TRIBUTE TO A TRULY INSPIRATIONAL TUTOR

I was very sad to hear last night about the death of my former Viola tutor and friend Paul Luke. Paul was a one-off; a free spirit who could be maddeningly unreliable but whose talent as both a player and teacher of the violin and viola more than mitigated his [usually drink-related] erratic attendance at lessons!

I had been a just about average Violist who had been badly misled by my first teacher [who will remain nameless] who had gratuitously allowed me to develop the wrong vibrato and other technical deficiencies due to a well-evidenced prejudice against boys (even little ones it would seem!) and, although I had benefited from working with a talented young tutor in Marion Richards, our time as student and tutor was cut short by her maternity leave. I did however have the pleasure of playing in the same orchestra as Marion a few years later.

Paul took on being my tutor when I was about 13 and even though he would sometimes fail to show (not just at my lessons but at the schools he taught at too!) for a couple of weeks in a row, what I would learn in an hour with him would dwarf what I could learn in ten hours with an average tutor.

One reason for this was that, had it not been for the drink and his nerves, Paul could have had a career with a top professional orchestra. He was that good and someone that good who also has such a talent for communication is able to impart knowledge at a level that far outstrips what ought to be the expectation of someone paying what we were paying.

At 15, I did my work experience with Paul, teaching violin at local junior schools in Dacorum Borough. On the Monday morning we took a class at Nash Mills School and then we went to the pub! That turned out to be quite a normal day!

By the time I was 17 and preparing for Grade 8 Viola, my dad had worked out that if he drove me to Paul's house in Wigginton every Sunday morning, Paul couldn't possibly fail to turn up even if he was nursing the hangover from hell. It paid off and I received a distinction in Grade 8, the pinnacle of my instrumental years. In truth I was never a happy or confident player. I always preferred composing but I exceeded my own expectations by a distance and that was entirely thanks to Paul's talent as a tutor.

In my later teenage years Paul would regularly get Mark Saxon and I paid work with London orchestras and opera companies and we always had a good crack, speeding down the M1 in his sports car, drinking, smoking and generally misbehaving. I wonder what he'd have thought if he'd known that Mark and I would end up performing on the BBC Introducing stage at Latitude 2017 together.

Paul was always great company and I can't ever recall him being in a bad mood. I'm not sure how old he was but he must have made it into his late seventies which is maybe longer than some of his detractors would have given him back in the day. As I said before he was a one-off. R.I.P Paul and thank you for everything you did for me.