Joan won the Birmingham School of Music Concerto Prize at 15 and gave her first public recital 16. She read music at Oxford University and was a member of Oxford’s premier choir Schola Cantorum.  In London she studied with Harold Craxton and Gerald Moore. Her love of singing led her to teach thousands of non-singers to sing. Her ‘Can’t Sing’ choir at Morley College has featured on CNN, Canadian television. ‘Richard & Judy’, ‘Heaven & Earth’ with John Walters and in the national and international press. 

 

The choir featured in a Radio 4 documentary in 2000 and in 2005 Joan was interviewed by Sir Mark Tully for Radio 4’s ‘Something Understood’. She was invited to be Vocal Advisor for BBC 1 programme ‘The Can’t Sing Singers’. Joan has received the ‘Honorary Freedom of Old Southwark’, a Civic award for her charity work with the choir in the Borough.  

As an accompanist Joan has played at the Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, broadcast on Radio 3, Channel4 (Opportunity) and BBC 2 (Serenade to Music).

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In 2015 Joan was repetiteur for the opera Cities of Salt by Syrian composer Zaid Jabri with conductor Michal Klauza at the Linbury Theatre Covent Garden.  This was part of the Shuback Festival.

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In 2016 she recorded a CD entitled "Rain-Songs" featuring music by Karel Janovicky.  A track from this CD, the slow movement of the Slata in F major, was chosen by Petroc Trellawney for his breakfast show on Radio 3 in 2020 to celebrate Karel's 90th birthday. 

 

To hear more of Joan go to periklavier@gmail.com (you tube)