Trustees and Officers - biographies
In this section:
Patrons | Trustees &
Officers | Membership of the
BKA | Policies & Procedures
Lesley Chandler taught in Southwark and Lewisham for most of her working
life and retired from headship two years ago. She introduced Kodály teaching
in her primary school after attending a singing course on the method. Lesley
had very little formal musical education herself and hopes that she will be
able to bring an enthusiastic but non-specialist perspective to the work of
the committee.
Celia Cviic (Treasurer / Year Course Secretary) read History at Oxford, where she began vocal studies with Norman Lilly, performing in concert opera and giving concert recitals, which she continued while working as a Studio Manager in the BBC World Service. She gained an ARCM in 1977, teaching musicianship and singing to children and adults in private and LEA classes. From 1982-1995 she was Head of Music at the Ursuline Preparatory School, Wimbledon. She gained the BKA Advanced Diploma in 1989, and the CKME in 1997. Since 1995 she has run "I Wish I Could Sing" courses for Malden Adult Centre and established two choral workshops.
Jay Deeble is a practical musician, who has worked within music education for her whole career. She has taught throughout the age range from birth to retirement age. All her music teaching is practical and based on the use of the voice. She has run pre-school music groups and pre-school play groups. She has taught within state primary and secondary schools as a music specialist. She has run classes for Adult education.
Currently Jay works at King Alfred’s College, Winchester, where she teaches teachers to teach music. She has a thriving private music practice. She is also a partner in Music Is Fun, an organisation which delivers Kodály based music sessions to pre-school children and their mums in Fareham and Portsmouth. This is expanding rapidly in the area.
Jay has served on many national bodies, before she was elected to the BKA Executive Committee. She has worked with QCA as consultant in music and ICT. She has served on the old SEAC and SCAA panels in the music committees. She was supplied valuable experience of early years to the working group which drew up the National Curriculum order for music and was instrumental in its review by Lord Dearing and again in 2000. She has been a longstanding Council member of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, and currently serves as Southern regional councillor and Chairman of Portsmouth Centre. She was Warden of the Music in Education Section in 1994. She is also currently Honorary Press and Publicity Secretary for the Schools Music Association and has been Deputy Chairman since October 2002.
Gillian Earl (President) studied at the Royal Academy of Music. She spent fifteen years in Winchester in charge of singing at St Swithun’s School and was the organist at the Cathedral. She now teaches piano in Cornwall. She has attended three International Seminars in Kecskemét and holds the Diploma of the BKA (Adv) and their CKME. She has tutored for the BKA, given lectures in many parts of the UK and also at the EPTA International Conference in Budapest, 2000 and the OAKE National Conference, San Francisco, 2004. She is the author of “With Music in Mind”, a founder member of the BKA, former Chairman and its current President.
Judy Hildesley (Secretary) graduated with honours from Denison University in the USA where she majored in music. She then studied music history and singing for her Master of Music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston before gaining a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford University where she obtained a B.Litt in Music History in 1972.
She began singing professionally soon after, studying with Miette Dernbach and Ruth Packer in London in the seventies and more recently with Deborah Miles Johnson and Meribeth Dayme. In 1976 she moved to Singapore where her husband was posted for four years and where she developed her concert and recital work and built up a substantial teaching practice as well as lecturing at the University of Singapore and directing their Madrigal Singers.
Judy was introduced to Kodály’s ideas in 1985 when her children were small and she attended her first Summer School. She subsequently became involved in running the organisation as Secretary and Newsletter Editor. After a period of absence in the nineties she returned to assist the Summer School staff in 1998 and has gradually become more involved and elected Secretary in 2003. This coincided with her retirement from teaching singing in at Queen’s Gate School in London where she had built up a student roster from 3 to 30 in her seventeen years there. Judy also sang with the BBC Symphony Chorus for almost twenty years before retiring in 2004. She is currently the Vocal Secretary for the Richmond upon Thames Performing Arts Festival and has been working with them since 1995. Judy is also a Director of the Songmakers’ Almanac and since 1991 has been coordinating Graham Johnson’s Young Songmakers’ Project - a bi-ennial series of masterclasses and concerts for singers and pianists on the brink of professional careers. This work has inspired her to create and produce additional recitals for some of these young singers and pianists as well as continuing with her teaching and performing.
