Our leader - Helen Purchase

Helen's love of the violin and its music began at the age of four when she started Suzuki violin lessons and was soon playing such classics as the Bach double violin concerto and Vivaldi concerti. Shortly after she commenced lessons with Jessie Ridley in Ipswich at the age of 11, she was introduced to orchestral music, playing in the Suffolk Schools orchestra, the Lavenham Sinfonia, Wolsey Chamber Orchestra, Ipswich and Colchester Chamber Orchestra.

At Colchester Institute, where she became a student at the age of 16, she took the double A-level music course and studied violin and viola under Glyn Parfitt. Her main study on the music degree course was Performance and she became Leader of the Symphony Orchestra and Leader of the violas in the Chamber Orchestra. She also gained her LTCL in violin teaching. Graduating in 1991, she immediately left for Jersey, an island for which she still has great affection, to take up a post teaching 100 viola pupils for a year.

Her year at Middlesex University on a P.G.C.E. course also involved leading the orchestra which among other things led a live BBC "Songs of Praise" programme. From here she took up her present post at Churcher’s college where she teaches class music and is Head of Strings. At the Petersfield Festival she can be seen conducting a 70-strong orchestra of young string players from many schools in the area.

Helen's association with Petersfield Orchestra, in which her husband William also plays, dates from 1993. She also plays in several other orchestras in Hampshire but still finds time for her hobbies of running, cross-country skiing, mountaineering and swimming. Since becoming our Leader, she has been happy to encourage combined music-making by children and adults in the Petersfield area.