Maureen Morrison, concert organiser
Last November Maureen was the organiser and presenter of the ‘Autumn Concert’ in North Berwick. It was performed by young people of the Lothians and I gave it a warm review on EMR. Maureen turned out to be a neighbour of mine and I went to her home to find out more about her.
How did you get into the idea of organising concerts?
Well, I was a professional cellist for many years with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. In fact, a founder member in 1974. But then I had a serious illness and a very nasty accident, both of which contributed to my having to stop playing the cello. I opened a violin and cello shop in Edinburgh - called Stringers - and another one in London and enjoyed that for many years. When it came time to retire about five years ago, I started to think about where I might go. I considered going back to the wilds of North Yorkshire to Swaledale, which is where I’m from, but the sea drew me here to North Berwick. I just love the place but what I did realise was that there was hardly any classical music in North Berwick. There’s the Lammermuir Festival in the summer which has very high-powered classical concerts; strangely enough, not in North Berwick, just in all surrounding areas. That’s because North Berwick doesn’t have a decent piano in any venue; that’s what I was told. Anyway, I was also involved with the Scottish Young Musician of the Year. At the inaugural competition I was blown away by the talent in Scotland, so I invited half a dozen of the finalists to come to North Berwick the following autumn and just put on a concert. It wasn’t particularly well attended but it was hugely appreciated. People couldn’t believe the talent of these young people, quite extraordinary. That enthusiasm from the audience made me do another and another, so I’ve now done six or seven concerts all featuring young Scottish musicians on the brink of their career. Some of them are really very promising and probably will go onto to have careers. As I said to the audience “You heard it here first”.
Tell me a little more about how you find the talent. It was certainly striking at the concert I went to.
Well, it’s not difficult really. The one you went to was largely the pupils of a very good violin teacher in Edinburgh, Uli Evans, who has many very good violin pupils. At the moment she has two extraordinarily gifted girls who to be honest when I was in the SCO playing with international soloists - these two girls, especially the older one who played the ‘Mendelssohn Concerto’, Rhea Fitzgerald. I have to say that her playing of the Mendelssohn was as good as any professional player I ever worked with. Quite extraordinary, and even more extraordinary is that she wants to be a doctor. And she is not only a hugely talented violinist but also an incredibly good pianist. She’s just played a Mozart Piano Concerto with an Edinburgh Orchestra. Another one, Louise de Crombrugghe, the 11-year-old, again she played the César Franck Violin Sonata in a way that wouldn’t have been out of place in the Wigmore Hall. The others are also very talented, even if not quite so prodigious. You know getting to the stage of playing a Mendelssohn Concerto at 13 or a Franck Sonata at 11 is very unusual.
So that girl was only 13. I didn’t realise she was quite so young.
Yes, the one who played the Mendelssohn, she’s just 13. She played the first movement in last year’s concert and now the second two movements at this one. And she’s playing it again with the Meadows Chamber Orchestra Edinburgh in, I think, April. She’s very special.
How do you select them. Do you have auditions?
No, I just know of them. Edinburgh has a festival every year called Perform. It’s a local competitive festival, huge really. You go into the under 10 class and the under 12 class. I first heard her there and the little girl Louise, she actually got into the final of the Concerto competition last year. You got this pint-size child playing a pint-size violin along with university students and students from the Conservatoire in Glasgow.
I thought you said she was playing a three-quarter size.
No, I got that wrong – she’s still on a half. In fact, she did the competition on a quarter and that’s when it became clear that, even though she still has very small fingers, she needed a half size because with that repertoire she needed to project. But it’s not only the really highflyers like those two. Last year I had a superb piper from Musselburgh, amazing young lad. I’ve had a guitarist from Prestonpans, again hugely talented. I really enjoy getting a range of children, and it is a range. I don’t have beginners, although the little boy who started the concert, Alex Layberry, he’s just so enthusiastic. Even if he’s not yet at the same standard as the others, his passion and enthusiasm is such that he deserved a platform. Yes, it’s a good mixed bag and people like the variety.
Tell me a little about your own career?
Well, I grew up in the wilds of North Yorkshire and loved music and the arts, but there was nothing apart from the Women’s Institute. From the age of eight I went to the local Women’s Institute and sang ‘Jerusalem’; I just thought that was the most beautiful thing. And then church on a Sunday, I loved all the hymns. So I grew up longing for music and there was really none available. When I finally went to a town to secondary school, again there wasn’t a lot, but when I was 13, the school was gifted a cello. I didn’t know what a cello was. This guy said, “We’ve got a cello; does anybody want to play it?” and I put my hand up just ‘cos I loved music and this farmer’s boy put his hand up and we had to measure hands, and his hand was bigger, so he got the bloomin’ cello. I was so disappointed. Of course, he presumed it was some kind of guitar (this was in the Beatles’ day) and he quickly returned it to the school and I got it.
Did you have a teacher?
Well, I had a trumpet guy who taught me, so I did in a way, but he was a trumpeter. I played so badly but I was determined. I told the headmaster that I wanted to be a musician, and he said, “Don’t be silly”, so I went off to start training as a nurse, though they gave me the cello because nobody else wanted it. So there I was practising away till I found a teacher.
So you were more or less self-taught?
I was. When I was 18, I qualified as a nurse; actually I was very young qualifier. The following week I auditioned for the Royal College of Music and really it was playing by numbers, you know, like Painting by Numbers. I had watched Jacqueline du Pré and listened to her; I played two pieces at the audition and I got in! But of course, when I got there, they were horrified. I mean, my house was totally built on sand.
Could you read music?
