Roland Melia
Biograpahy
About Roland Melia
I was a prize-winning cello scholar at the Royal Academy of Music, studying with Florence Hooton from the age of 14, and thereafter with Richard Markson and Pierre Fournier.
Highlights of student life included NYO performances of The Rite of Spring, in the Champs-Elysée Theatre and Royal Festival Hall with Pierre Boulez.
This programme included Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste by Bartok and the Berg Violin Concerto with Itzhak Perlman.
As a professional cellist, I played with ensembles and orchestras such as City of London Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia, Lontano, English National Opera, Royal Ballet, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and The National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland.
I have been very fortunate to have made music with exceptional soloists including Anthony Marwood, Nicholas Daniel, Matthew Barley, Tim Hugh, Roger Tapping, Darragh Morgan and many others. In contemporary music, close collaborators include Odaline de la Martinez (Lontano).
Following my early career as a cellist, I moved to Russia for three years to study conducting with Ilya Musin at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. Musin’s celebrated students include Semyon Bychkov, Valery Gergiev, Yuri Temirkanov, Martyn Brabbins, Teodor Currentzis and Sian Edwards (Head of Conducting at RAM). Prior to arriving in St Petersburg, I studied with David Robertson (Head of Conducting at Juilliard) and Charles Bruck (Pierre Monteux’s assistant).
As a professional conductor, I have worked with the St Petersburg Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, symphony orchestras in Portugal, Mexico and Chile, Britten Sinfonia, Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Royal Ballet, London City Ballet, Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra, Leicester Symphony Orchestra, Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra, Salisbury Sinfonia, Hereford Symphony Orchestra, Hertfordshire Chamber Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, as well as St Petersburg Opera Studio, White horse Opera and Wedmore Opera. Working closely with David Robertson, I had the opportunity to conduct the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris.
As Artistic Director of the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, I worked regularly with the Cyprus Youth Orchestra – touring to Germany and Greece. I also founded the island’s first bi-communal youth orchestra (The Cyprus Bi-Communal Youth Music Ensemble) which united young musicians from both the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities and toured to the UK.
As a private teacher, I have run conducting workshops in UK, China, Italy and Germany. I have also worked with trainee teachers of secondary school music at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge as well as for teachers in Wells Cathedral School.
I currently teach for Guildhall Young Artists, Taunton. I have taught music at both IB and BMus level and lead conducting workshops for secondary school students; this has included residential work at ProCorda as a conducting coach.
Beyond my work as a player, conductor and educator, I have modest credits as a composer including commissioned compositions for the BBC. I have also produced recordings with Alkyona, and the Danel and Dante string quartets as well as the legendary Cuban Jazz flautist, Maraca and Middle Eastern traditional musician Ross Daly.
About Ilya Musin
Legendary pedagogue, Ilya Aleksandrovich Musin was born on 6 January 1904 Kostroma and died in St. Petersburg 6 June 1999. He studied conducting under Nicolai Malko in the Leningrad Conservatoire and very soon afterward in 1932 was invited to teach orchestral conducting, a post which he retained until his death in 1999.
Ilya Musin was the creator of the school of conducting known as the “Leningrad/St. Petersburg school of conducting.” He was a deeply committed teacher devoted to his class which he taught for four hours, three times a week in Room 27 on the third floor of the conservatory.
Only in his final years did he yield to the suggestion that he should take one short ‘refreshment’ break during the class. Otherwise, his concentration on the music and the students in front of him was intense and the rewards for his students, immense. Former pupils of Musin include Yuri Temirkanov, Semyon Bychkov, Valery Gergiev, Martyn Brabbins, Sian Edwards, Yakov Kreizberg and Theodore Currentzis.