Creative learning, composition, performance and collaboration grounded in professional musicianship.
I trained at Chetham’s School of Music and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, later becoming principal bassoonist of the Cyprus State Chamber Orchestra. My orchestral and creative-learning work has included major ensembles, venues and education departments in the UK and Europe.
Selected experience
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra & Barbican
A creative-learning residency in which young people from East London developed original responses to Brahms and his music, culminating in a pre-concert performance at the Barbican. The wider project was connected with a Royal Philharmonic Society Award nomination.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra — Candlebird
A composition project with secondary-school students responding to Martin Suckling’s Candlebird and Don Paterson’s poetry, developed with the composer and SCO musicians and culminating in a performance before an SCO concert in St Andrews.
“It was an extraordinary experience thanks to the workshop leader Luke Crookes.”
Project participant, reflecting on Candlebird
Philharmonia, Opera North, BBC Proms & Wigmore Hall
Projects have included secondary-school orchestral workshops, family and participatory work, cross-arts activity, narration and instrumental projects, as well as work connected with the Royal Shakespeare Company and orchestral repertoire.
What I bring to an orchestral project
- Professional bassoon and orchestral experience
- Creative composition and improvisation
- SEND and inclusive practice
- Cross-arts and embodied approaches
- Ability to work with repertoire without reducing a project to explanation of the score
- Responsive facilitation that can hold both structure and artistic risk
Bassoon as creative voice
In workshops and collaborative projects the bassoon can function as more than an instrument for demonstration: it can hold atmosphere, mirror movement, sustain drones, extend an idea, punctuate transitions and participate in the artistic life of the room.