About

Priory Farm Music Camp combines wild, outdoor settings with high quality music making and aims to build confidence and joy in children and a safe space for them to return to year after year. What began as a small garden camp for 9 children has grown into something lasting and special with hundreds of children and young people returning again and again to different PFMC venues to be part of this beautiful, joyous and ever growing musical family. For several years now, our camps have been taking place in the Walled Garden in Eryholme with the founders of www.we-are-wild.com: old friends, florists, forest school leaders and owners of the gorgeous walled garden; and this feels like a match made in heaven.

PFMC consistently achieves very high standards of teaching and playing together, both in small, intimate groupings and large, joyous numbers, whilst always making sure that the musicians who are just starting out are nurtured and supported and are at the very center of the vision, both musically and socially. Building confidence starts with having fun - both on - and away from - our instruments.

Why outdoors?

It is in direct contrast to the screen-centred lifestyle of many young people, but also many young musicians, who generally play, learn and practise within four walls. PFMC blows these walls down, like a good wolf, and plants our feet on the ground, out there, so we can make our music part of the soundscape of the world around us, mingling with birds, leaves, air, river, cracking twigs and flapping clothing or canvas.

To feel connected to each other in the joy and wonder of this new way of existing and playing music, to share it, to feel safe and energised simultaneously

If we let go of routine and shed cultural expectations of, and reliance on, formality, institution, the classroom, technology:

we become free to shout, cry, laugh, team up together, be brave, be quiet, sing, try hard, watch and listen, do our best, have a go
we create connections between these liberated sparks in ourselves, and the scenery around us.

MEET THE TEAM

Adelaide Carlow

Adelaide is the founder and director of Priory Farm Music Camp. Having studied music and psychology, and ethnomusicology, Adelaide now teaches cello, piano and elementary violin. She founded and directs Milnathort Youth String Orchestra and delivers early years music classes in Kinross-shire and Fife. Adelaide enjoys arranging music for string groups, and for choirs, and she also loves leading non-audition community choirs up in Scotland and finds amazing human connection and inspiration through the natural voice and unaccompanied choral harmony. Her biggest passion is PFMC though, and she loves sharing it’s annual summery mini-world of music and happiness with her three children every year.

Sally Anne Anderson

Co-founder and music director Sally Anne Anderson plays violin with the Royal Liverpool Phil, and is Lead Musician for the Sistema-inspired music education program, In Harmony Liverpool. Specialising in group string teaching, Sally currently teaches over 350 children a week! She has created many resources to support her style of teaching including two series of books, ‘Tune Up!’ and ‘Sticks & Blobs’. Sally coaches at the NCO having been a member as a child. As faculty member of The Till Project, Sally is enthusiastically developing ways for teaching healthy string playing. PFMC is an annual highlight for her and her children, and Sally especially enjoys conducting the camp orchestra using techniques that allow children to feel the music from the inside out.

Grace Dale

Grace Dale is a pianist, clarinetist, guitarist, accompanist and choir leader, studying community music up to postgraduate level at Aberdeen and Glasgow.
Grace set up and facilitated regular choir sessions for the homeless across Scotland, and has delivered music and songwriting workshops for people with additional needs and people in prisons. Grace teaches piano in Glasgow and plays in ceilidh bands around Scotland.
She excels at creating team spirit, whether she is running our amazing annual ceilidh, or, in chamber groups, enabling our youngest musicians to shine.

Music Team

Meghan Perry PFMC

*Co-founder, chamber and cello coach*
Meghan is a cellist playing in chamber groups and orchestras across Edinburgh.
Meghan is also an Infectious Diseases Consultant with the NHS. In a crossover between her two passions, Meghan devised a historical musical called The Mould that Changed the World (one of whose songs was a hit at a previous PFMC!) This important show has gone on to have major success both in the UK and the US.
Meghan is also a hill climber, and a keen wild swimmer and camper. Her two boys will be attending PFMC this year.

Ceri Pearmain PFMC & PFMC+

*Co-founder, chamber and violin coach, and support team leader PFMC*
Ceri Pearmain is a violinist and pianist, teaching peripatetically and privately along the Welsh-English border. She leads her local orchestra, and has coached chamber music and choir at PFMC since its beginnings.
She is a keen gardener, expert wild camper, and pretty competitive frisbee player!
Ceri is a secondary school history teacher as well!

