The Alternative Conservatoire

Dr. Joel Bell

Director - The Alternative Conservatoire

Dr. Bell has lectured and mentored students and young professionals in universities and conservatoires across the UK. A Berklee scholar and graduate of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, his work has been performed in festivals and concerts in the UK, Canada, NYC, Hong Kong, Singapore and Amsterdam.

As an academic he has spoken at conferences on new techniques on the guitar, improvisation, composition and inter-cultural collaborative practices as well as speaking on BBC Radio 4.

He leads cross-cultural ensemble Gokumi and is a long time collaborator with Peter Wiegold and is 'house guitarist' at London's Club Inegales.

In 2019, after spending years studying, performing and collaborating with musicians from the Near and Far East, alongside conversations with his many students, he realised a new direction was needed in Higher Education - thus the seeds of The Alternative Conservatoire were born.

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bushra el-turk

Composer/Co-Director of The ALternative Conservatoire (parterships and external relations) - mentor

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Faraz Eshghi

Kamānche player/Persian Music Theory and Practice - Lecturer

Kamānche player and composer, Faraz Eshghi was born in Rasht, Northern Iran.
As an orchestral violinist and violist, he is one of the co-founders of Guilan Philharmonic Orchestra, the first independent Orchestra in Northern Iran. Recent performances include Festival d’Aix as part of Woman at Point Zero opera, a Research and Development project reimagining Mozart's Requiem in conjunction with University of Sheffield, as well as performing with award-winning contemporary Afghani poet Reza Mohammadi. He will appear as the soloist with Solem Quartet premiering a new work by Bushra at the Norwich and Norfolk Festival in May 2023.

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CHENG YU

Chinese Music Lecturer

Born in Beijing and formerly a pipa soloist with the Central Orchestra of Chinese Music in China, Cheng Yu is a renowned pipa lute and guqin zither virtuoso, ethnomusicologist and specialist in Chinese music. She studied the pipa from the age of 7 from her father (a Pudong pipa master) and the guqinzither from the age of 14, graduated with distinction from the Xi'an Conservatory of Music and won several top prizes for her pipa performances. Based in London since the 1990s, she gained scholarships for her MMus and PhD degrees in ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London. She is a co-founder of the UK Chinese Music Ensemble (1998), the London Youlan Qin Society (2003) and the award-winning Silk String Quartet (2007)

Shri Sriram

Bassist/Composer - lecturer/house band member

SHRI SRIRAM is an award-winning bassist, composer, producer and arranger whose dynamic quest for new and collaborative ways of making music has taken him all over the world. From Indian classical music to electronica, from trip hop to jazz, from musical theatre to film scores, Shri’s superb musicianship and positive vibes are in constant demand from fellow musicians and producers, presenters and audiences everywhere.

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Peter wiegold

Composer/Director - Mentor, Lecturer

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Catherine Contz

Composer/Director - Mentor

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Claudia Molitor

Composer - Mentor

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