My friend Viv McVeagh, who has died of cancer aged 69, made a significant contribution to the musical and cultural life of Lincolnshire and beyond.
In 2001, in response to some remarks made on Radio 3 by the pianist and composer Huw Watkins, she founded Convivium Music of Lincoln in order to commission a work celebrating 21 years of joint performances by the pianist Julius Drake and the oboist Nicholas Daniel. Watkins had mentioned that the work was being written, and wondered aloud whether anyone wanted to pay for it. Two Romances received its world premiere in 2002 in Lincoln and its London premiere, at Wigmore Hall, later that year. It is now played regularly by the duo.
Other Convivium commissions followed: John Woolrich’s Stealing Steps for violin and viola, first performed in 2005, and Alexander Goehr’s Fantasie, for Watkins, at the piano, and his brother, Paul, on the cello.
Viv’s aim was to make contemporary music accessible to a wider audience by bringing inspirational performers and composers to Lincolnshire, and Convivium’s festivals (Voice and Verse) from 2008 to 2010 commissioned two further world premieres: David Matthews’s One Foot in Eden, first performed by James Gilchrist (tenor) with Drake at the piano, and Judith Bingham’s Tomcat Murr. The project brought other artists, including the actor Fiona Shaw, the baritone Benedict Nelson and the mezzo-soprano Katarina Karneus to Lincolnshire’s churches and small venues.
In 2004, Viv was invited to be the administrator of the new Lincoln and Lincolnshire International Chamber Music festival (LICMF). In her first year 25 events were held over eight days. From 2007 she worked alongside the new artistic director, the pianist Ashley Wass, also a native of the county, to make the Lincolnshire festival renowned in its field.
Viv found venues in grand houses, parish churches, chapels and village halls, and negotiated grants and contracts, arranged transport, accommodation and hospitality for the artists, and inspired volunteers. Her clarity of vision, unwavering determination and perfectionism attracted the admiration of the artists who came to take part.
Viv was the daughter of Joseph Woolerton, a tenant farmer at Colsterworth, south of Grantham, and his wife, Marjorie (nee Riley). She attended Stainby school until the family moved to a smallholding in Devon, and then went to Tavistock primary school before boarding at Crediton high school. While training as a nurse at University College hospital, in London, she met Dan McVeagh, who was studying French at UCL, at a dance. They married in 1967 so that she could accompany him on his study year abroad in Caen, Normandy.
After 10 years of marriage the couple and their two young sons, Matt and Steve, returned to Lincolnshire, where Dan took up a teaching post. Viv undertook two degree courses and then used her new expertise to teach the piano, present a weekly classical music programme on Radio Lincolnshire and teach Workers’ Educational Association classes. She also sang in local choirs and set up a music listening group in a vegetarian café.
Viv is survived by Dan and their sons.