Olly Blackman PFMC & PFMC+

*Percussion coach, Jazz Band Leader, PFMC & PFMC+*
Olly Blackman is a drummer/composer/arranger who studied at Guildhall and has been working as a freelance musician, MD and educator since.
Olly performs, arranges and writes for Hackney Colliery Band, a nine-piece brass and percussion band who have released several critically acclaimed albums.
He has toured extensively with HCB throughout the UK and Europe.
When not performing, Olly directs the Wandsworth Jazz Orchestra, a big band featuring the talents of young jazz musicians attending the Wandsworth Music Academy. Olly’s percussion workshops at PFMC are legendary!

Sophie Till PFMC+

*Violin and chamber music coach, Till clinics and masterclasses.*
Violinist Sophie Till’s teaching has become internationally known for solving playing-related injuries among professional orchestral musicians. She has delivered numerous workshops, lecture series’ and symposiums for professionals, teachers and students in the U.S, U.K, Singapore and Australia and was a keynote speaker for the Australian String Teachers Conference.
Sophie makes annual visits to the U.K working with members of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and the BBC Orchestras. Working in tandem with children and young people aged 4-18 at home and with professional players internationally has resulted in a new children’s pedagogy now being used in schools and string programs internationally.

Anton PFMC

*Clarinet and chamber music coach*
Anton is a graduate from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire who performs and tours with a number of UK professional ensembles such as BBC National Orchestra of Wales, English Touring Opera, Ulster Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia and regularly at the Proms with Chineke! Orchestra. He has also performed chamber works with the London Symphony Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Anton has performed in many contemporary music projects, for the BBC Radio 3 New Music Show and the Beijing Modern Music Festival.
Anton is a keen educator and he has held posts with the Junior Royal College of Music, Nucleo, Warwick school. the National Children's Orchestra of Great Britain, Sistema, Orchestras for All and the Royal Academy of Music outreach programme.

Ben Cashell PFMC+

*Cello and chamber music coach*
Ben Cashell studied cello at the Yehudi Menuhin School and later at the Royal Northern College of Music. He is an extremely versatile musician, equally at home playing classical, pop and folk.
Ben has played at many prestigious venues including Wigmore Hall, Glastonbury and Celtic Connections. He specialises in chamber music, having founded the RNCM Cello Ensemble, the Herbert Cello Quartet and the Cashell Piano Trio.
Ben is passionate about the education of young musicians - over the last seven years, he has taught dozens of young cellists through the In Harmony programs with Opera North and In the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. He also teaches at Stockport Grammar School and Yorkshire Young Musicians.

Katie Foster PFMC

Katie studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she graduated in 2015. She thrives working in both classical and non-classical music and has enjoyed a multitude of incredible performance experiences.
Katie is co-principal of collaborative ensemble ‘The Untold Orchestra”, who work with acclaimed pop and jazz artists and is a founder-member of progressive folk-fusion ensemble Kabantu. The group’s highlights include performing at the BBC Proms and delivering a TEDx talk, live sessions for BBC Radio 3 In Tune, BBC World on 3 and a guest appearance on Cbeebies, plus an array of renowned festival and venue appearances.

Rosamund Hawkins PFMC+

*Viola and Chamber music coach*
Rosamund is a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music and has worked with the In Harmony Liverpool programme,. She teaches violin and viola to pupils of all ages, taking a music-driven approach with inspiration from the Kodaly, Dalcroze and Sophie Till methods.
Rosamund lives in Manchester and leads a busy freelance orchestral and chamber music career, and is excited to be joining the PFMC staff team once again!

Ian Sankey PFMC+

*Brass and chamber music coach*
Ian Sankey is a musician and trombone player based in the North East of England.

In 2023, Ian performed with numerous award-winning ensembles and orchestras, including Royal Northern Sinfonia, Cologne Chamber Orchestra, WDR Symphony Orchestra and Northumberland Radical Fun Group. Ian also toured Britain and Ireland with Surge Scotland’s street theatre show ‘Beautiful Bones’. Ian has collaborated with composer Joe Snape - working on a large format piece for trombone and electronics as part of the Glasshouse International Centre for Music’s Foundry Residency in November 2023.

Lia Gourlay Gerrard PFMC, PFMC+

Support team & Guitar coach

Lia is a proficient guitarist, guitar teacher and singer/songwriter. Lia has played and been involved with music for a long time and used to attend PFMC when she was younger! Lia is studying Theatre at the University of Glasgow and over several years has become a trusted and valued member of the PFMC support team.