Hello! I offer two specialisms
- help with performance anxiety (on any instrument)
- natural horn (especially low horn)
I can help you with your performance anxiety!
I have a new approach developed through my 30 years professional performing experience and PhD research.
I am a coach of 20 years experience with a unique blend of specialisms in physical, mental, and historically-informed aspects of performance.
As well as being a busy performer specialising in historically-informed performance, I have developed a practice called Free Your Playing, which looks at physical, psychological, and creative aspects of performing - areas that are often marginalised in classical music. This uses my training in:
Eyerman Technique - a form of body-work developed from deep tissue massage, Feldenkrais Method and yoga (see keneyerman.com).
Process-Oriented Psychology - a psychodynamic approach that amplifies rather than suppresses symptoms to bring out their underlying meaning (see processworkuk.org).
Music workshop training with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's world-renowned education and outreach team (see oae.co.uk/who-we-are/education).
My own doctoral research on performance anxiety - which has led me to a thought-provoking conclusion: your performance anxiety is a new and interesting musician trying to get out!
We can work WITH your performance anxiety to find out what it means for you. We won't suppress any symptoms, we will bring them out, play with them, take them on a ride to find their hidden message (this is often fun!) - a message that could help you be the musician you always wanted to be. Performance anxiety can be the key to your artistic development!
Mine is a very positive view that does not aim to make you 'bullet-proof', or immune to nerves, but accepts anxiety as part of being human, expressive, and free - in other words, the sort of musician we want to listen to! After all, the great Miles Davis said
"If you're not nervous, you're not paying attention".
I have many happy stories to tell about this, through my work at the Guildhall Scool of Music, Cambridge, Huddersfield and Chichester Universities, and in my own courses and private practice, both online and in-person.
See my website, freeyourplaying.com, for more info and testimonials.
Note that though I play French horn, I welcome players of all instruments, and singers, to this aspect of my teaching.
I also teach natural horn from beginner to professional level. I have been a member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment since 1995, and work frequently with ensembles such as the Academy of Ancient Music, English Concert, English Baroque Soloists, and Pygmalion, and as guest natural horn in modern ensembles such as the Scottish and Australian Chamber Orchestras.
I specialise in 'cor basse', or the lower end of natural horn writing, which is traditionally the position that specialises in virtuosic hand-stopping technique. I frequently play second to many of the best 'cor alt' players around, including Anneke Scott, Ursula Monberg, Roger Montgomery, Philip Eastop, and previously with Anthony Halstead and Andrew Clark, so I can advise well on this role, both in terms of general technique and attitude, and in the challenging repertoire that the role brings, such as the Beethoven 9th solo, advanced hand technique in Brahms, and high writing in Bach and Haydn, amongst much else!
Martin is a very inspiring teacher. It's an honor to learn from him.
Martin is wonderful. He has great insights that I wouldn't think of myself, and a wealth of experience.