Music

Early years

As a teenager at an all-girls school, the highlight of my week was playing the violin in the vibrant (and mixed) Reading Youth Orchestra.  I was immersed in Sibelius and Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Stravinsky.  It was later that I discovered folk music (and real ale) through a guitarist boyfriend.  We went to Bracknell folk club and lowered the average age by several decades.  We wrote songs together, but when we split up, I had to learn the guitar, finally releasing an album of original songs in 2003 (She is Gold).

In the 1990s I was part of a band, Jabberwocky, bringing our ‘psychedelic medieval pixie folk’ to festivals and playing from the ramparts of Carisbrook Castle.  

Kismet

In 2001, I formed a band with Melissa Holding (voice, accordion, piano, koto) and Kath Lucas (voice, clarinet, whistles).  Kismet – 3 women, 3 voices, many instruments – wrote songs and tunes inspired by Celtic and Eastern European music, and nature.  Guitarist John Fletcher joined the band in 2009.  Together we released four albums, staged numerous concerts and ceilidhs in Oxford and beyond.  Some highlights were: Growing an Arts Council England funded residency at Oxford University Botanical Gardens; and Soundtracks (2009) a song cycle, written and performed with community choir Voices Unlimited to an audience of over 1000 in the Cotswolds (funded by BBC & Network Rail).

Composition and Improvisation

In 2014, I was chosen by Improbable Theatre to be the musician alongside 4 other performers in Permission Improbable – a ground-breaking, all-female improvisation project, with 6 shows at Battersea Arts Centre, recorded for the British Library.

Songhold

In recent years, I have been writing simple chants and songs that express different aspects of the Divine Feminine.  Some of these are inspired by the writing of Sharon McErlane (see netoflight.org).  In 2025, I gathered three of my favourite musicians – Josie Webber (who was a collaborator on my first album) and Melissa Holding (from Kismet) with percussionist Tobias Stürmer and created an album Songhold – Music to hold the world in love.