Meet the team
Victoria
Barlow
Victoria is a choral conductor, music educator and pianist with over thirty years’ experience working across education, community music and high‑level choral performance. In 2016 she became the first woman to guest‑conduct at the Festival of Male Voice Choirs at the Royal Albert Hall, a milestone which made her “the first female conductor in its fifty year history.”
She has led a wide range of ensembles, including South Notts Men’s Chorus, Radcliffe on Trent Male Voice Choir, Open Voices, Lyrical Songbirds and the RAF College Cranwell Military Wives Choir. Her work with the Military Wives included BBC and University of Lincoln collaborations for the Beechey Boys project, where she arranged compositions which were sung in the film, and “which won Best Innovation and Best Special Event in the 2015 New York Film Festivals Awards.”
Alongside her conducting career, Victoria has spent 17 years as Head of Music and Director of Music in secondary education, in both state and private education, where senior leaders noted she “transformed the school choir into a sound they had never heard in 20 years.” She has worked for Our Lady of Lourdes Academy Trust as a peripatetic and classroom teacher. She also served on the Quality Assurance Team for Derbyshire Music Partnership and is a long‑standing Moderator for Edexcel GCSE Music Performance.
A pianist, singer and French horn player, Victoria trained at Clarendon College, Newcastle, Huddersfield and Sheffield Hallam University, and has completed both the Intermediate and Advanced ABCD Choral Conducting courses. She is a member of the Association of British Choral Directors.
Carly Collingwood
Carly studied BA Music Technology at Rose Bruford College London specialising in Performance and composition, and songwriting at New College Nottingham where she was Student Of The Year. She has performed both solo and in a band across the UK and Europe, the latter becoming Finalists in Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Competition in 2007 where they performed at the Festival before being signed to Light In The Attic Records in 2008, subsequently releasing a single, and she later achieved airplay on BBC radio with her original songs.
A piano student of Brenda May, she has a Diploma in Piano Performance and was winner and joint winner of the Beethoven and Bach advanced piano classes at Derby Arts Festival in 2014.
She is now an accompanist and Piano Teacher in various Nottingham schools, including The Becket School, Bluecoat Wollaton, Bluecoat Trent, and English Martyrs Primary school.
An avid supporter of young musicians she was the founder of the Oxjam Beeston Music Festival, creating a platform for local talent which has now raised £250,000 for charity since it started in 2011. Musicians have since gone on to earn chart success, and even become a finalist on The Voice. She has mentored others who have achieved scholarships and performed on The Piano. She has also coordinated and project managed various musical initiatives and collaborative projects for Bartons, Beeston Bid, and Broxtowe Borough Council, including festivals, open mic nights and local markets.
Jane Ingram
Jane Ingram is a musician and music teacher with over 35 years of teaching experience to her name, both in the secondary classroom and individual music lesson environment. She plays and teaches the piano, clarinet, saxophone and flute and previously accompanied the Saturday Singers for five years for their rehearsals and concerts and currently plays lead tenor sax with Shell’s Belles swing band and lead alto sax in the cover band, Trent Connection. She also loves to play in pit orchestras for musicals and shows. A few years ago, she was asked to guest perform with the Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra playing the solo part of the Pink Panther on tenor saxophone in the Royal Concert Hall. In her youth, she was selected to play with the MAYC Orchestra, a national Christian orchestra, which performed on the BBC on many occasions and played annually at London’s Royal Albert Hall. She has a flourishing music teaching business in West Bridgford, ‘Mad About Music’. In her teaching role, she has guided around 600 pupils through practical music exams and has taught pupils from beginner level up to diploma level.
