‘A portrait in music’: Elite violinist pays tribute to his beloved teacher

He’s performed on the world’s great stages and worked with Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Sting, but Australian violinist Patrick Savage still gets nervous before a show.

As the curtain rises, he remembers a pep talk his childhood violin teacher Donald Scotts gave him when he was 13, before a recital.

“He said, ‘You’ve done the work, you’re prepared, and all you have to do is go and enjoy it,’” Savage says.

Savage, who grew up in Bendigo, is lead violinist for the musical Hamilton in London’s West End.

He’s a former principal first violin of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, led Bacharach’s UK touring orchestra and played on two McCartney albums.

He composes and plays on Hollywood film soundtracks and has performed at London’s O2 arena and the Lincoln Centre in New York.

But Savage is in Victoria on a personal quest – a tribute to his mentor Scotts, in three concerts and a new album.

From the age of six to 18, Savage took private lessons from “Mr Scotts” at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Every two weeks, Savage would take a train from Bendigo to Melbourne and back. The lessons ended when Savage went to study at the Royal College of Music in London, but Savage never forgot Scotts.

He says Scotts, who had been Melbourne Symphony Orchestra associate concertmaster and had led the Melbourne String Quartet, was a grandfather figure who was “irrepressibly joyful”.

The lessons never felt like a chore. “I wanted to have him praise me,” Savage says. “And have him saying ‘best yet’, which was his slogan, if you’d done well.”

Savage strove to play violin like Scotts – with charm, warmth and “this sparkle behind the eyes”.

In 2023, in his second to last visit to Scotts’ Rosebud retirement home before Scotts died in 2024 at the age of 97, Savage played some of Scotts’ favourite pieces.

Scotts then presented Savage with his own childhood violin and his sheet music collection with personal notations.