Grace Callaghan

Grace Callaghan was born in London, and after a childhood of listening, dancing and singing, she was awarded a full Music Scholarship at the Old Palace School in Croydon 2008 after only playing the flute for a year, where she quickly established her position as the principal flautist of the school from an early age, forming a number of ad hoc ensembles as well as leading the school flute choir. Simultaneously she undertook additional classes at Bromley Youth Music Trust and private improvisation classes with the British jazz pianist Alex Maguire, including workshops on the music of the quintessential jazz-rock band Soft Machine. This led to a host of performance opportunities before commencing undergraduate studies at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2015. In her time at RNCM Grace has continued to expanded her technique and repertoire under the tutelage of Laura Jellicoe and Kevin Gowland, as well as masterclasses with Andrea Olivia, Adam Walker, Paul Edmund-Davis, James Galway and Michel Bellavance to name a few. Grace has a broad horizon of music interests and techniques which has already led to her being much in demand; playing with the college big band with Markus Stockhausen and the RNCM session orchestra and featured with the great Alice Zawadski at the London Jazz Festival. Most recently Grace played with the Ignition Orchestra in a recording for BBC Three’s ‘The Rap Game’. Grace’s most recent personal project is Dolce Flutes, an innovative new flute quartet based in the North West. The quartet perform a wide range of material, both familiar and challenging and also use current music technology, for example employing looping pedals, leading to arranging a series of concerts based around four looped flutes, which have been enthusiastically received, and have provoked much discussion, which in turn has led to the group’s development as well as increased audience involvement. They continue to perform in a wide variety of venues from daycentres and care- homes to recital venues around the North-West. Grace has quickly established herself as the go-to flautist and is understandably regularly in demand in and around the North-West as well as further afield in London and the South- East, and the breadth of her experience and interests, aligned with her sparkling musical technique and personality ensure her place in today’s music scene.