Giles Woodforde speaks to Judith Evans ahead of the official debut concert of her group Instruments of Time and Truth

‘It’s just mad,” says double bass player Judith Evans.

“There’s a constant stream of professional classical musicians coming from London to Oxford, and vice versa.

“I play with a lot of London orchestras, but I don’t play in any Oxford orchestras. There’s a whole clump of musicians like me, living here in Oxfordshire but playing at Covent Garden, for example, or in one of the BBC orchestras.”

So Judith is helping to form a new professional orchestra in Oxford: “It’s such an obvious idea, it has to be done!” It’s to be called Instruments of Time and Truth, and it will be a period instrument ensemble, like the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment or the English Baroque Soloists, for instance. Judith herself has been playing in period instrument groups for some 25 years.

“I came back to England in 1987, having been playing in the Lyon Opera orchestra,” she explains. “There was a boom time for period instrument playing in the 1990s, and I started just at that time: on any given day you could have been doing three different jobs. I got into it because I worked for the conductor John Eliot Gardiner in Lyon, and he then offered me a job in his English Baroque Soloists.”

Judith trained on both the violin and the double bass at the Royal College of Music.

“The double bass won in the end because it had such a detrimental effect on my violin playing,” she laughs. “Also there are more opportunities for double bassists, and the more opportunities you get the more rewarding your career becomes.

“It’s as Malcolm Gladwell says in his book Outliers: you get the training, you get the opportunities, and you become that thing.”

But Outliers, Gladwell’s blueprint for making the most of human potential, is all very well when it’s conveniently contained between the covers of a book. In Judith’s front hall sits a very bulky travelling case for her instrument. Surely she’s landed herself with perpetual transport nightmares?

“Absolutely, it’s the bane of my life. When I go away I am single-handedly responsible for 70 kilos of luggage. It must be a bit like the problems of being in a wheelchair: the whole of life becomes an obstacle course, with doors you can’t open — revolving doors are a bass player’s worst nightmare.”

We are talking in Judith’s Summertown home. What, I ask, brought her to Oxford in the first place? “I became an undergraduate at the age of 30. I started at the Royal College of Music when I was 14 as a junior exhibitionist, and by the time I got to 30 I felt being a bass player wasn’t challenging enough — I had this enormous chip on my shoulder about not being educated.

“So I put myself through Oxford. But I ran out of money by my third year: I was a self-financing student, which was very unusual in those days — I’d already had my grant money for the RCM, so I had to pay for myself.

“At least you did get a fee reduction of £1,000 if you were self-financing!

So I sold my house in Battersea, bought this house in Oxford, let out two rooms, and never left.”

On September 20, Instruments of Time and Truth will give its official debut concert. In fact it has appeared once already, at a gala concert, pictured above, marking the retirement of Edward Higginbottom as New College’s director of music. He will be the new orchestra’s principal director, and Judith explains, he’s another reason why Instruments of Time and Truth has been founded.

“I’ve been involved and worked for Edward for a very long time, both as an orchestra fixer and player, and also as the mother of a New College chorister. I couldn’t bear to think that wasn’t going to happen for the rest of my career.”

Instruments of Time and Truth
Holywell Music Room
September 20
Visit oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford or call 01865 305305