I started my musical life at the age of 6 when I joined a local choir. We used to put on musical shows for Harvest Festival including Oliver and Joseph's Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat which would run for a whole week and I loved it. My father, a music teacher, started teaching me the piano around this time and this is where my love for playing began. I also started to learn the violin but this was not really very successful and my father and I thought that the best way forward would be to learn a woodwind instrument.
Whilst in secondary school I began my bassoon lessons. We were very fortunate in our school to have a very enthusiastic music teacher who ran a recorder group and a great Head of Music who ran the school wind band which is where I first experienced playing in groups.
By the age of eighteen, I had progressed to grade 8 bassoon, regularly playing in five orchestras and for several operatic societies around Sussex and Surrey, often under my father’s baton. The last production I played for as a teenager was Gounod’s opera Faust.
I currently play 1st bassoon for the Chichester Symphony Orchestra and sing 1st Alto in the chamber choir, Chichester Voices. I also regularly sing for visiting choirs when cathedral choirs are on holiday and love meeting up with friends for anything musical.
I am delighted to have been asked to become Membership Secretary for the Guild and very much look forward to meeting many members new and old at our General Meetings.