Jillian Leddra  I was brought up in New Zealand but studied the violin in Australia. After graduating I played professionally in an opera and ballet orchestra. When attending an Australian String Teachers conference I met the first American teacher to study with Suzuki in Japan, John Kendall, graduate of the Juillard School in New York. He offered me a scholarship to do a Masters in Performance and Teaching (Suzuki) in the USA that was a two-year course. We taught students who travelled, in some cases, five hours to attend groups and private lessons at the university. The programme had children from Twinkle to Tchaikovsky in it. It was a fabulous training which included teaching at summer workshops around America, national and international conferences. Whilst in the USA I was also fortunate to be coached in chamber music by the Beaux Art Trio which built on the coaching I had received from the Coull Quartet in Australia. The first groups I taught in the UK were at the London Suzuki Group building in Bayswater where the children also had Kodaly classes with Yuko Vinden. Before long we outgrew the building and started using College Park School, also in Bayswater, which enabled me to start an orchestra programme. It is thrilling to see the cello programme grow and to work with colleagues who bring so much to performing and musicianship. We have now had our third annual chamber music course which extends every participant in their playing and musicianship skills. Jillian holds a large annual concert each November with the other BSG teachers. At the end of the Easter and Summer she holds informal soloists concerts for each of her pupils - (an excellent evening always ending in a party held at pupils houses). See also Jillian's teaching dates for this term.  Claudio Forcada was born in Cordoba, Spain. He taught the violin in Conservatoires and schools of music in Spain from 1993 to 2006. He has coached chamber music for many years since the early 1980s. In 2001, he was selected by the Galician government to formulate the syllabus for a new Bachelor of Music degree. For three years until 2003 he was the director both of 'The Summer School' at Oleiros in Galicia and of the 'Violin Pedagogy Seminary' where he continued until 2004. In 2004 he was appointed director of the 'International Music School' and he himself founded 'The International Summer School of Music', an organisation based in Madrid which puts on music courses all over Spain. In 2005 he was appointed deputy head at the 'Conservatorio Superior' in La Coruña. Claudio regularly gives and organises lectures on violin pedagogy and instrumental teaching in the UK and abroad. He is currently writing a thesis on 'Motor learning and violin pedagogy' at BCU (Birmingham City University), as well as performing in the Altissimo Ensemble and other professional chamber music groups. At present he is settled in north London. He is a trained Suzuki teacher. Claudio has his own web site at : http://www.claudioforcada.com/  Emma grew up in the Suzuki Method, beginning the cello aged four and learning with Christine Livingstone until eighteen. Whilst taking the rather unconventional route of studying Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University, Emma played regularly with a number of orchestras there, performed with the Christ's College Music Society and formed a five-cello rock group, for which she composed and arranged all the music. |
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