Hi! My name's Jennifer.
I'm a writer, musician and creativity geek. I've lived mostly in Nottingham for over 30 years, having originally come here to study maths at the university.
I was born to music-loving parents and given a violin at the age of 4. My first "gig" was playing a beginner violin piece one line long, at my violin teacher's concert in her house.
Throughout my teenage years, I played & sang lots of classical music, mainly on first violin or bassoon or as an alto in choirs. Took part in the Schools Prom, national competitions, chamber music and so on, much of it within the Bromley Schools Music system which had lots going on. Took Grade 8 violin at 14. Reached the final of a national youth chamber music competition (I've forgotten the name of it now) as bassoon player in a wind quintet (alongside clarinettist Emma Johnson, who went on to be much more famous than me :-) ). Overall thousands of hours of music rehearsals, under a few dozen different conductors & coaches, or (in chamber music) often running our own rehearsals.
Meanwhile I was also into pop songwriting. Wrote, sang & played bass in a couple of bands, then invented Single Bass, with which I've toured around the place, inc gigs at Glastonbury Festival, Ronnie Scott's, the old Marquee Club in London, and so on.
Never totally lost my connection with classical music, and in 2003 began writing orchestral pieces for Da Capo.
In 2018, I also had the chance to conduct Da Capo, and discovered I thoroughly enjoyed it! And it turned out that my past experience of being in all those other rehearsals was a useful resource-hinterland for how to run these ones.
I've got no ambition to be the kind of conductor who comes up with Important Interpretations Of Great Works. The part I enjoy is bringing people together, especially people who might not otherwise have had the chance, and collectively assembling something that everyone enjoys. I'm endlessly fascinated with the process-geekery of: What do we need to practise in order to make all the segments work and connect, so we can play all the way through and get a sense of satisfaction? I sometimes think of it as the "plumbing" side of music: this pipe connects to this other pipe, so we need to make a join; this part is leaking, let's fix it :-)
A little 3-piece sampler of my orchestral writing is online here: Classical Collection. Of those three, Lakeside is the easiest to play and most likely to eventually be used for NBFSO, but we'd start with even easier stuff than that.