Hugh McKenna
Professor of Oboe and Professor of Cor Anglais
Email: [email protected]
Tutor in Oboe
Hugh began his musical life playing the cornet in a local brass band, and eventually joined the army at the age of 15 to continue his playing in the band of the Royal Fusiliers. He went to the Royal Military School of Musicfor a year before being posted to Gibraltar and Sharjah. When a vacancy for an oboist occurred Hugh, who was ready for a new challenge, volunteered to take up the instrument. After making rapid progress on the oboe, he decided to leave the Army, and was accepted as a student at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Neil Black and Janet Craxton.
He went on to join the Ulster Orchestra, the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, and then the Hallé Orchestra, where he has been for over twenty years. Hugh teaches the oboe at the RNCM and many of his pupils have now followed him in to the musical profession. In his spare time he enjoys the sport of triathlon (he completed an Ironman triathlon in 2005) and ballroom dancing.
