I studied Violin at the Birmingham Conservatoire and finished my time there on a fellowship course with my piano trio (Hepplewhite Piano Trio). I am Associate 2nd violin with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Principal 2nd violin with Orchestra of the Swan and freelance with orchestras across the UK. I am a founding member of the Hepplewhite Piano Trio which has performed extensively across the UK for chamber music societies and festivals and attended the prestigious IMS Prussia Cove.
Whilst at music college, I became particularly interested in the area of performance psychology. I noticed a negative shift in my mind, from being in the practice room, to being on stage, and realised that in order to perform as I wanted, a lot of my preparation needed to happen mentally. I realised that if my mind was not in the right place, or I had only prepared technically and not mentally, then my performance was affected. The combination of technical and mental preparation, I feel, is the key to a successful performance. It is an area that is often not spoken about within the music industry, however, its parallel in sport is of great importance -being spoken about and explored in great depth! This inspired me to start my research into this area and obtain a qualification in Counselling and Psychotherapy with a bias towards its application to music performance.
I believe that there are many people that can benefit from this work, whether to help particular problems such as interfering nerves, or to generally enhance performance.
Spoken language: English