Paul Goodey. Head of the School of Woodwind and Percussion, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. Advertised: The Times Higher, June 16, 2006

Paul Goodey moves from Trinity College of Music in London this week to the Royal Northern College of Music to take up the position of head of the School of Woodwind and Percussion. He is an oboe player of international standing and a champion of challenging new music.

Professor Goodey will manage about 40 staff at Manchester. In addition to his teaching duties, he will have a key quality assurance role: ensuring that course standards are maintained and that the college delivers against national requirements for the successes and outcomes of degrees.

Professor Goodey is keen to nurture close collaborations between students composing music and those performing it. "There are some real challenges in running study programmes for wind players, mainly because there are fewer seats for them in the orchestra than there are for the string players.

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"It's very easy to have the wind students getting completely bored while the string players get a repetitive strain injury. But imaginative concert programming can alleviate many of these issues."

"I like to work with composers on new music so that they can build up a picture of the techniques that are possible and the sounds I can make.

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"I'm working on a piece written by Marc Yeats, a composer living on the Isle of Skye. It's 46 pages long and is probably going to take me a year to learn, so don't hold your breath," he said.