May Mukle

May Henrietta Mukle FRAM (14 May 1880 – 20 February 1963) was a British cellist and composer. She has been described as a "noted feminist cellist", who encouraged other women cellists. Her father was an immigrant from Rohrbach near Furtwangen in the Black Forest, Germany, who trained as a clockmaker, but was best known as an organ builder in London and part of the partnership Imhof & Mukle, which had its premises in Oxford Street. His two surviving sons followed him into the business. May's sisters — Anne (pianist), Lillian (trumpet), Flora (singer) and Louisa — were also musicians. She studied cello at the Royal Academy of Music with Alessandro Pezze (1835–1914).

Career Mukle was a working musician for over fifty years, including concert tours in Australia, Africa, and Asia. Mukle was also a composer of works for cello and piano.

She performed as a soloist, and in chamber ensembles. She was a member of Rosabel Watson's Aeolian Ladies' Orchestra, and of the all-women English Ensemble, with violinist Marjorie Hayward, violist Rebecca Clarke, and pianist Kathleen Long. In 1925, Mukle played at New York's Aeolian Hall with Percy Grainger and Lionel Tertis. With her pianist sister, Anne Mukle, she was a member of the Maud Powell Trio, which toured South Africa and America. Also with Anne, she gave the first performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Six Studies in English Folk Song in London in 1926. and in a Trio with Langley and York Bowen.

Mukle's apartment near Wigmore Hall was convenient for hosting visiting musicians; she also convinced the landlords to rent other apartments to musicians, so there would be fewer conflicts about noise. She founded the MM (Mainly Musicians) Club in a basement near Oxford Circus in London; She was an original member of the Society of Women Musicians, present at the organization's first meeting in 1911.

Mukle was described in The Times as "in the very front rank of living violoncellists",

Personal life and legacy Mukle broke her wrist in a car accident in 1959, at age 79, but resumed playing after it healed, She preferred to undertake her extensive journeying around the world by tramp steamer, returning from the last of them only a year before her death.

She died at Cuckfield, Sussex, in 1963, at the age of 82. The May Mukle Prize was founded in 1964 in her honour and is awarded each year to a cello student of the college. Louisa Mukle (1878–1926), viola, cello, double bass, percussion May Mukle (1880–1963), cellist and composer

Leopold's two surviving sons, Fred Mukle (1877–????) and Stanley Herbert Mukle (1883-1970), followed their father into the family business. Stanley's daughter Nora Mukle married the composer Vernon Elliott. Their daughter Naomi (born 1938) became a cellist.