Peter Martin    Mon, 17 Jan 2000 00:48:21 +0000
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I've come rather late to this, since I only get the weekly digest of the
lute list.  Anyway:

My name is Peter Martin and I live in Coulsdon, just south of London.  I
started playing the lute in 1974, when I was still at school.  I studied
music at Cambridge but then headed off in a different career direction
and sold my soul to Arthur Andersen. Now I'm finance director at a music
management company in London.  We deal mostly with more mainstream music
- symphony orchestras, conductors, opera singers, pianists - but we do
also stretch out into earlier music sometimes, and work for Fretwork,
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with Simon Rattle, Trevor Pinnock,
and indeed John Williams.

Deep down I still think of myself as a guitarist, but I play much more
lute these days and have steadily moved in that direction - I cut off
the nails about 5 years ago, and moved to thumb-under RH 2 years ago,
prompted by Stewart McCoy on the course in Latvia (q.v.).  I should be
taking delivery soon of a nice new 7-course lute from Martin Haycock so
the guitar will probably get even less attention after that. I'm on the
look-out for opportunities to play and display the new baby!

My current lute project is to learn to read German tablature properly.
I keep telling myself it can't be inherently more difficult than the
other sorts....  It's all part of having a voracious appetite for lute
music.  I keep being surprised, still, at the quantity and quality of
the repertoire.

If you want to see a picture of me, hunt for the secret link on the Lute
Society web site at http://ds.dial.pipex.com/silvius/lute/

Peter