Alice McVeigh

Alice McVeigh was born in South Korea, of American diplomatic parents, and lived in Southeast Asia until she was thirteen, when the family returned to the suburbs of Washington DC. She then began to play the cello, winning, among others, the Beethoven Society of Washington cello competition, as well as being selected as a finalist in the National Music Teachers Association Young Soloists competition and the National Symphony of Washington Young Concert Artists award.

She achieved a BMus with distinction in performance at Indiana University School of Music in 1980, the same year in which she came to London to study privately with William Pleeth. Since then she has freelanced with orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and John Eliot Gardiner's Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique all over the UK, the EU, America and the Far East.

Alice has written fiction all her life, but never attempted publication until the 1990s when her first two novels (While the Music Lasts and Ghost Music) were published by Orion, and her first play (Beating Time) in 2003 by New Theatre Productions. She is currently finishing a commissioned play, and a third novel.

Alice has been married to Simon McVeigh (currently deputy Vice-Chancellor at Goldsmiths College, University of London) since 1981; and she started editing by working extensively on his first book, 'Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn', which was published by Cambridge University Press. Since then she has edited all of his articles and books, as well as being in constant demand by other musicologists and writers.

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