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Levine Andrade
'A potently eloquent soloist' - The Daily Telegraph
Indian-born British violinist, viola player, conductor and composer Levine Andrade was born in Mumbai on 12 November 1954. He emigrated to England and won a scholarship to the Yehudi Menuhin School, becoming, at the age of nine, one of its first twelve members. He was taught there by Robert Masters and Yehudi Menuhin. Two years later he became the subject of a BBC TV Life of a Child series documentary. He took up the viola, which he studied with Patrick Ireland, and he also studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger and Margaret Hubicki. At fifteen he won a Vaughan Williams scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music, where his teachers were Frederick Grinke (violin), Max Gilbert (viola), and Sidney Griller and Colin Hampton (chamber music coaching).
Andrade was a founder member of the award-winning Arditti Quartet, with Irvine Arditti, Lennox Mackenzie and John Senter, Royal Academy of Music students who were all interested in twentieth century music. He played with the group for seventeen years, leaving in 1990 to work as a freelance musician in London and spend more time with his family.
He wrote a film score for Strings, a film based on the true story of Bosnian cellist Vedran Smailović, known as 'The Cellist of Sarajevo', and also worked as a conductor.
There was tragedy in Andrade's life when, in 2013, his violinist wife Frances Andrade committed suicide after being accused of lying in court after giving evidence against her former music teacher at Chethams, Michael Brewer.
Levine Andrade died on 20 November 2018, aged sixty-four.