JANE SEBBA’s musical beginnings were in the back seat of the car when she annoyed the family by singing incessantly. Aged four, she yelled for piano lessons; aged ten, she begged to stop (the lessons continued). As a bassoonist in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and as a Junior Exhibitioner at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she found herself increasingly drawn to music until it had her firmly in its clutches.

After studying the piano and bassoon at the Guildhall School of Music in London, she worked in primary schools in London, both as a class teacher and as a music specialist.  For twenty years she ran her own music school – The Music Funshop – attended each week by 150 children aged 3–9, making music with voices, percussion and recorders.  She taught herself the piano accordion and played on stage for many theatre productions; she is proud to have been the rabbit-with-the-accordion in the National Theatre production of The Wind in the Willows and can still do rabbitacting if required. For many years she worked as a commissioning editor in the music department at A&C Black publishers, and later as creative director at Charanga.com where she led the development of interactive instrumental and vocal resources for Charanga’s website. She regularly adjudicates at music festivals, trains teachers and enjoys taking music into the world of business. Jane is a prolific composer and writer of children’s music with more than fifty publications to her name, including the acclaimed series Abracadabra Piano, Piano Magic and Recorder Magic.  Her music for children has been published, recorded and performed on TV/radio and in concert halls/theatres world-wide.

As well as all this, she is a keen compère, musical arranger, lyricist, presenter, vegetarian, snorkeller, tropical-fish-keeper, musical-workshop leader and yoga devotee, and has recently started to play the ’cello in order to fulfil a 40-year desire to play string quartets.

See map