Alison has always loved music. She started guitar lessons at the age of seven and on the advice of her guitar teacher took up a second instrument and began playing the cornet in a brass band at the age of ten. She really enjoyed the excitement of playing in concerts and competitions. Alison went on to study trumpet at the Royal College of Music in London with Professor David Mason, most famous for being the Beatles’ trumpet player on records such as “Penny Lane” and “All you need is Love”. During her time at the Royal College, she won the Brass prize and was a member of the European Community Youth Orchestra playing with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Bernard Haitink and Claudio Abbado. After leaving College Alison played regularly with the BBC Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony and Halle Orchestras, with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Mark Elder, Sir Edward Downes, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Yehudi Menuin amongst many others. She has played at several BBC PROM concerts and has appeared on television and radio. Alison and her husband, having three very young children, decided that they wanted to travel and see more of the world. In February 1999 they left England and moved to Lima, Peru, not knowing what to expect. They had a fabulous three years there and would certainly recommend travel to Peru. They followed this by spells in Papua New Guinea, Norway, the USA, Poland and Qatar. As a music teacher Alison has started primary and secondary choirs, a FILMharmonic orchestra which only played music from movies, recorder, and ukulele clubs, run both primary and secondary productions such as “Seussical Junior”, “Beauty and the Beast” and “Annie” and helped to run a Jazz Band, a Funkadelic Orchestra and community choirs. While in Warsaw Alison also organised a music trip to Paris where the secondary choir and jazz band performed several concerts and spent the day at Disney. She also helped to organize the first Nord Anglia Music Extravaganza in Dubai in May 2017. Alison took forty-seven students from Compass International School joined students from our Nord Anglia sister schools in Al Khor, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai in a first Nord Anglia Music Extravaganza event. In 2019 year, Alison took 14 students from Compass International School to the Nord Anglia European and Middle East Music Festival in Bratislava. In her spare time, much to the dismay of Mr Porter, Alison likes to go shopping. She loves to go to the cinema, especially the 7 star cinema in Doha, and when she has the time, during the holidays, she likes to watch ridiculously large amounts of television.