Clare Farr appointed at Royal College, London

Principal Bass Trombonist Clare Farr has been appointed as “Visiting Professor” of the Royal College of Music, London. She is one of 3 new visiting brass professors, with horn player Sarah Willis and tubaist Jens Bjørn-Larsen being the two others.

Farr has been the Principal Bass Trombonist of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra since 2013. She was born in the UK in a musical family, and moved to Stavanger, Norway at the age of 14. She earned her Bachelor’s degree Stavanger and Manchester, and graduated with a Master’s degree from the Norwegian Academy of Music in 2001. The following years, she held extensive contracts in the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, and she worked as an active freelance musician all over Europe. She teaches bass trombone at the Barratt Due Music Institute in Oslo.

She is a founding member of the trombone quartet Norsk Trombone Ensemble, where she shows great versatility and playfulness along

with musicians from the 3 major Oslo orchestras. They were nominated for the “Norwegian Grammy” for a recording of the Hvoslef Trombone Quartet, and released their first album “Nibbles” in 2020. You can also watch them in this chamber concert recorded by the NRK or on Youtube.

In 2022 she released her first solo album, Loud Mouted Beauty, which was recently reviewed by the ITA Magazine. The album features standard works by Lebedjew, Sachse and Tommasi and 2 commisions from the Norwegian composers Torstein Aagaard-Nielsen and Bente Leiknes Thorsen.

As responsible for the social media of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, she was the director of this humorous portrait of the life Orchestra Trombonist. It went viral in 2016, and was later used by various others, including a salsa band!
https://fb.watch/zM5LSlDpr6/

Clare Farr is one of very few women holding permanent orchestra positions as bass trombonists. However, the number has been steadily growing in recent years. The others we currently know in addition to Clare Farr are:

Martha Eikemo Andersen of the Swedish Radio Orchestra
Lisa Hochwimmer of the Kiel Philharmonic Orchestra
Amanda Tillett of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Mariann Krasznai of the Hungarian State Opera

-Eyvind Sommerfelt