Trustees

Janet spent much of her professional life in social work, working with people with learning disabilities. The period before she retired in 2021, she was an academic with the Open University. In 2019, when her two daughters left home, she moved to Penzance from those distant lands around Helston and was astonished at the amount of music that was available locally. Janet doesn't consider herself very musical, but one of the many delights of Penzance was the fact that she can wander down to Chapel Street on a Sunday afternoon and enjoy such great quality performances on her doorstep. She also learnt these weren’t musicians largely shipped in from “up country”, but local professionals trying to make a living through their portfolio careers of teaching, examining, wedding gigs, etc. The concerts at Chapel Street give them the chance to explore and perform the repertoire they have trained for and loved, which is what made her want to become a Trustee and support in whatever way she can.

Timothy Dean was educated at Reading University and the Royal College of Music. He was chorus master and head of music for Kent Opera for ten years, conducting tours in the UK and abroad.

In 1987, he was appointed the first music director, and subsequently artistic director, of British Youth Opera, developing the company into a vital part of the infrastructure for training young singers and musicians in the UK.

Having spent a year as assistant music director for the New D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, conducting tours in the UK and USA, he went on to make company debuts with English National Opera and Scottish Opera. He was also conductor of the London Bach Society in the late 1980s and director of the RSNO Chorus from 2006 to 2014.

In 1994, he was appointed head of opera at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, responsible for postgraduate courses in opera training for singers and repetiteurs, conducting over 50 new opera productions in Glasgow and Edinburgh. He was made a Fellow of the RCS in 2010 and subsequently a Professor of the Conservatoire. He led collaborative projects with the Conservatoire of Rostov-on-Don in Russia, culminating in performances of a new edition of Prokofiev’s ‘War and Peace’ in 2010, which subsequently received a Royal Philharmonic Society Award nomination.

He is artistic director of both the Royal Conservatoire’s ‘Song Studio’ giving recitals with young singers all over Scotland, and RCS Voices, a vocal ensemble created to perform early and contemporary repertoire, broadcasting on BBC Radio 3 and appearing at the Edinburgh and St Magnus Festivals.

He has worked with the RSNO, Orchestra of Scottish Opera, English Chamber Orchestra and the Paragon Ensemble.

In 2013, he conducted The Cunning Little Vixen for the Hong Kong Academy of the Performing Arts and in 2014 was Artist-in-Residence at the Hochschule in Nuremberg. In 2018, he relinquished his full time position in Scotland to move to Cornwall, and continues to be active as coach, accompanist, adjudicator and conductor.

He is founder of the Chapel Street Ensemble, and the Chapel Street Music Festival, and chairman of the charity, Chapel Street Music.

For the majority of his career, Will worked in Local Government within Education, Adult Social Care, and Cultural and Community Services. He supported senior managers and local politicians in the delivery of services across Education, Arts, Culture, Social Care, Health and Crime. Much of his work also involved supporting partnership working and community engagement with the voluntary sector. Simultaneously, Will was a primary school governor over approximately 13 of these years working with three south London primary schools in challenging circumstances.

After leaving Local Government and moving to Kent, Will worked in a number of new areas including Higher Education and a council-run Museums Service. In 2013 he started volunteering at my local community Gallery and Museum which ended up being taken over by the Community following the Council’s plans to close it. As well as being a volunteer guide, he was a Trustee until moving to Cornwall in late 2020. Following his move, Will worked in Further Education and for the local NHS Trust.

Will has always been an avid consumer of the Arts, and since moving to Cornwall has enjoyed the wide variety of Art and Cultural experience available in West Penwith, and now, having recently retired, has much more time to enjoy them, as well as offering his time as a volunteer. He also enjoys walking, reading, and travelling, especially to Lundy. In addition to being a trustee of Chapel Street Music, Will is a trustee of the Friends of Penlee House Museum and Gallery.

Mandie comes from an academic background, teaching and researching in the field of English Language and Linguistics. Her love of music began at a young age listening to her father’s classical music collection. Mandie lived in Spain, Costa Rica and the southeast before settling in West Penwith in 2022, where she now feels completely at home. In her free time, Mandie enjoys the challenges of learning the cello as an adult, yoga, running and exploring the beautiful Cornish landscape.

Heather worked in London as a civil servant in Whitehall and in the corporate sector. Since retiring to Cornwall, she has been involved with a number of organisations - on the Standards Committee of Cornwall Council, as a non-executive on a Primary Care Trust and as Chair of Penzance as the cultural capital of Cornwall and loves its musical, artistic and literary heritage.

Emma’s passion for teaching, performing and studying music has taken her all over the world before moving to Cornwall in September 2019. She studied violin and viola at both Junior and Senior departments of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with Tim Boulton, Krzysztof Smietana and Rivka Golani. After graduating she taught violin and viola in Abu Dhabi for eight years including setting up a youth string orchestra for Abu Dhabi’s most talented string players. Emma holds a diploma in music education from the Kodály Institute in Hungary and also completed a Master’s degree at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) studying with Richard O’Neill (Takacs Quartet) and Carla Maria Rodrigues (principal viola, San Francisco opera). She was awarded several scholarships at UCLA, including the Elaine Krown Scholarship for the arts. During her time in California she taught on UCLA’s music partnership programme working with underserved communities, as the teaching assistant for the strings department and for musicologist and cellist Elisabeth Le Guin’s Early Music Ensemble. Since returning to Britain, Emma has been teaching Kodály musicianship at Junior Guildhall and is working with her former teacher, Tim Boulton in West Cornwall. Since moving to Cornwall, Emma has started string programs in four local primary schools, coached Cornwall Youth Orchestra and helped organise and teach on a music summer program for the Syrian refugee families settled in the area. As a performer, Emma has a particular love for playing chamber music and is versatile in her experience, from performing with Kanye West and Harry Connick Jr. to orchestral playing and solo recitals. In the Emirates, she ran a chamber music series and in the USA, her quartet was a fellowship quartet at Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in New Hampshire, USA.