Norah Joy Clydesdale
Norah Joy Clydesdale started playing the piano at five years old and the cello at eight which became her main instrument of study. She comes from a family of musicians starting with Robert Clydesdale from Glasgow, Scotland who was an orchestra conductor and cellist and who immigrated to New York State on a cruise ship across the Atlantic in 1932 performing trios, to continue his career as a cellist and teacher in upstate New York. Stuart Clydesdale,her father is a pianist and Norah’s mother, Joyce Clydesdale sang professionally in opera productions in the Bay Area in California.
Norah studied with Colin Hampton of the Griller Quartet and Andor Toth, Jr.
of the Hungarian Quartet at the San Francisco Conservatory before going to Boston University to study for seven years with George Neikrug, world-reknowned concert cellist and pedagogue. Norah played professionally in the Boston area particularly in chamber music performing the entire Beethoven Quartets Cycle with the Artaria Quartet and as a member of the Portland, Maine Symphony before moving to Paris, France to be married. She taught music and the cello and violin to children and adults in Paris and developed the string department in the Lycee Ombrosa in Lyon, France as well as teaching five-year-olds music in the public schools in Milan, Italy before returning to Colorado. Norah is bilingual in French and also speaks Italian.
Returning to Colorado Springs after 27 years in Paris and Italy, she is presently a member of the COS Chamber Orchestra, teaching cello privately, as well as teaching and performing with the COS Conservatory.