Striking a Chord with Pate's Music

New year, new opportunities - why not take up a new instrument?  Who knows where your musical journey can take you...  Pate's Visiting Music Teacher Caron DeBurgh shares her vital and varied life as a freelance musician and teacher.

I grew up in Gloucestershire and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama while doing A Levels before reading Music at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. I had some amazing teachers and I hope to pass on their fun, thorough and hard-working approach to my students.

Double reed instruments are endangered species, which does mean that there are many, many more opportunities in orchestras, wind bands, scholarships etc. I run the Gloucestershire Double Reed Day which is held at Pate’s promoting the oboe and bassoon. It is a very social day where the few players from each school can congregate to participate in masterclasses, a mass band, reed making, shopping and biscuit eating!

The life of an oboist can include orchestral concerts, solo concertos, chamber music concerts, conducting and the most exciting part for me, pit work. A show usually lasts for a week, with a band call on a Sunday, then dress rehearsal, technical rehearsal when the sound and lighting are tweaked before opening night. The show then runs for the rest of the week with matinees on Thursdays and Saturdays. It’s great to work with the same group for that amount of time and it’s a lot of fun. I have played in Bristol Hippodrome, Cheltenham Everyman theatre and lots of others throughout the South West and Wales. As an oboe and cor anglais player, I get booked for Les Misérables a lot, probably six times as many of those as other shows!

I have taught the oboe at Pate’s for many years and have taught many students who have gone on to include music in their lives in similar ways. As well as teaching the oboe at Pate’s, I teach piano and am honoured to have some fabulous students who are at the beginning of their musical journeys. My current Year 7s and 8s have all done brilliantly well this year with lots of success in exams.

I also run a Lunchtime Theory Club (which features more biscuits!) helping any student to conquer the theory exams needed to take Grade 6 ABRSM practical exams. Theory can really help to consolidate learning in instrumental lessons as well as classroom GCSE content. It can help to tie everything all together and help it to make sense. The course is ten weeks long and covers the whole syllabus from grades one to five. Good luck to the first cohort of exam candidates in a couple of weeks.

The Pate’s Music Department is an incredibly lively, vibrant department to work in and I am very fortunate to work with so many very talented teachers and students.

Pictured: Caron de Burgh. Oboe, piano and theory teacher, conductor and bringer of biscuits!