B i o g r a p h y
Siobhain specialised in collaborative piano playing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in a two-year postgraduate course. This was followed by a Junior Fellowship in Accompaniment at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Whilst studying at the GSMD, Siobhain won the School's Accompanist Prize, and later the Megan Foster Prize, the pianist's prize in the Maggie Teyte Competition with Soprano Martene Grimson.
Since then she has been based in London, working mainly as a recitalist and a vocal coach. During this time her performances have taken place in locations such as the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, St James's, Piccadily, Southbank Centre, the Austrian Cultural Institute, the House of Lords and the Tower of London, and various BBC Radio broadcasts. Recital partners have included Paul Hamburger, Elizabeth Watts, Kamila Bydlowska, Richard Steggall, Ameral Gunson and Lee Bisset, amongst several others.
Siobhain values greatly both teaching and coaching, with a handful of regular piano students and various singers and instrumentalists bringing repertoire to work on. For many years she co-ran an Opera course at Birkbeck College, London, and has directed various operas, her favourite being Suor Angelica for Zezere Arts Festival, Portugal.
For all musicians Lockdown had a notable effect on the nature of work possible. Although nobody would have chosen it, Lockdown has led to some changes of benefit, such as the widespread use of Zoom for both remote performances and teaching when in-person visits are not possible. It has enabled workshops to be broadcast to schools in Norfolk, with carefully-placed cameras demonstrating the internal workings of the piano during live performance, for the Norfolk-based charity Classical Music Rocks.