Something a little different this month – a concert of 16th century masterpieces for viol and lute, delivered by locals Alison Crum and husband Roy Marks.
Alison Crum is one of the best-known British exponents of the viol. As teacher, performer, and moving spirit behind several well-known early music groups, she has travelled all over the world giving recitals and lectures and teaching on summer schools and workshops.
After considering a career in meteorology, she decided to read music at Reading university as a French horn player. While there she started playing the viol, and later went on to study it with Wieland Kuijken in Brussels and Jordi Savall in Basle. Since then she has made over one hundred recordings with some of Britain’s finest ensembles and, as a soloist, on discs of Marais, Bach, and virtuoso Italian divisions.
Alison is President of the Viola da Gamba Society of Great Britain, and until 2020 she was Professor of Viol at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London, but she is still a visiting teacher at several colleges and universities in both Europe and the USA. She is also the author of two highly acclaimed books on playing the viol, and has been called the doyenne of British viol teachers.
Roy Marks is Alison’s husband. In early childhood he began his musical life playing the piano, and in his teens playing lead guitar in a rhythm and blues band. Rather than to conservatoires of music, however, he went to colleges of art to study – studies that culminated at the Royal Academy in London where he was awarded the prestigious David Murray scholarship for landscape painting.
Roy went on to teach painting and drawing in adult education, but turned his attention in his late thirties almost exclusively to early music – to the recorder, the viol, and the lute. Roy also edits, arranges, and composes music for his friends to play.
Together, Alison and Roy are very much occupied with playing music from the 16th to the 18th century and they have collected a large number of copies of early instruments – all of which they play. As members of The Rose Consort of Viols they have recorded many CDs of English consort music, and as teachers they are popular on courses and workshops in the USA and in Europe.