A classically trained flautist and cellist from Ireland, with a rich international background in teaching and performance in orchestral and chamber settings throughout Ireland and Germany. 

I studied music in my hometown at The Cork School of Music and took masterclasses with James Galway, Trevor Wye, Anna Noakes, Evelyn Grant and Sabine Ducrot. For my masters programme, I specialised in modern flute and concentrated on playing more of the unknown chamber repertoire. This gave me a chance to really get to know and develop my own style of playing and to learn more about everything the flute is capable of.

After my masters, I moved to Berlin to study further and later on I moved to Lake of Constance, where I am currently based. My studies with cello began at home with Gerda Marawood - wife of renowned cellist Christopher Marawood, from the Vanburagh Quartet. So my first lessons were like magic. While living in Berlin, I studied with Anna, who at the time was principal Cellist at the Deutsch Opera Berlin. This happened somehow all by chance and I am so grateful that I got the opportunity to learn with such great women and cellists. My last 8-year mentorship was with a dear friend and cellist, Mathias Buchhaussen. An amazing cellist, who has since stepped away from teaching and performing. A quiet and true soul, devoted to teaching me everything and also how to teach the Cello well. It is because of him I am now teaching today, his words and wisdom being passed on to the next generation of cellists. I am forever grateful to him.

I fell into teaching a little by chance. A job offer came my way and my first thought was ‘okay, I will do it for just a few weeks’, but something inside of me came alive, and I think in the student too. They are, to this day, still in my life. I felt an immediate spark teaching and knew then that this is one of the things in life I am meant to do. 

My philosophy is to try to see the student as a person first and work from this point. I try to find the potential lying in the individual, bring it out and develop it, while adding to and aiming for artistic excellence, regardless of age, level or talent. And most of all, I hope to inspire the individual to play in a way that’s right and true for themselves, to play music and simply be happy, with themselves, in that  moment, and to have some fun along the way too.

And… my students inspire me  just as much if not more, to aim to be a kinder person in this world. I think music reminds us of this, that we are all going through things in life, we all have pain in some form or another, and it’s often the tender moments, the tenderness in art, that remind us of what’s true and important in life.