Ben Knowles
Piano, violin, viola

I have always had a love for music from a very young age. Although no one in my family was musical, my Grandad was always playing classical music at home so I grew up listening to Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and many more. When I was 4, I heard Vivaldi’s Four
Seasons at school and, after telling my Grandad about this, he offered to arrange for me to have violin lessons. Piano and recorder followed at the age of 7 and by the age of 16, I had started viola, was playing regularly in youth and amateur orchestras in Kent, and was generally involved with absolutely any music-making I could find, be it singing bass in the
school choir, playing in the school steel-band or solo piano recitals.
I studied at the Kent Music Academy (a former Saturday morning music school not dissimilar to Dunedin!) where I learnt conducting and then gained my degree in Music at the University of Manchester. After a year out, I completed a postgraduate diploma in viola at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where I studied with Sarah-Jane Bradley and Richard Crabtree.
Since finishing my studies, I have become more active as a conductor, and worked extensively alongside Kenneth Woods as Conducting Assistant with the English Symphony Orchestra on the first two performances of a new work by Deborah Pritchard based on the
paintings of Maggi Hambling. The performances took place at LSO St. Luke’s and the National Gallery, London. The first of these performances was recorded and released on CD by Nimbus Records. I was also appointed as one of two Assistant Conductors for the world
premiere of John Joubert’s opera Jane Eyre, which was recorded live by SOMM Recordings and released in March 2017.
I regularly freelance as an orchestra violist, most recently playing with the Worthing Symphony Orchestra and work extensively as a pianist accompanying singers.
As a piano teacher, I focus on the Leschetizky technique of playing and as a violin/viola teacher, specialise in the teaching of Mazas, Schradieck, Kreutzer, Sevcik, Rode and Dont, as well as the lesser known Pal Lukas and Harold Berkley studies. I strongly believe that everyone has their own learning style and that my job as a teacher is to discover that style
and adapt to it, making learning music fun, enjoyable and to pass on the same love of music that was instilled in me from a young age.