Penny has been based in Oxfordshire for the past 20 years, and has built a lively and busy teaching practice combining her role as Head of Singing at the School of St Helen and St Katharine, Abingdon, alongside private teaching and performing during this time. She has also taught at the Junior Department of the Royal Academy of Music. Penny particularly enjoys working with teenagers , relishing working with students as their voices transition from children to young adults, but she is equally at home working with older students, both keen amateurs and University students.
Penny has taken part in Masterclasses with many experienced performers and teachers, including Ryland Davies, Malcolm Martineau, Susanna Stranders, Robin Bowman, Simon Over, James Bowman, Ann Lampard and Claire Weston, and has achieved acclaim at numerous Music Festivals and competitions .
Roles in operas and opera extracts have included Countess, The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), Desdemona, Othello (Verdi), Belinda, Dido and Aeneas (Purcell) and Mother, in the World Premiere of Pascha Nostrum (Caldwell). Oratorio performances have included soprano soloist in Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Magnificat, ‘Herz und Mund’ Cantata and Mass in B Minor, Fanshawe’s African Sanctus, Faure’s Requiem, Gounod’s Messe Solonelle De Sainte Cecile, Jenkins’ Armed Man, Mass for Peace, Mozart‘s Requiem, Rossini Petit Messe Solonelle and Telemann Cantatas 20 and 21. She has performed numerous recitals in venues such as the Holywell Music Room, Oxford, New College, Oxford, and Auckland Castle, Bishop Auckland.
Whilst an undergraduate reading music at St Peter’s College, Oxford she held a choral scholarship, and was a member of various other prestigious choral ensembles, regularly singing with members of the Choral Foundation Choirs.
Keen on professional development and pursuing her own musical interests, Penny is intent on gaining a formal teaching qualification in the Kodàly Musicianship approach, which she has studied, and uses regularly with her students.
Penny is a member of the ISM (Incorporated Society of Musicians).
She lives in Watchfield, Oxon with her husband, daughter and cat. Her other hobbies include reading, baking, knitting and playing various types of accordion.