About me

Daughter of the Academy’s former Head of Keyboard, Alexander Kelly, and cellist Margaret Moncrieff, Alison Moncrieff-Kelly was a cello pupil of Antonia Butler before winning a scholarship to the Academy to study with Florence Hooton and subsequently with Pierre Fournier in Geneva. She has performed and broadcast all over Europe and the UK as soloist and chamber musician.

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She has recorded the complete piano trios of Hummel, the piano trios of Clara Schumann and Saint-Saens, the complete cello and piano works of Stanford and three discs of solo cello repertoire. In 2005 she was awarded the Heinrich Boll fellowship, the first musician to be given this honour - mostly given to writers, poets and artists of note.

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​​From 2007 until 2012, Alison was the Director of Music at The Conservatoire in Blackheath, where she ran a programme of music tuition and concerts, and was responsible for managing a team of seventy tutors.

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As well as being an adjudicator, Alison is also an examiner for ABRSM in classical, jazz and diploma exams. Since 2007 she has been a syllabus consultant for ABRSM, selecting all the exam material for grades 1 to 8. She was also part of the editing team that put together all the ABRSM cello scales and sight-reading material. In 2015, she and Tim Wells created and edited a book of cello pieces for ABRSM., Principal Cello.

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Alison was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2013, an award made for distinguished services to the music profession. She is a sought after teacher and coach and has run many successful workshops for children and adults. She has particularly strong experience in the teaching of gifted children, and in coaching chamber music.