival in Edinburgh.

Ian Partridge

Ian Partridge has an international reputation as a concert singer and recitalist. His tenor voice, with its most distinctive timbre, and his unfailing sensitivity to words have earned him a devoted following through his hundreds of broadcasts and recordings. His wide repertoire encompasses the music of Monteverdi, Bach and Handel, Elizabethan lute songs, German, French and English songs and first performances of new works.

Ian Partridge's phenomenal list of recordings includes Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin (first choice in BBC Radio 3's Building a Library and recently re-released in the UK), Schumann's Dichterliebe and Liederkreis Opus 39, Britten's Serenade, Vaughan Williams's On Wenlock Edge, Warlock's The Curlew, three discs of English 20th century songs, Romantic Songs for voice and guitar with Jakob Lindberg, Schubert's Winterreise with Richard Burnett on a period piano, and, with The Sixteen Choir and Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Harry Christophers, the complete set of Handel's Chandos Anthems, Purcell's The Fairy Queen and the part of the Evangelist in Bach's St John Passion.

Ian Partridge continues to collaborate with the actress Prunella Scales, with whom he has shared over 350 performances of An Evening with Queen Victoria all over the world. Ian Partridge has also enjoyed taking masterclasses on Lieder, English Song and Early Music at venues as diverse as Aldeburgh, Vancouver, Trondheim, Versailles and Helsinki. He is a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and was awarded the CBE in 1992 for services to music.

Jennifer Partridge

Jennifer is acknowledged as one of Britain’s leading piano accompanists as well as a most sensitive solo performer. Trained as a pianist and singer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she first broadcast for BBC radio when she was 12, since when she has appeared in concerts, recitals, radio and TV programmes all over the world, performing the works of Beethoven, Bach, Schumann, Schubert, Fauré, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Ivor Novello, George Gershwin et al.
At the piano she featured in TV favourites such as The Two Ronnies, Dad’s Army and Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
With her brother, the eminent tenor Ian Partridge, she has won plaudits from critics and audiences world-wide for their bench mark recordings and live performances of lieder, English and French songs.
When she is not performing, Jennifer is much in demand for Master Classes and as a teacher and coach to young and established piano accompanists and singers. She has also examined and adjudicated at examinations and competitions at the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, Trinity College and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Margaret Knight

A graduate and prizewinner of the Royal Academy of Music, Margaret now pursues an international solo career specialising in singing to her own harp accompaniment.

Margaret has performed for Russian Television in the winter palace of Peter-the –Great; in Japan for the Empress at the Soka harp festival, Tokyo; in America for the North American Jane Austin Society conference; in Istanbul, playing on a steam ship for Turkish celebrities and European journalists; in Scandinavia and Germany where she took her harps to parties! Margaret also visits Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand every spring to give concerts and master classes.

For the For BBC Radio, Margaret has composed and performed music for Radio Dramas as well as being featured in her own right on radio 4’s The Afternoon shift and Desert Island Discs for the A B C. Margaret has recorded the sound tracks for many films - she was the hand-double for Kylie Minogue in Jim Hensons’ 2005 "Jack and the Beanstalk" recorded at Elstree Studios!

In 2006 ,along with other well known British musicians Margaret was invited to Buckingham Palace to cellebrate her services for British music . She is the resident harpist for Warwick Castle, and recently played for the Home Office and their European counterparts in the Queen's state dining room.

Margaret has enjoyed passing on her skills to young students, and has developed a harp school on the lovely Island of Jersey in the Channel Isles as well as her private pupils at home. She has tutored in workshops and given many demonstration recitals worldwide.

Guest Tutors

Where instruments other than Harps and Voices are involved Highland Music Holidays will invite the appropriate tutors to suit the group and its instruments. We can be quite flexible regarding the range of instruments on any one holiday.

Richard Roddis

Richard Roddis won joint First Prize for his Lieder singing in a national competition staged by the London Lieder Group, in December 2001. The event attracted 265 entrants, from whom eight Finalists were judged by Graham Johnson and Anthony Rolfe Johnson.

As a Recitalist, Richard has made a speciality of the German Lied. Since teaming up with Clive Pollard in 1997, he has performed Schubert's song-cycle Die schöne Müllerin a number of times around the Midlands, on the first occasion as part of the composer's bicentenary celebrations. He has also performed Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, and Wandsbecker Liederbuch by Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck. Richard and Clive have issued a CD: Songs of Joy and Woe, featuring Dichterliebe and English song.

His recital repertoire encompasses English song across the 20th-century and into the 21st. At one end, a full recital of Roger Quilter songs, at the other contemporary composers such as Patrick Larley, Trevor Hold and David Halls. Richard's recording of Larley songs is called: On a Fine Morning. He sings in a number of foreign languages, including songs by Rachmaninov and Moravian songs by Klement Slavický, and folksongs from many lands, often unaccompanied.

Among his work with instrumental ensembles he has performed Warlock The Curlew, Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge, Gurney Ludlow & Teme, Finzi Dies Natalis and Britten Serenade. He is shortly to premiere Pilgrimage, for tenor and piano quintet, by David Halls.

As an Oratorio tenor, he has sung many times the role of Evangelist in the Bach Passions, and much standard repertoire up to Britten and Stravinsky. He recently sang tenor solos in the Bach Magnificat, under Paul Spicer, and in Purcell's King Arthur, under Harry Christophers. In Opera and Light Opera, he has musically directed many works, and taken principal rôles in Magic Flute, Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore, Trial by Jury, Merrie England and modern one-act opera.

Richard graduated in Music at Exeter University and held a Choral Scholarship at the Cathedral. He now combines a career as a solo singer with the directorship of several choirs and a busy teaching practice. He is on the peripatetic music staff at Nottingham High School and Lincoln Minster School.