Musical Director 2009 to 2023 – Karen Beer

Karen Beer

Karen is a well-respected Choral conductor and vocal practitioner, having conducted Biggleswade Choral Society for 13 years, Ampthill Choral Society for 5 years and many school choirs from primary to senior. She formed East Bedfordshire Youth Choir in 2009. 

 

Karen has been Musical Director of Grimsby Philharmonic Society for 2 years and successfully started a new choir in 2019– Claxby Community Choir in NE Lincolnshire which now has 40 members.

 

Karen studied oboe, piano and singing at the Royal College of Music. After gaining her PGCE at Roehampton Institute, she became a Head of Music in a Middle School in Stanmore then a peripatetic music teacher for Bedfordshire Music for 20 years, teaching singing and piano and directing choirs. 

 

She still continues to teach in Bedfordshire where she lived until 2018 but now also teaches for North Lincolnshire Music Service and at John Leggott Sixth Form College in Scunthorpe as well as privately at her studio in Claxby, Lincolnshire.

 

She is in much demand as an oboist and plays Oboe, Oboe D’Amore and Cor Anglais in Louth Chamber Players, Boston Sinfonia, Pro Musica in Lincoln and occasionally in Saffron Walden and Lincoln Symphony Orchestras.

Karen has recently qualified to become a Vocal Health First Aider.  This means that she has:

 
  • An understanding of vocal health and the factors that can affect vocal wellbeing
  • Practical skills to spot the signs of a range of vocal dysfunction and imbalance
  • Knowledge to help someone towards recovery by guiding them in self-management, or passing them on to further support, whether that is specialist vocal rehabilitation coaching or clinical treatment
  • An understanding of how to prevent vocal health issues from occurring in the workplace.