Darwin Ensemble

The husband and wife team of George Caird (oboe) and Jane Salmon (cello) join DECO for the Winter Warmer concert - a suitably Romantic night of beautiful music for oboe, cello and strings.

George Caird

Since 1970, George Caird has combined a career as a performing musician with one as a music educationalist, firstly teaching and later in senior posts at the Royal Academy of Music and at Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University.

Coming from an academic family (his father was Principal of Mansfield College Oxford and later held a chair at The Queen’s College, Oxford),  George studied the oboe with Janet Craxton and Evelyn Barbirolli at the Royal Academy of Music, with Helmut Winschermann at the Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademie, Detmold and privately with Neil Black. He then gained his BA and MA in music at Peterhouse, Cambridge graduating to pursue a freelance career as an oboist including orchestral playing, chamber music and solo engagements.  He worked with many of London’s major orchestras including the London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and City of London Sinfonia and particularly as a member of The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields from 1983 to 1993. He has also been a member of a number of leading ensembles, notably as a founder-member of The Albion Ensemble, Vega Wind Quintet and Caird Oboe Quartet.

George has toured for the British Council in China, the Far East, India, Egypt, Tunisia and Canada as well as performing in concerts and broadcasts in most European countries. In addition to many orchestral recordings for EMI, Phillips and other labels, he has recorded for Chandos, Nimbus, Hyperion, Meridian, Oboe Classics, Somm and Proudsound labels with solo and chamber music repertoire. In November 2004 ‘An English Renaissance’ of quintets and quartets for oboe and strings was issued on the Oboe Classics label. In 2007 he recorded Benjamin Britten’s Six Metamorphoses after Ovid for Oboe Classics as part of his published study on that work, and Beethoven music for wind ensemble with the Albion Ensemble for Somm Recordings and in 2009 recorded the Martinu Quartet with the Schubert Ensemble for Chandos.  George has had many oboe works written for him including Paul Patterson’s Duologue, John Gardner’s second oboe sonata, Andrew Downes’ sonata, In the Gardens of Burdwan and John Mayer’s Abhut Sangit. George plays on oboes made by Püchner.

In 1996 and 2006 George was a juror in the ARD Munich International Oboe Competition and chaired the International Flute Competition there in 2010.  George has also sat on adjudication panels for BBC Young Musician of the Year, the Audi Junior Musician, the Shell-LSO Competition, the YCAT awards and the Chamber Music Competition for Schools.  George chaired the panel for the Barbirolli International Oboe Competition in the Isle of Man in 2005 and 2009, becoming the Competition’s President in that year.

Committed to the idea that professionals in any discipline should give encouragement to young people, George has been involved in many areas of music education: teaching, devising educational programmes, coaching chamber ensembles, conducting and coaching youth orchestras and as a founding member of the British Double Reed Society which appointed him as Patron in 2010. He joined the staff of the Royal Academy of Music as a professor of oboe in 1984, became Head of Woodwind in 1987 and Head of Orchestral Studies in 1991. In September 1993, George was appointed Principal of Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University a post that he has held until August 2010. He involved himself in all aspects of university life chairing validations, and serving on a number of university committees. Major projects for the Conservatoire have included a collaboration with the Royal Irish Academy of Music (1998), the CUK Conference at Meriden (2004), the Three Cities Project with conservatoires in Lyon and Frankfurt (2005), the Annual Conference of the Association of European Conservatoires in Birmingham (2005), the New Generation Arts Festivals in Birmingham (2005-10), Boulez in Birmingham (2008) and idrs2009, the annual congress of the International Double Reed Society which brought over 1000 delegates to the City for 100 concerts and events in five days. Throughout his career, George has continued to teach and, across a teaching career of nearly forty years, a great many of his students have enjoyed successful professional careers.

George is a board member of Performances Birmingham which runs Symphony Hall and Town Hall Birmingham. George was a member of the Executive of the UK’s Music Education Council from 1997 to 2010 and was Chair from 2001 to 2004, leading the major Symposium The Importance of Music at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2004. He served as Secretary of the Federation of British Conservatoires (now Conservatoires UK) from 1999 to 2004 and was elected Secretary-General of the Association of European Conservatoires in November 2004. Also in 2004 George joined the Board of the national charity, Youth Music and was the President of the Incorporated Society of Musicians for 2004/5.  He chaired the Learning and Skills Council Music Review for Birmingham and Solihull 2003/4. Since November 2005 he has been Chair of the National Association of Youth Orchestras. In January 2006 he joined the Advisory Group for the Department of Education and Skills Music and Dance Scheme, and in June 2007 he became a Trustee of the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. In November 2010 George was appointed as Music Adviser to the Wingate Foundation.

George is married to the cellist Jane Salmon and Lizzie, their six-year-old daughter, is a proud student of the Junior Conservatoire and Young Strings Project. His four older children are all involved in music and the arts – George couldn’t persuade them otherwise.

Jane Salmon

Jane Salmon has established a reputation as one of the busiest and most successful cellists of her generation. Her work as a chamber musician and as a recital soloist has taken her to more than 45 countries across the world and has involved her in more than 60 CD recordings, broadcasts for radio and television, festivals and performances in many leading venues.

As cellist of the Schubert Ensemble of London, a leading exponent of music for piano and strings, she has recently toured China and the Middle East, given the New Years Day concert at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and performed at the Bermuda Festival.  Regularly giving over 50 concerts a year, the Ensemble tours extensively, appears regularly at the Wigmore Hall and King's Place in London and broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 3. In 1998 the Ensemble’s contribution to British musical life was recognized by the Royal Philharmonic Society when it presented the group with the Best Chamber Ensemble Award, for which it was shortlisted again in 2010.  The Ensemble records regularly for Chandos, the most recent release being of music by Enescu and a Dvorak recording to be released in June 2012.

As a recitalist Jane has premiered solo works on BBC Radio 3 and in concerts on London's South Bank and Wigmore Hall. Recital tours have included two visits to India where solo performances to large audiences were juxtaposed with educational work in Madras, Bangalore and Calcutta. She has performed at Birmingham's Town Hall and Symphony Hall in recitals with Thomas Trotter. More unusually, Jane was the on-stage cellist in the Royal National Theatre's award-winning production of the Arthur Miller play 'Broken Glass'. A graduate of Cambridge University, Jane studied the cello with Amaryllis Fleming, Pierre Fournier and Johannes Goritzki. She won numerous prizes and awards and was selected for promotion by Young Concert Artists Trust which launched her solo career. Although the Schubert Ensemble has been her principal commitment for nearly twenty years, Jane has been a member of the Endymion Ensemble and the Caird Oboe Quartet  and has worked  as guest principal cello with the London Sinfonietta, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the English Chamber Orchestra. Jane is a cello tutor at Birmingham Conservatoire where the Schubert Ensemble is Ensemble-in-Residence.