Alice McVeigh was born in South Korea, of American diplomatic parents, and lived in Southeast Asia until she was 13, when the family returned to the suburbs of Washington D.C. She then began to learn to play the cello, winning among other competitions the Beethoven Society of Washington Cello Competition, as well as being selected as a finalist in the National Music Teachers Association Young Soloists competition and the National Symphony of Washington Young Concert Artists award. She achieved a B.Mus with distinction in performance at Indiana University School of Music and in the 1980s came to London to study privately with Jacqueline Du Pre’s ‘cello daddy’, William Pleeth. Since then she has freelanced with orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique all over the EU, America and the Far East, including Carnegie Hall. In addition, she has performed cello concertos with orchestras including the Bromley Symphony Orchestra, the Waveney Sinfonia, the Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra and the Sussex Philharmonic (Dvořák, Elgar, Saint-Saëns, Don Quixote, Schelomo, etc.) She has been our cello principal since 1983.
Alice has written fiction all her life, but never attempted publication until the mid-1990s when her first two novels (While the Music Lasts and Ghost Music) were published by Orion Publishing House London, and her first play (Beating Time) in 2003 by New Theatre Productions. Alice has been married to Simon McVeigh (currently deputy Vice-Chancellor at Goldsmiths College, University of London) since 1981; and she started editing by working extensively on his first book, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn, which was published by Cambridge University Press. Since the birth of their daughter, Alice has ghosted over 50 books for celebrities, academics and fellow writers. Her third book (All Risks Musical) is published by Pocket Press. Alice also writes a weekly humour column for the daily classical music magazine www.mvdaily.com.