Sally has thirty years of teaching experience in the widest range of community settings. She is unusual as a choral director in researching, arranging and writing new material for choirs as well as providing vocal training. The practical work is strongly supported by continuing professional development.
'Out of Silence', established with help from Arts Council England's Year of the Artist scheme and the National Trust, is a creative music project which grew from Sally’s accidental discovery of hand-written, seventeenth century songbooks in Belton House, Lincolnshire. In bringing those songs ‘out of silence’, Sally developed a unique approach to researching, interpreting and creating music which breathes life into the past and gives voice to forgotten people and their extraordinary histories. The Leader of the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, Bradley Creswick, added solo violin to the choir's regional performances and the recording of a first CD. The Out of Silence project been featured six times on BBC Radio 4's 'Woman's Hour' and 'The Archive Hour'. In 2006 the choir recorded their second CD, 'Sackcloth & Silk', a song-cycle created for three historic sites: Clumber Park, near Worksop; The Workhouse at Southwell and Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire.
Born at Whitby in North Yorkshire, Sally studied at the University of Northumbria and Newcastle School of Music. In 1986 she undertook a six-month residency with the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, and in 1989 completed a research project in West Africa as a Winston Churchill Fellow.
For five years during the 1990s she managed, fronted and sang with her own swing band, playing both violin and double bass, and touring to major venues across Britain and Ireland. In 1995 she became the Folk Music Worker in Lincolnshire, organising, among many projects, the Fulbeck Fiddle Festival, the first event of its kind in this country to present a mixed programme of workshops and performances show-casing different genres of violin music from across the world.
In the summer of 2003 Sally wrote a story called Inside Ella Fitzgerald which won the Orange Prize for Short Fiction, organised in conjunction with Harper’s and Queen magazine. She is currently completing a novel about Django Reinhardt, the Gypsy-jazz guitarist, and is represented by David Higham and Co, Literary Agents.
