Alison McGillivray is taking a long holiday from playing on metal strings. She studied modern cello at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with William Conway, and has him to thank for still being a cellist. She loves playing bass lines, and loves the feel and sound of gut strings. She has been tempted away from the bass line a few times in her career so far—to play concertos by Haydn, C P E Bach and Vivaldi with The Academy of Ancient Music. She studied baroque cello with Jennifer Ward Clarke at the Royal Academy of Music, partly to avoid associating with the ultra-competitive world of modern cello-playing, but mainly to spend time delving into facsimiles and historical bowing technique.

She hasn’t looked back—a sideways glance to the gamba has led her to play with the viol consort Concordia, and she picks up that instrument in the group Ricordo too (Linn CKD195, ‘Virtuoso in the Making’—music of H Biber). After many years as principal cellist with The Academy of Ancient Music, she now plays principal with The English Concert. Working with David McGuinness’s Concerto Caledonia has taken her not only into the world of Scottish baroque music but also into the world of folk/baroque/contemporary crossover.

Alison spends time teaching the baroque cello privately and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Her most famous student is Paul Bettany, who learned to play the cello for the film ‘Master and Commander’.