Hello

I'm Jenni, and I'm passionate about music teaching!

Scroll down to learn more about my background & training.

My Story

I have been involved with music from my early infancy, coming from a very musical family - my parents are both music teachers, I’m one of four siblings, and all of us sing and are multi-instrumentalists.

Listening tastes at home ranged from Bach to Benny Goodman, Gregorian chant to Gilbert & Sullivan, John Rutter to The Rolling Stones and much more.

I learned violin and piano from a young age, later adding recorder, clarinet, saxophone and flute. I also sang weekly in the church choir run by my parents.

My first teaching experience was as an assistant to my ballet teacher in primary school, and I started teaching violin in my late teens.

I thoroughly enjoyed studying for my Music degree at ARU in Cambridge and deliberately selected modules in Music Education and Music Therapy to further my goal of a career in teaching.

In 2002, I began teaching at a local non-profit Saturday morning music school - Young Arbury Music Makers. I have been teaching there ever since, and am now Chair and Musical Director.

Originally the school only provided individual tuition. In 2010, I created an ensemble programme which enables all pupils to be involved in various ensembles and then perform in our summer concert. Each year I compose & arrange music for the widely varying instruments & abilities, run the rehearsals, and conduct the concert. The programme is very popular, and has run every year since it started.

After becoming Chair in July 2022, I built a website for YAMM, and have directed the transition to a new digital administration system which has dramatically streamlined the running of the school.

In 2008 I qualified as a secondary school teacher and started teaching Music & ICT at Monk’s Walk School in Hertfordshire.

Alongside classroom teaching, I launched & ran many successful ensembles including a jazz band, saxophone group, string orchestra, recorder consort. The group I am most proud of is my very successful boys’ choir, with 25 boys aged 11 to 18 singing in 4-part harmony, for whom I arranged several pieces, Eye Of The Tiger being a particular favourite.

Monk’s Walk’s Music Department was a key pioneer of the Musical Futures teaching method, and I learned basic guitar, bass, ukulele & drums in order to deliver the performance-focussed curriculum.

I also thoroughly enjoyed being musical director for four school productions: Bugsy Malone, Honk, Grease, and Les Misérables.

My performing experiences include:

Orchestras
Pit orchestras for musical shows
Chamber choirs
String quartets
Swing bands
Folk groups
Sax quartets
Backing vocalist & saxophonist for a Meat Loaf tribute band.

Currently I am teaching violin, woodwind and ukulele with Hertfordshire Music Service, as well as continuing my work with Young Arbury Music Makers.

I am also working on my own range of music education resources: Mighty Musicians