About Jane

I am in my element when I am singing, playing music with others and enabling people to find their musical selves. I am a music facilitator, trainer of community music and singing leaders and an Alexander Technique teacher. Alexander Technique has helped me to sing and play more freely, given me the physical stamina to keep singing and playing longer and helped me remember to rest!

My story: I was lucky enough as a child to spend a lot of time around people singing in harmony. Lucky because my brain, at that age highly plastic, relentlessly assimilated and organised this aural information, “hard wiring” it and enabling me to be able to hear, sing and play in harmony my whole life long (so far!). Very lucky.

It was not until I began to learn Alexander Technique in 2008 that I understood that, although our brains’ capacity for plasticity diminishes after childhood, it remains throughout adulthood, enabling us to consciously change the habits of a lifetime with some directed and repeated thinking.

My passion for getting people singing and making music together has been strong since my teens, and I have been leading singing workshops and teaching singing for a long time, but only since learning Alexander Technique have I really been able to offer people effective tools for improving their singing and playing, as well as their speaking and their confidence in doing it in front of others.

The added bonus for me (and the reason I began to learn Alexander Technique) has been an end to 20 years of severe and debilitating back pain and a new found capacity both to exercise and to relax.

I grew up in Oxford and lived in West Yorkshire for many years, where I first initiated community choirs and bands, before coming to live in Australia in 1999. Melbourne was my home until 2011, when I moved to South Gippsland (Victoria).

My time in Melbourne saw the beginning of my Alexander Technique journey and also my intense involvement with Community Music Victoria. I have been deeply involved in developing leadership programs which enable ordinary people to get group singing and music activities happening in their own communities, with nothing more needed to get started than a love for singing and music, and a belief that everyone has the capacity to participate if the activity is designed with inclusiveness as its guiding principle.

I now spend my time teaching Voice and Alexander Technique and being a community music activist which means initiating music making opportunities wherever possible!

I make it home to the UK every couple of years (covid permitting!) and always enjoy leading workshops there as well as re-connecting with my music making and singing friends.

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