I grew up in the south of England and began exploring music from a young age. I eventually ended up studying for a bachelor's degree in Music at Clare College, Cambridge and then focused on playing at the Royal Northern College of Music, studying viola performance with Yuko Inoue.

 I enjoyed my time in Manchester immensely and was planning to stay, but an adventurous impulse led me to answer an advert looking for musicians to go to South America and I joined the viola section of the Orquesta Sinfonica del Valle in Cali, Colombia. I stayed for two years, playing in the orchestra and various chamber groups, teaching at the conservatoire and travelling and exploring Colombian life.

 When I returned to the UK, I moved to London and began freelancing in orchestras and chamber ensembles. Another new chapter also began when I joined the band iO - this was a large collective of musicians from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (and their friends) who wrote and developed original material inspired by a wide variety of world, pop and jazz music. It was my introduction into playing this kind of groove based music, and into improvisation and collaborative composition.

Of course I wanted to explore this even further and enrolled at the Guildhall to study on the course where many of my fellow band members had met. I learned and developed creative skills which have informed my practice ever since; my own playing and ensemble work, as well as my teaching practice and educational work with larger groups.

 In the summer of 2005 I set out to walk the Camino, from the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostella. Here I met my (Dutch) husband, another new path opened up and in 2007 I moved to the Netherlands. Here I continued freelancing in orchestras and ensembles, but now specialising more in pop, jazz, world and light music, for which I have also been composing and arranging. I also continued my teaching practice, giving individual lessons to adults and children and creative composition workshops to larger groups.

 In 2018 I joined Moving Strings, a collective of musicians researching and exploring the boundaries of music, sound, and movement. This led to my to interest in somatic movement and how this relates to performance and musicianship; I have since been exploring various somatic practices such as Body Mind Centering, Laban/Bartenieff Movement System and Body Mapping. Over the last few years I've been combining these interests in the Play As We Are initiative.

Mindfulness and meditation

This has been a growing part of my life for the last decade or so and has become an essential feature of my musical practice. The seed was planted some 30 years ago when I first came to London. I began attending yoga classes and found a unique experience during the end relaxation - a change in perspective, an openness, experienced both mentally and physically.

About 10 years ago I discovered Vipassana style meditation and realised this was really for me. I began practicing with the help of Sam Harris’s Waking Up app, with teachers such as Joseph Goldstein, Loch Kelly and Adyashanti.

My discoveries and development in meditation have always resonated strongly with my practice as a musician and over the last years I've been developing methods and workshops that bring these two practices together. There is also a strong connection with somatic movement, which I explore in Play As We Are.

I took the MBSR course in 2022, as I wanted to practice meditation in a group context. In 2023 - 2025 I followed the course at the Mindfulness Academie in Amsterdam to become a trainer, not only because of my interest in the course itself, but to develop my skills in communicating this material in a group context. In these last years I have really realised how your practice can deepen in relation to others and how mindfulness and meditation can find a place in everyday life.

Mindfulness has become a bit of a trend, but I’m more and more convinced of its importance and relevance in today’s world. We are flooded with information and stimuli and are in danger of losing an essential skill, or perspective; being able to stand still, to look at and accept what is really happening. It means accepting what and who we are, in mind and body; in relation to others and to the world around us.