I focused on vocal performance and composition for my degree in music at Dartington College of Arts. Three years spent immersed in the astonishingly beautiful grounds of the Dartington Estate on the edge of Totnes in Devon – alongside the river Dart – was a precious, powerful foundation for my adult life as a human, an artist and a teacher.

We were surrounded by passionate professors and students, and immersed in experimentation, study, practice, and plenty of play. At Dartington we formed deep and lasting friendships and ideas, and I came to understand that there is a world of like-minded creative beings – past, present and future –  who love to sound and to listen as I do. It is a depth of play that belongs to everyone and to all those who care.

I moved to London in 2005 and connected myself to the free improvisation scene, playing with open-minded creative practitioners in the capital and practicing the present moment in performance. Time was spent extending my vocal technique, playing on the radio and writing new solo song material, exploring the voice and electronics and editing songs and sounds in Pro Tools, whilst working in the local bookshop and co-curating the art gallery of Madame Lillies, our shared house in Stoke Newington.

I completed a Masters in Creative Practice at Goldsmiths College in 2012. Goldsmiths – embedded in its urban valley of traffic noise – is the flipside of Dartington’s pastoral bliss. Nonetheless, it mirrors Dartington’s air of experimentation and its creative approach. Here I continued to develop my voice and ear in the context of sonic art, experimental score and 8-channel field recording work, as well as studying English folk song from an ethnomusicological perspective (becoming better aquainted with a culture through its music…)

I have studied masterclasses with Meredith Monk and Ellen Fisher in Paris – Meredith Monk writes, performs and teaches with the body and the voice as two aspects of the one singing dance. Extended vocal technique and dance. I have studied and performed and collaborated with my mentor and friend Maggie Nicols – who also uses the body and the voice together. All singing comes back to a form of somatics its deepest.

I hold an Estill Levels I-II certificate and studied the physiology of the voice from the perspective of the Estill technique, Janice Chapman and Gillyanne Kayes. This practical, scientific understanding of the singing voice greatly informs the practical aspects of my teaching work.

I hold a 200h Yoga Alliance-certified Vajrasati yoga teacher training certificate, studying with the uncommonly knowledgeable and fair-minded Jim Tarran and Khadine Morcombe. I have also – fundamentally – been taught by the amazing Beth Win – her yoga teaching is a quiet and passionate, and implicitly dances around a celebration of the body / creativity / spirit triad. Training with Beth made me feel like I’d finally come home to my body. Unspeakable emotional healing – from addictions and emptinesses – has taken place inside me since finding Beth in a studio in Peckham in 2016. My yoga practice also has a big impact on my teaching – which is why I studied become a qualified instructor.