Trustees

After reading music at Durham University, Margaret taught music in secondary schools. Subsequently, having retrained and qualified as a Montessori teacher, she worked for 23 years across the curriculum in a Montessori school (nursery & infants) with special responsibility for music there, as well as giving private music lessons. Though retired from teaching, she continues to pursue her love of singing.

A BKA member since 1994, Margaret has served as a Trustee and on the Communications Committee. She chaired the Communications Committee and subsequently the Board of Trustees, resuming that role, after a short break, in 2021. She continues to look after the sale of books and coordinates the Operations Team.

John Oliver (Treasurer)

John writes: My first connection with the BKA was through Margaret, in her role as Bookstore Manager, for several years helping her behind-the-scenes, particularly on administrative and financial aspects. Then, as Treasurer from 2011, I became much more directly involved, drawing on my pre-retirement experience of administration in a large industrial company. This work in the BKA has usually been balanced alongside busy family activities, much travelling, and lots of choral singing – and I hope to resume all that fully as we emerge from the Covid pandemic. As Treasurer I have built up extensive experience over a wide range of money matters, administering payments in and out, taking care of the accounts and advising the BKA Trustees on budgets and financial matters generally. It has been good to see the BKA continue to flourish during these past 10 years. To help support further growth, the Trustees are currently exploring ways of developing the finance function to manage its many responsibilities in new ways.  There are exciting possibilities for the future!

Sally Edwards (Membership)
Sally writes: I was born in the Far East and grew up in Lincolnshire and Suffolk where my brothers and I were founder members of one of the very first County Youth Orchestras in the country enjoying trips to France and Norway.

Music was always in my background, my mother a very talented amateur musician, and I turned to music as a career while studying on a post A level music course where my tutor was Christopher Hogwood. I studied at RCM and then at London University under Keith Swanwick for a Music Teachers Certificate.

I did not discover the Kodály philosophy and the BKA until very late in my teaching career when, after I had attended a session run by Lucinda Geoghegan introducing her ‘Singing Games and Rhymes for Early Years’ at a Singposium on the South Bank, I booked onto my first Summer School in Leicester.  What a revelation!

Since retiring, I have enjoyed volunteering locally with the RDA, the NHS and at a local prison.  Now, my main focus is the BKA. I am determined to do all I can to enable Kodály training, especially for young teachers, be as widely available as possible.

David Greenhalgh

During a wide-ranging career, David was a professionally qualified and experienced Manager and Engineer with extensive knowledge of managing high-value assets in a national company. He worked in operational, customer interface and change management roles and as a specialist in the implementation and ongoing management of Construction and Design management legislation and ISO Management Systems. He has a master’s degree in management from Manchester Metropolitan University.
Running parallel to his career, he has successfully managed several non-professional arts organisations and is a performer in music ensembles throughout the North West. He is an Associate of the Royal College of Music London.
He has worked for Making Music, is a Trustee for Trust Music in Bolton and the Light Music Society, a Director of Note Weavers CIC educational consultancy, a volunteer for the Fix the Fells scheme run by the Lake District National Park and enjoys cycling and walking.
He has extensive experience working with Charitable organisations both at a Board level and in operational roles and understands the challenges of working with voluntary organisations, and the need for appropriate governance to ensure that the objectives of organisations are identified, understood, and delivered.
He is proud to be a Trustee and looks forward to helping the BKA achieve even greater success.

Sally Leeming

Sally is a singer and musicianship teacher living in Bingley, West Yorkshire. For many years she was a class teacher and KS2 Maths Co-ordinator. 

Whilst teaching in the middle school she set up a project, working with a group of children from the local special school, and their teacher – Judith Brindle. The project involved singing and playing musical games together and was Sally’s first ‘proper’ introduction to the Kodály Concept of Music Education. 

One of the aims of the project was to encourage Sally to incorporate her singing skills into the classroom. After the birth of her son, Sally attended courses run by Judith and The Voices Foundation. After hearing about the wonderful summer school from circa 1990 onwards, Sally finally made it to Leicester in 2003 and has attended the majority of summer schools since then, becoming a BKA tutor in 2014.

Sally has worked on projects, incorporating Kodály musicianship, for the Northern Orchestral Enterprise Ltd (NOEL) in Halifax and the Sing Up Outreach Project for Bradford Cathedral and has presented a series of workshops at the Bradford Music Education Conference. In her last school, a state school in Queensbury, Bradford, Sally was employed to teach Kodály musicianship throughout the school from Nursery to Year 6, with the children having 15 minutes Kodály musicianship every morning.

Sally teaches privately as well as singing as a soloist and in a variety of choirs. 

Janey Maxwell MA(Mus), BA(Hons) PGCE qualified as a primary school teacher in 2003 and since then has been teaching music in primary and nursery schools in the Bromley area. Janey left the role of class teacher in 2009, to concentrate on being a music specialist.

Janey’s teaching is inspired by the music education philosophy of Zoltan Kodály. Janey has attended several courses run by the British Kodály Academy, including the Early Years study tour to Hungary in February 2020 and has completed the BKA Early Years Certificate. Janey is currently studying for the MA Education (Early Years Music) through the Centre for Research in Early Childhood and Birmingham City University. In January 2021 Janey joined the BKA Early Years team and became a Deputy Teacher for Junior Guildhall on their Kodály programme in November 2021.

In 2014 Janey started Maxwell Mini Music a Kodály-inspired independent pre-school music group. From that time until Covid restrictions in 2020. the classes built a loyal following from local families and Janey loved watching the growth and development of many children who joined as newborn babes and developed into confident walkers enjoying their weekly music class with their friends. During Lockdown, Janey moved online. In the summer of 2021, Maxwell Mini Music became a part of the Bromley Music Hub (BMH) partnership, run by Bromley Youth Music Trust (BYMT). From September 2021, classes moved from Beckenham and online to their new location at BYMT’s home in Bromley.

Janey sings with three choirs including the London Philharmonic Choir, plays piano and cello, and enjoys walking, swimming, and reading.