Colourstrings Music Kindergartens
Colourstrings Music Kindergarten for babies, toddlers, and children!
Part of The North London Conservatoire, est. 1995
Kindergarten Teachers
Our Kindergarten classes are run by teachers fully trained in the Colourstrings-Kodály approach, and all have wider musical backgrounds, see our kindergarten teachers below and find out more!
Beatrice Driver (Vice-Principal, Head of Kindergarten)
Beatrice Driver
Vice-Principal, Head of Kindergarten and Middlesex University Saturday School
Inspired by a family friend playing his French horn to a field of sheep, Beatrice took up this wonderful, at times mysterious, instrument at the age of 10. She went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music and in the Netherlands, where she remained for a decade enjoying performing across a great variety of genres and repertoire – symphonic, musical theatre, chamber music, big band and contemporary, including being a member of Louis Andriessen’s Orkest de Volharding.
Returning to England, Beatrice discovered Colourstrings and the North London Conservatoire when her children were very young, which led to a new musical adventure, teaching Music Kindergarten and Kodaly musicianship to children. She still plays the horn and loves the outdoors (but has yet to make an impression on any sheep)!
Alex Ho
Charis Lai
Eleanor Bartlett
Eleanor graduated with a first class music degree from the University of Durham before continuing her studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she completed a Masters degree in music performance.
She then undertook her Colourstrings training with Geza Szilvay and David Vinden, and has also studied with early years music specialist Nikhil Dally.
She has been teaching in the Kindergarten department at NLC since 2011, where she enjoys reconnecting with her inner child. She has also taught in the violin department where she still occasionally covers lessons. You might also see her occasionally in the musicianship department, Saturday Flying School, coaching orchestras and chamber groups and compering at concerts.
When she’s not teaching she enjoys a diverse career as freelance violinist, guesting with various orchestras and ensembles around London and further afield. If she had any spare time, she’d enjoy spending it doing yoga and baking.
Éva Babják-Garai
Éva started playing the violin in Beregszász, Ukraine when she was six years old. It soon became clear that she wanted to be a musician and she continued her studies first in Békéscsaba, then at the Béla Bartók Faculty of Arts of the University of Szeged, Hungary,under the wings of Dr. Márta Gévayné Janurik and Ferenc Szecsődi. She firstly qualified as a violin teacher and two years later obtained her Master's Degree as a violinist. She participated in various master classes (Kapás, Perényi and Denisova).
During her university years, she began teaching and was also a member of several orchestras. She currently lives in London with her husband, little daughter and 4 year old son. She is an avid visitor to London's classical concerts and she says that one of the most defining moments of her life was seeing and hearing Maxim Vengerov play, live. Éva joined the NLC in September 2022.
Holly Watson
Holly started learning the piano aged five when her grandmother noticed how she was always drawn to the instrument when she visited, so she began to teach her. Although music continued to be an important part of her life, she chose to work for many years in the television and film industry and during this time, she lived and worked in Budapest, Hungary for three years where she first encountered Kodály’s work in music education. However, it was back in London and through her children that she discovered Colourstrings, she immediately loved this approach and wished she had been taught this way.
She trained as a Colourstrings Kindergarten teacher and has worked at NLC since 2017. As she loves all areas of the arts, she feels lucky to live in London and tries to access the capital’s culture as much as she can. She also enjoys London’s varied restaurants, eating out with her family is perhaps where she is happiest! She still plays (as does her daughter) on the same piano her grandmother taught her on all those years ago.
Ina Surikova Winjahr
Ina’s love of music started very early on in life through hearing the rich offerings of folk culture in the former Soviet Union in a daily TV/radio broadcast. She would listen to the simple rise and fall of the melodies, sang them back and savoured the intervals and movements without knowing what they meant; her curiosity was so inspired that she used to get lost in her imagination and make up stories to herself about who might have composed the tunes, what it looked like in their own land where they sang them and what the singers felt when they sang the melodies.
At the age of seven, Ina auditioned with one of her favourite songs to be admitted to study piano and all the supporting subjects; twelve years later, she graduated with a Diploma in Piano (tuition, performance, accompaniment). She taught and accompanied in Almaty, Kazakhstan and in Bonn, Germany, then settled in London in 1995, which has been her home ever since. While on maternity leave, she took up undergraduate studies in Humanities with Music at the Open University and was awarded a Bachelor’s Degree with Honours. She joined The North London Conservatoire in 2009 and has enjoyed working there since, in a variety of capacities.
In her spare time, Ina loves spending time with friends and family, potters around at home with her comprehensive plant collection and keeps on learning new things about music and life in general.
Janka Kalo
Jasmin Allpress
Katalin Kahno
Katalin started learning piano at the age of 7 in a specialist music school for children in former Soviet Union, in the city of Uzsgorod, Republic of Ukraine. Her love for piano came about in the nursery where her mother was a manager and Katalin heard accompanists playing for the children. She was mesmerised with the different music she heard on the piano asked her parents to let her learn to play it.
She graduated as a Piano teacher, Pianist (Performance) and Accompanist and has been teaching and accompanying ever since.
As Katalin is of Hungarian origin, she moved to Hungary in 1991, where she had her diploma accredited as equivalent to a degree from the Liszt Academy in Budapest. This allowed her to continue teaching and accompanying widely in Hungary.
Katalin now lives and works in Muswell Hill. She enjoys meeting friends, taking long nature walks and visiting arts performances that London is so rich with. She joined The North London Conservatoire as a Kindergarten assistant teacher in 2019 and as a piano teacher in 2022.
Kathy Chan
Kathy Chan was born in Hong Kong with two older sisters, moving to England at fifteen. Unlike her studious siblings, she favoured all things creative over studying, much to her parents' dismay! Her passions have always been art and music, which saw her either spending hours doodling at her desk or attending choir rehearsals and competitions. She played piano from age six and took up drums and percussion a few years later, just so she could play in an orchestra!
Kathy chose Architecture for study at university but adamantly kept music a constant part of her life. She eventually discovered Colourstrings at the NLC with her first child – this approach completely opened her eyes to early years quality music education. Her fascination grew into deciding to train as a Colourstrings Music Kindergarten teacher, which she feels privileged to have obtained certification for with Distinction.
Kathy has been a lead teacher at the Conservatoire since 2019. She still works as a freelance Architect in between teaching times and in her rare free moments, continues to take on keenly any creative challenge that comes her way! She plays the piano and loves walking her Norfolk Terrier Rolo while catching up with friends.