Phyllis Sellick

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Phyllis Sellick
Birth name	Phyllis Doreen Sellick
Born	June 16, 1911(1911-06-16) Ilford, England, United Kingdom
Died	May 26, 2007 (aged 95) Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey
Genre(s)	Romantic, 20th century
Occupation(s)	Virtuoso Pianist, Pedagogue
Instrument(s)	Piano
Years active	1929-2002

Phyllis Sellick, OBE (June 16, 1911 - May 26, 2007)^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] was a British pianist and teacher, best known for her partnership with her pianist husband Cyril Smith.

Born at Ilford, Essex, she started to play the piano by ear at the age of three and had her first music lesson on her fifth birthday. Four years later she won the Daily Mirror's "Pip, Squeak and Wilfred" contest for young musicians and was awarded two years' private tuition with Cuthbert Whitemore, subsequently winning an open scholarship to continue her study with him at the Royal Academy of Music.

She first met Cyril Smith at a concert in the Queen's Hall, London. They married in 1937 and began performing together in 1941^[5] making many international tours and recordings as a duo. This continued even after Smith lost the use of his left hand following two strokes, when the couple would play specially devised material for three hands, including a concerto written for them by Malcolm Arnold.

Both she and her husband were appointed OBE in 1971. After Smith's death in 1974, Phyllis Sellick continued a long and successful career as a teacher at the Royal College of Music where her husband had taught. She continued to work into 90s, despite her failing eyesight and (in an ironic twist) loss of her playing ability in her left hand following an accident.

In 2002 she appeared on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs. One of her choices was Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini to which she added "I would like Cyril to play it."