Jacky Hintze is currently employed by Kent County Council as an Early Years SENCO, advising nurseries on inclusion for children with special educational needs. Formerly, she worked with Mary Place at Godstone Village School, where she was a nursery teacher and school SENCO, and also helped out with music teaching and school concerts. Jacky began learning about the Kodaly principles many years ago - first with Angela Tilley and later through Kodály courses at Roehampton, Godstone and the Summer School in Leicester. In past years she has run children's music classes - both in a private capacity and on behalf of Kent Music School (as a Colourstrings Kindergarten teacher). In her current post she plans to deliver training for early years practitioners on the value of music as a tool for inclusion. Jacky enjoys singing with a local choir in her spare and is pleased to announce that they have just released their first CD recording!
Glenis Jones (biography available soon)
Mary Place For the last 16 years Mary has been Head of Godstone Village School, a small First School with a Nursery in rural Surrey. She takes all the children for music - a therapeutic and welcome break from the hectic life of headship - and teaches recorder to the older classes, as well as having a few children learning piano using Gillian Earl's books, which she finds invaluable.
The expertise she has acquired over the years from many wonderful Kodály educators has enabled the musical requirements of the National curriculum to be implemented with relative ease within the school.
Mary has been a member of the BKA (then the BKS) since (1983). She came back on to BKA committee in 2003, having served on it in the past and also done the job of Secretary before Brenda took it over. Her main task for the BKA for a number of years has been Summer School Secretary, a huge task which she undertakes cheerfully and efficiently. In 2006 she will be sharing the responsibility with other members of the Executive as an alternative to retiring altogether from this demanding post.
Margaret Oliver After reading music at Durham University, Margaret taught music in secondary schools. Subsequently, having retrained and qualified as a Montessori teacher, she worked for 23 years across the curriculum in a Montessori school (nursery & infants) with special responsibility for music there, as well as giving private music lessons.
Though retired from teaching now, she continues to pursue her love of singing. She has been a BKA member since 1994, has served on the Executive Committee and Communications Sub-committee since 2006 and in November 2007 took over the sale of books.
Natasha Thompson (biography available soon)
Christopher Watts is a freelance music teacher in Wiltshire, teaching upper strings and general musicianship in Primary and Secondary schools. He sings with the St John's Singers, and conducts another local choir. He has also worked with a teenage orchestra and local cast producing "The Marriage of Figaro" in Salisbury.
He joined the BKA in 1989, and as well as attending Summer School he has also trained on conducting courses in Szeged, Hungary. He became a BKA committee member in 1999 and is now Assistant Treasurer. He is keen to develop the choral conducting training opportunities available through the BKA, and is helping to set up a Conducting Workshop in Salisbury with BKA Patron David Hill.
Miranda Zwalf, B.A; L.R.A.M; DIP.RCM; CSAK (Colourstrings); C.K.M.E (dist); won an Exhibition Scholarship at the Royal College of Music and every prize available to flautists. She studied with Geoffrey Gilbert in the U.S.A. and performed at festivals there including Aspen and Grand Teton. She has worked with the Balearic Symphony Orchestra, played in ‘Les Misérables’, and was for several years Assistant Principal Flute in the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. She has taught Kodály on the String Training Programme at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and is currently teaching at the Perse School for Girls, Cambridge. She is lecturer in Kodály Musicianship at Birmingham Conservatoire and has taught for the British Kodály Academy, the Dalcroze Society, Colourstrings and NYCoS. She delivers In Service training in Kodály principles applied to instrumental and classroom teaching, and has published ‘A Sound Beginning in Flute Playing’ - a Kodály based flute tutor. Miranda also has a degree in French from London University.