Because our daughter Lizzie has been learning the violin with Lucy Akehurst since she was three, it was great to be able to take part in Lucy’s 70th Birthday Concert in the Adrian Boult Hall last Sunday. Lucy has been teaching young violinists in Birmingham for many years and has run the Young Strings Project at Birmingham Conservatoire for more than twenty years. Small wonder then that around 100 current and former pupils of Lucy made it this concert with supporting cellists, bassists and few wind players including one lone oboe. Stars included Alessandro Ruisi who played a beautiful Gershwin Prelude, Amy Galluzzo who played two Paganini Caprices with great panache, and Roberto Ruisi, Philip Edwards, Edward Pether, Caroline Pether, Sarah Thornett and Dewi Tudor Jones. But the real star was the massed young violinists (around 60 of them) who played the first movement of the Bach Double from memory. tring playing is alive and well in Birmingham and it was nice to hear Lucy resolving to continue teaching long into the future.

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