Callum Kenmuir
Callum Kenmuir has led a double musical life for many years, working as pianist and keyboardist in the field of popular music, while composing concert music for piano and orchestra, chamber groups, solo piano and voice.
Apart from the piano, he has studied and played clarinet, trumpet, tuba and viola, and his wide-ranging musical interest has also involved him in jazz, traditional music and in amateur symphony orchestras.
Mostly earning his living playing piano in 5-star hotels and piano bars in London’s West End, Switzerland, Monte Carlo, Norway and his native Scotland, he has also travelled the world with Cunard aboard the QE2 and Cunard Countess, and with P&O Cruises aboard Aurora.
Songwriting from the early 1970s, he was successively contracted to Chappell Music, EMI and independent producer/publisher, Larry Page, and remains a member of the Performing Rights Society. He is also a composer member of the Scottish Music Centre.
Callum was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1945. Having lived in Milan for 19 years, Callum returned to live in Scotland in June 2021.
From his earliest years, Callum has the ability to improvise and harmonise. At the age of two, he was picking out melodies on the piano, and began lessons at five. Aged nine, he took an interest in jazz, which became his main enthusiasm for many years.
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Skiffle
Callum formed his first band (a skiffle group) playing banjo, while still in primary school, then a jazz band (playing piano) in secondary school.
Dance Band
At eighteen, he joined Fergie MacDonald’s Highland Dance Band as pianist, playing Scottish traditional music for dancing. This led to his first experience of recording, making three LP albums and an EP with the band, and a first experience of broadcasting on BBC programmes.
A year and a half later, he was invited to join George Penman’s Jazzmen playing trumpet, and worked with the band for periods over the next twelve years, sometimes playing piano or tuba.
EMI
In 1972, a guitarist friend encouraged him to become involved in writing pop songs. With two other writers, the group Hope Street was formed and a publishing contract was obtained with Chappell Music. The group recorded singles for EMI. In 1974, Callum won an international song competition in Malta, which encouraged him to pursue song writing. He next collaborated with another Glasgow songwriter, Harry Barrie, this time under contract to EMI Publishing. In this period, he also recorded a programme of ragtime piano music for Radio Clyde.
From 1976, he led a 4-piece band in a Glasgow nightspot playing keyboards. The group played for dancing and backed cabaret acts.
In 1978, the band was booked onto the Cunard cruise liner QE2 and subsequently on the Cunard Countess in the Caribbean.
London
After a summer season in the Channel Islands in 1979, Callum moved to London to work with independent producer/publisher, Larry Page, staying in the capital for almost five years. Apart from writing songs for various singers, he also began to write instrumental pieces. He recorded an album of his own compositions under the pseudonym of Michael Park and his Orchestra, also having pieces recorded by the Johnny Pearson and Larry Page orchestras. Another typical project involved writing English lyrics for an album of twelve European hit songs, each from a different country. He played solo piano around the famous West End hotels, and played on recording sessions.
Leaving London in 1984, he worked abroad in piano bars in Norway and five-star hotels in Switzerland and Monte Carlo, before returning to Scotland.
While resident pianist at the Edinburgh Sheraton Hotel, he completed a three-year college course in piano tuning and maintenance, going into business for four years before returning to full-time piano playing.
Composition
During the 1990s, composition became a more serious activity and his Piano Concerto was composed in 1995. This Concerto was first performed and recorded by the eminent Scottish concert pianist Murray McLachlan, along with Callum’s Rhapsody on Themes of Grieg. Solo piano music, chamber music for wind quintet, piano quintet, harp trio, saxophone quartet, string quartet, clarinet, and viola, plus song cycles for mezzo-soprano and baritone voices are all included in his output to date.
Pianist
Working as solo pianist with P&O Cruises from 2000 to 2002, he drew on an accumulated repertoire of more than eleven hundred titles, mainly in his own improvised arrangements. He subsequently moved to Milan, Italy where he now lives with his partner Manuela, while continuing to compose concert music.
