Biography

Patricia Calnan started to play the violin at the age of eleven and studied at the Royal Academy of Music with David Martin. She won many scholarships and prizes and continued her post graduate studies first in Freiburg, Germany with Wolfgang Marschner, and later with Helen Airoff-Dowling in Switzerland and London. Helen remains the formative influence on Patricia’s philosophy of teaching.

In 1980 Patricia won the Mozart Memorial Prize and performed extensively both as leader of the Trio Zingara and as a soloist at the Royal Festival Hall, Barbican, Wigmore Hall, and Queen Elizabeth Hall, collaborating with such eminent conductors as Sir Charles Groves, Lord Menuhin, Ivan Fischer and James Loughran.

Patricia led the Lyric Quartet to great critical acclaim, following their debut recital in 1991, touring extensively with them in the UK and Europe. She toured worldwide with Sir Neville Marriner as a member of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

Throughout her career she could be heard regularly on Radio 3 and her discography includes the Brahms Sonatas and works by Dohnányi, Ross Edwards, Herbert Howells, Glazunov, Ginastera and Rimsky-Korsakov.

In 1998 Patricia married viola player, painter and film-maker George Robertson, who is the artist of the paintings on this website. Since the birth of their daughter Emily in 1999, Patricia’s focus moved towards teaching. Her style and methods have developed to incorporate her work as a teacher of the Alexander Technique.