Why come to me?

I have over twenty-five years experience teaching piano and woodwind, both in schools and in my private practice. I started learning the oboe at Dover Grammar School for Girls and from there was offered a place at the Birmingham School of Music. I’m an experienced solo, orchestral and concert band player and was a founder member of the Menai Wind Quintet which specialised in performing the music of twentieth-century and contemporary composers. I’ve acted as a sectional tutor at local wind bands and for the St Asaph Music Festival and I occasionally conduct. I’ve played in the orchestral pit for various musical productions, often being the only member of the band not playing my specialist instrument! I regularly put on pupil performances and collaborated with other music teachers to demonstrate music to the under-fours. I’m currently a member of the Maidstone Wind Symphony and I’ve deputised with the Folkestone Symphony Orchestra and the Thanet and Sandwich Concert Bands. I was a member of the Llandudno Swing Band playing alto saxophone and I still get together with friends to play duets on the flute and on the piano.  

I left music college after a term (it didn’t suit me) and instead went off to read Politics at Exeter University where, ironically, I spent all my time in the music department and had oboe lessons with John Williams, principle oboist of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. I then joined the Royal Air Force and began to concentrate on the piano and on retirement, I developed a large piano teaching practice from my home on Anglesey. A period of time in Cyprus led me back to my oboe and then, on return to Anglesey, almost by accident, I became a woodwind tutor for Ysgolion Cerdd William Matthias and had to quickly learn how to play the flute, clarinet and saxophone and, more latterly, the bassoon, giving lessons in primary, secondary, state and private schools on Anglesey and in Gwynedd and Denbighshire. I gained teaching qualifications through the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM), gaining my Certificate of Teaching based at the Royal Northern College of Music and my Diploma of Teaching. I then returned to university at Bangor and achieved a first-class honours degree for my BMus and went on to do a Masters in Historical Musicolgy and took my licentiate in oboe performance, again with the ABRSM.  I remain an oboe and cor anglais specialist.

After twenty-five years in North Wales, I returned to East Kent last year and live in Walmer, between Dover and Deal and about half an hour’s drive from Canterbury. Whilst part of me misses the mountains and the country life (I had a smallholding on Anglesey, growing vegetables, keeping bees and making prize winning sloe gin) it’s good to be home. My aim here remains the same as it has always been: to encourage others with focused and sympathetic teaching to learn an instrument so that they can experience the huge amount of enjoyment and sheer fun and camaraderie that I’ve experienced throughout my playing career.