Biographies

• Lisa Nelsen
• Melanie Ragge
• Neyire Ashworth
• Stephen Stirling
• Meyrick Alexander

Melanie Ragge

Melanie Ragge has two principal musical passions - chamber music and education. Although originally a Medic at King’s College, Cambridge, she graduated with a MPhil in musicology, writing her final thesis on Stravinsky’s early neoclassicism. She went on to study performance as a Leverhulme Fellow at the Royal College of Music, where she was awarded exhibitions both as a pianist and oboist; she studied piano with Phyllis Sellick, oboe and cor anglais with Michael Winfield, and contemporary oboe with Edwin Roxburgh. She also subsequently took lessons from the German oboist Thomas Indermuhle.

Whilst at the RCM, she performed a duo with Ann Martin-Davis, with a special interest in performing and commissioning new works. They were awarded a residency at the Banff International Performing Arts Centre in Canada where they premièred a new commission by Sam King in the Banff International Festival. In 1998 they recorded Lutosławski’s Epitaph for ASV, as part of Ann Martn-Davis’ CD of his piano chamber music: “everything is exquisitely and cleanly played” … BBC Music Magazine. This, and a new commission In memoriam Lutosławski by the young Polish composer Maciej Zieliński they subsequently performed in the Lutosławski memorial concert.

As well as being a founder member of the nlce, Melanie has performed as a concerto soloist both in England and abroad and freelances as an orchestral player. She has also worked as a recitalist with the harpsichordist Ariadne Blyth and countertenor Stephen Taylor, and performed with the Campbell Wind Ensemble, with whom she premièred Julian Philips’ Piano and Wind Sextet. As a tutor and/or artist in residence at the Swaledale and Aberystwyth Festivals she has performed the Mozart Quartet with the Dante and Schidlof string quartets. Her solo and chamber performances have taken her to a wide variety of diverse destinations, including Malta, Sweden and the Pacific Rim, as well as more ‘conventional’ venues such as St John’s, Smith Square and Wigmore Hall.

Melanie’s teaching and coaching consumes the remainder of her professional life; she teaches the oboists at the Purcell School of Music and is a Professor of Oboe at the Royal Academy of Music. She has given a number of masterclasses, coaches for Chamber Music International, is an adjudicator and also an Associate Director and tutor for the National Youth Chamber Orchestra.