I could just about read music, but I couldn’t read the tenor clef, which is the cello clef. When my professor found out, he almost dropped his cup of coffee. But there was a teacher there called Joan Dixon, and I went to her because I’d heard her play, I’d seen her teach, and I said, “Look, you know, I can play because I copy people, but I don’t have the foundations”. She was unbelievable. She gave me lessons after college. She gave me lessons at her hotel. She only came down to London once a fortnight to teach; she was living in Edinburgh. So I managed and by the time I’d done three years I graduated well. But she said “Come and do your Post-Grad in Glasgow where I teach every week, rather than every fortnight”, which I did, and that brought me up here. And then the first thing I did I got into the Scottish Baroque Ensemble and then when the Scottish Chamber Orchestra was formed, I was a founder member.
How did you pay for your lessons?
When I was nursing? You get a certain amount a month as a grant, and I managed to squeeze something out of that. I didn’t go to any big night clubs or anything; I was just determined to be a cellist. In fact it wasn’t that expensive; it was a pound a lesson. That’s how I paid her but then you know those days the role of music for three years in the Royal Collage in Glasgow for a year and North Yorkshire County Council paid all the fees. Those were the days, with the grants. So that’s how I became a cellist. I was a founder member of the SCO; until I had this awful accident and a cancer diagnosis, that was my life. Then I opened the shop and it’s done extraordinarily well, and I’ve now opened one in London. I played in the SCO for many years and had a wonderful time. We went all over the world, and I have to say that, when you get to a certain age, that kind of travelling the world… It was really better for me and my children and my husband for me to be at home more.
What else is in your life? Obviously, music is your passion, and you made it your life.
Really it’s not until I moved here that anything else came into my life. It’s strange; you know, the orchestra, the SCO, became everything. And I’m married, my husband was also in the orchestra, so our whole life was based around it. We had our lovely kids, so we went socialising a little with other parents, but music was our main life. We did found a small orchestra in Edinburgh which we did for 10 years called the Edinburgh Children’s Orchestra. We did that on a Saturday morning.
So your interest in young people was always there?
Yes, I taught on the one day off from the SCO. I taught in pretty well every Edinburgh school. I loved teaching, just because of my own start. Because without my music teacher at that school and his encouraging me and I was given the cello to take away with me because my parents couldn’t afford one – well, who knows? I was at his funeral a couple of years ago and I said, “Without his enthusiasm and encouragement I would never have been able to do it.” He saw something in me and said, “Take it! Nobody else is really interested”. So I’m very keen to support really talented young people who don’t have the resources.
Tell me a little more about the financial side of what you’re doing with young people.
Well, the concerts I put on, it’s totally self-funding. I have a system whereby I have some wealthy people who’ve bought instruments because instruments are a superb Investment. In fact, one of my neighbours bought a hugely expensive instrument last year and has lent it to one of the young musicians. He wants to remain anonymous, but this is a very very valuable instrument which is going up and up - much more than shares or gold or anything. So there are people buying these expensive instruments and lending them to talented youngsters; I’m very keen on that.
But you need more than just the instruments.
I’ve had for many years an account at RBS called Charity Concert Account. I did a few events in Edinburgh when I was there. There was a bit of money in that account. Basically the hall costs about £300. The children, if they’re children, they get a box of chocolates and £20 and they’re very happy. If I have older ones, like this folk group that I had, I actually paid them £500 and then - you weren’t there last summer when I had this quite extraordinary South American young girl who we lent a fine instrument to. That was a very full house. So some concerts make a loss but other ones make a profit and over the year I lose about £150, which I can absolutely afford. Actually, I’m on the board of the William Sison Foundation. He was a banker in Edinburgh who’d been brought up in a very deprived area - a bit like me, he’d longed to go to concerts and ballet and drama. He’ d left school at 15 and became some sort of minion in the Bank of Scotland, went up to become the head of the bank. When he died, he left a real fortune and we have this in the bank. All the interest we use to support musicians. So I’m on the board of that. We do award money to various organisations, but I think in these times people have to think outside the box a little bit financially because my concerts are self-funding and concerts if they’re good enough and in these out-of-the-city regions can do things without getting huge grants. What I try to do is say “Look what’s on your doorstep”, especially to people who can’t afford to pay £26 for a ticket. I’ve put the adult tickets up for the concerts to £15 because that’s the only way I can fund them. I send a notification to the schools that if a teacher brings a group of children, they all come free of charge. I’m really not very happy with the fact that they don’t do it! So I’m trying to. I’m you know I’m going to go up there and say “Is there a reason?” Especially when I’m doing ‘Peter and the Wolf’ in April, they really should take advantage of that. I’ve got fine people playing, really superb young people, and I’m going to try and get a well-known narrator. I did ‘Peter and the Wolf’ in Edinburgh at the Usher Hall for the Breast Cancer Institute and I got the younger Dimbleby, David, to come up and narrate Coming up, I’ve got Sandy McCall Smith to narrate ‘Carnival of the Animals’. People are willing, especially if they’ve got an interest in the charity I’m doing it for. I did that for Breast Cancer. It paid for itself, and it made a profit for the charity. You can use local talent for really good concerts.
PS The Spring Concert of popular classics takes place on 23rd February at 7pm in St Andrew Blackadder Church, North Berwick. Music by Handel, Schubert, Schumann, Mozart and Bizet (excerpts from ‘Carmen’) is played by talented young Scottish musicians, including Alistair Cottee, finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year 2024.
Tickets: Adults £15 Children free from Greens and Blues, North Berwick High Street, Stringers of Edinburgh (0131 557 5432) or on the door.
