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Bio

I am a flute specialist and I recently completed a four year PhD in Creative Music Practice/Music Pedagogy at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, London, focussing on ways to develop tone and tone colour in flute playing. I have worked with some of the top flute players and teachers in London and Europe (Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Trinity Laban Conservatoire, BBC Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra) to develop innovative new teaching materials designed to be used by students with their teachers in lessons, but also by students working on their own, to develop and build their own personalised musical, expressive, and technical skills.

I have 30 years of instrumental and classroom music teaching in the UK and Spain, working for Local Authority Music Services including Hertfordshire, Waltham Forest and Barking and Dagenham, as Head of Department, and in International Schools. Many of my past students have gone on to study music at University and Music College. I have Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and a PGCE.

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Teaching Info

My Teaching Philosophy:

*Learning should be fun and students should leave their lesson motivated to practice and improve.

*We are learning to play the music more than we are learning to play the instrument. Instrumental technique permits us to play with confidence and expression.

*Practice should be goal-oriented. Students should leave their lesson understanding what they will be working to achieve and how they will go about it. Teachers must give students the tools to work independently. Technology can act as a powerful aid in helping students to maximise their practice time.

*Students should develop heightened awareness of what they are doing physically and what they feel, through understanding sensory feedback, and how this affects the sounds they make.

*Students should develop heightened awareness of what they hear, and learn how to act to improve and finesse the sounds they produce.

*Students should be learning how to think, problem solve, and make decisions for themselves. They should not always be reliant on the teacher. They should be developing the ability to work autonomously, and take responsibility for consulting the teacher about problems or misunderstandings that they encounter between lessons.

*Students need to know how they want to sound. They should be developing musical imagination and an inner ear, so that they have a clear idea of what are are trying to produce

*Music is a social endeavour. Students should be encouraged to play in ensembles, which will help to develop a range of skills, including: social skills, negotiation, concentration, following both verbal and non-verbal instruction, and the ability to react and interact creatively with others.

*As students advance, they should combine the ability to learn-through-doing, and also to learn through thinking, reasoning, dialogue, and analysis. This helps students to become reflective practitioners, as illustrated below.

*Teaching should be informed by academic research, with teachers constantly developing their skills and practice for the benefit of theory students.