Hi! My name is Maxine Ansell (previously Barnwell) and I am a music teacher based in Shefford, Bedfordshire. Welcome to this website. I have been playing the piano for 25 years and teaching for 14 of those years. Music is my passion and I love to listen to, play and talk about a variety of genres and styles. This aids my teaching as I have a wide area of knowledge to draw on to inform lessons and discussion with pupils. My devotion to music really began at 12 years old when my piano teacher moved away and I started to explore other genres of music I had never before tried… I taught myself Mozart’s Alla Turca and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to perform at a concert in London and while there heard a boy play the most beautiful performance of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C sharp Minor; I have been hooked on Piano, and music in general, ever since. It led me to make the choices in what I studied through school and university. I studied music GCSE at Loreto College in St Albans, where I also began to learn Violin and Singing (which is now my second instrument) and taught myself how to play guitar. I continued to study music at A Level, again at Loreto College. In 2010 I graduated from Royal Holloway University with a second class honors degree in music (BMus). By this point I had already cultivated my other passion — teaching — and decided to study for a PGCE in Secondary Music at Middlesex University. After working in secondary schools in Hertfordhire and Bedfordshire for five years, whilst also building up my own music school ‘Barnwell Music‘, I decided to leave mainstream schooling to pursue one to one instrumental teaching.
