Maryan Balkwill

Maryan Balkwill studied at the Royal College of Music with Antony Pini and Joan Dickson qualifying with ARCM and GRSM, before moving to Edinburgh where she continued her studies with Joan Dickson. While based there she worked with various chamber and opera orchestras touring in the UK and many European countries playing in concerts and music festivals, recording for radio and for a BBC TV documentary. She taught privately and at schools including St Mary’s Music School, Edinburgh.  Now in London, Maryan has played in orchestral and chamber music concerts in and around London and also on the high seas playing in concerts aboard cruise ships.

Maryan was inspired by the beautiful sound, accurate intonation and rhythmic vitality of the young players of the Helsinki Junior Strings and was curious to find out how it was possible for children to play with such beauty and musicianship.  A few years after she attended her first Colourstrings teacher training course with Csaba Szilvay, Maryan started to teach at the Colourstrings Music School. She also taught at other Colourstrings schools in London and Kent until taking a break in 2005/06 to study for a few months at the Kodály Institute in Kecskemet, Hungary.  Maryan has visited the East Helsinki Music Institute, where Colourstrings was first developed, to observe musicianship and instrumental lessons.  

She was a founder member of the Colourstrings team at Gallions School in Beckton, East London, and now oversees the Colourstrings project established at Kings Cross Academy Primary School.  Maryan is now Deputy Director at the Colourstrings Music School in Kingston.

In 2017 she was invited to compile a series of repertoire books for cello.  These books are published and contain her selection of songs from English-speaking nations adapted for cello, with piano accompaniment, and complement the teaching methods of Csaba Szilvay’s Colourstrings Cello School.