sentences:  He won scholarships to study with Margaret Eliot at the Royal Academy of Music (at 12) and later under Terence MacDonagh at the Royal College of Music (at 16), where he won the Joy Boughton Memorial Prize in only his second year of study.His orchestral career began with the Philharmonia Orchestra as Co-Principal Oboe and then the English National Opera Orchestra as Principal Oboe.He joined the London Symphony Orchestra as Co-Principal Oboe in 1986 and was appointed to Principal Oboe in 1988, staying for almost twenty years before deciding to move to the Northern Sinfonia as Principal Oboe in late 2005.