Peter Farnbank, LRSM

 In February 2010, the Orchestra appointed Peter as its Leader.

Peter studied the violin under Alan Powell (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra) and Mark Knight (now Professor of Violin and Viola at the Guildhall School of Music).  As leader/concertmaster, Peter brings a wide range of music-making experience to the Blackpool Symphony Orchestra.

Peter's first concert experience was performing Haydn's G major Violin Concerto at a St Peter's Independent School concert in Bournemouth, aged 18, barely three years from starting to learn the violin.  After qualifying from Southampton University as a teacher in music in 1976, he taught violin privately and music up to A Level in Gibraltar Government schools.  Peter was Conductor/Musical Director of the Gibraltar Youth Orchestra and Music Advisor to the Gibraltar Music Centre. He formed the Camerata Singers, a female-voice chamber choir, which he conducted and for which he wrote numerous arrangements.  Peter also formed the Gibraltar Youth String Ensemble, which he conducted, sometimes from the violin.  He guest-conducted the Gibraltar Choral Society in a Christmas broadcast on Gibraltar Radio, and in the 1980's Argo LP recording of sacred music from Gibraltar Peter was assistant-leader of that string orchestra.

In 1986 Peter gained a degree externally from The University of the State of New York, partly by passing a national US graduates' exam in music on the 95th percentile of a cohort of nearly 8000 examinees. (He recalls with amusement the onerous experience of taking his exams in a US/NATO base in Europe, invigilated by a highly decorated "gentle giant" of a US Navy Commander!)

Peter has played the violin in a large number of student and adult orchestras across England, including string orchestras, leading Violin 2 in a couple of them. He has led the LSU College theatre orchestra and played an unaccompanied solo on stage in an 18th century production.  He has also played the violin, viola and double-bass in the Gibraltar Symphony Orchestra.  In 2004 Peter was in a piano trio that performed a memorial concert in Poulton, where he also played a Sarasate solo on the violin and a Villa-Lobos solo on the classical guitar.

Classical guitar and clarinet were part of a range of minor electives that Peter studied as part of his general training.  But apart from violin/viola what he has kept up and particularly enjoys today is composing.  Peter has composed a varied range of music from pastiche solo to contemporary symphonic.  And in 2007, he co-principalled John Au in a double-violin solo in one of his own compositions, "Starie Romansi" (Old Romances), performed by the Fylde Sinfonia.

Peter is also currently assistant-leader of the Fylde Concert Orchestra, for which he has arranged music and continues to play solo along with Ron White, its Leader.  Peter was the conductor of the Soundwaves ensemble, which ultimately evolved as the FCO.  He leads The Cameo String Quartet of Lancashire, which he formed in 1997, and for which he has written numerous arrangements from Baroque to Pop.  Peter currently pursues a career as a Chartered Psychologist, and is deeply interested in Music Psychology.