Teaching and Community

Live Music Now!

Paul has for several years been a performer and workshop facilitator for Live Music Now! Founded by the late Yehudi Menuhin, this is the largest music outreach organisation in Britain, and provides music for community venues such as schools, hospitals, prisons, and special needs and elderly care settings, delivered by young musicians.  Divided into several regional branches, the South West branch, with whom Paul has special ties, is the largest branch and last year put on over 1000 concerts in around 600 venues.

Dr Faustus were responsible for a number of large projects in special needs schools and adult mental health units in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Cornwall. The photograph on the right show Dr Faustus at final concert of Live Folk for Special Folk project, Truro College.

More recently Paul and Benji ran songwriting workshops in prisons in the South West and for MIND in Taunton. October saw the issue of three CDs of music from Youth Offenders Institutions,  on which Paul and Benji collaborated with other LMN! musicians.

Having well exceeded the age threshold for LMN!, Paul has been put out to grass, and is now employed for consultancy and training. In September, he ran a workshop on music in prisons for trainee Live Music Now! musicians at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and in October delivered a presentation for Live Music Now! South West at the Plymouth Pavilion in front of a large and formidable delegation of community leaders. In December
he will run an expanded version of the prison workshop, and he continues to do occasional mentoring for younger musicians on the scheme.

The Andover Museum Loft Singers

As  musical director of this small and informal choir, so named because it rehearses weekly in the loft of the Andover Iron Age Museum, Paul has been able to explore and arrange local and Southern English traditional songs and get the music back from whence it came. The Singers are a lovely and enthusiastic bunch, drawn from all ages and walks of life, and they perform regularly for concerts, seasonal celebrations and community events such as fairs, church services, wedding receptions, and most recently the unveiling of the Andover Christmas lights (on 18th November!).

The Singers were founded by Roger Watson under the auspices of Traditional Arts Projects, better known as TAPS. Paul has worked on a number of education projects for TAPS, including orchestral arrangements of English tunes at the Oxfordshire County Music Service, songwriting at the Wiltshire Music Centre (with Mauricio Venegas and Musa Mboob), and the Hampshire Sing Out Weekend. He and Roger directed the Andover Museum Loft Singers together as part of commemoration of the Battle of Trafalgar and death of Nelson, and the recreation of the arrival of the stage coach which carried the news to Andover and towns throughout the South.

National Youth Folklore Troupe of England (NYFTE)

Paul is Performance Consultant and Guest Tutor for NYFTE. Run by Dave Leverton and a band of dedicated leaders, NYFTE specialises in English dance, song and instrumental music, and provides training and performance opportunities for school-age children (who come from all over the country). Paul is a regular tutor at the Easter course at Tockington near Bristol, and has even been known to get up and have a go at dancing - once.

St Edward's School, Oxford

Although Paul started at Teddy's deputising for a friend in 1999, he soon found himself sucked into the busy and dynamic music department (four full-time music staff, a music secretary, about forty peripatetic teachers, and, soon, a new purpose-built concert hall), and has been there ever since. Although his principal job is as a singing teacher, he has done stints teaching oboe, training the chapel choir, playing or singing in school concerts such as a production of 'Carmen', a recent recital of Lieder, and the forthcoming 'Les Miserables'. He has the occasional and dubious honour of judging the House Singing Competition and aptly-named House 'Shout'.

Private Tuition

Paul does a modicum of private tuition at home - voice, oboe, violin, piano, theory, and extra help with GCSEs and A Levels.