Keith Pascoe

In 2016 Keith Pascoe received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Concert Hall, Dublin for his work with the Vanbrugh Quartet. He is an internationally respected violinist, conductor, lecturer, and editor based in Cork, Ireland.

Principal conductor of the Cork Symphony Orchestra from 2004 until 2015, when he was appointed conductor of the newly established Cork Fleischmann Symphony Orchestra. During that period he conducted an extensive repertoire of symphonies, and accompanied such soloists as singers Cara O’Sullivan, Majella Cullagh, Mary Hegarty, Sinead Ni Mhurchu, Raphaela Mangan, John Molloy, and the The Three Irish Sopranos; violinists Mairéad Hickey, Sarah Sexton, Megan Chan, Tasmin Little, Patrick Rafter, and Nigel Kennedy with whom he also played Bach’s concerto for two violins; cellists Christopher Marwood, Julian Lloyd Webber, Yseult Cooper-Stockdale, Zoe Nagle; pianists Ciara Moroney, David Syme, Kevin Jansson, Barry Douglas, Michael McHale and Artur Pizarro; the Fleischmann Choir, as well as the Army Band of 1 Southern Brigade; International choirs including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir, and the Harlow Chorus. He opened Cork’s International Choral Festival notably with A Sea Symphony by Vaughan-Williams in 2008, and Verdi’s Requiem in 2017, and will open the 2025 festival with Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. He has conducted at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, and at the National Concert Hall, Dublin. He conducted the DIT Conservatory’s production of Britten’s opera Noye’s Fludde in Dublin (2013), and in the same year gave the premiere of Paul Alday’s first symphony (1816), the first symphony known to have been composed in Ireland in the eighteenth century. Composers that have created works for the Orchestra include Ian Wilson, whose Fleischmann Variations (2016) were especially memorable. Ian Wilson is currently composing a work for violin and orchestra for Keith and the CFSO.

Liverpool born Keith Pascoe’s professional career began after prize-winning studies at the Royal College of Music, London where he studied violin with Jaroslav Vanecek, piano with Eileen Reynolds, and conducting with Norman del Mar. His professional life began in 1981, when he became a founding member (and first leader) of the Chamqber Orchestra of Europe. Subsequent full-time positions included third concertmaster of the London Philharmonic at the age of twenty-three, assistant director of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the Fields (with whom he has appeared as soloist), and ten years with exclusive EMI artists, the Britten Quartet. From 1998- 2017, he was a member of the Vanbrugh Quartet, artists-in-residence to University College Cork. The Vanbrugh continue to tour and play concerts with guest artists. In January 2019 he was invited to lead an international orchestra in Bologna, Italy to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the death of conductor Claudio Abbado He is lecturer in Chamber Music and Violin at the Conservatoire of Music at TU Dublin. He lives in Cork City, Ireland.