Venezuelan / British musician Arturo Serna enjoys an impressive career as conductor, cellist and teacher. He studied at the celebrated Venezuelan El Sistema with further studies in France, Switzerland and the UK.
He is the principal conductor of, among others, the Exeter Symphony Orchestra, the Dorset County Orchestra and the Orchestra of the University of Bath.
An experienced educator, Arturo has a history of pupil's successes in exams, competitions and auditions. He is also a performer, regularly giving concerts as a soloist and recitals with his wife, pianist Ana Laura Manero. He has performed extensively in North and South America and Europe as soloist and chamber musician and freelanced with orchestras such as the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

In Roderick Kennedy’s long career as a bass-baritone he was renowned for his commanding performances and recordings in opera and oratorio repertoire. In 2005 his career transitioned from international singing to opera administration and production becoming the Artistic Director of Dorset Opera. This became the Dorset Opera Festival in 2011 and adopted a format presenting two fully staged operas each summer in their original languages with surtitles. These combine professional soloists with an amateur chorus, where participants learn and perform two works from memory in an intensive 11-day period. Many former chorus members have advanced to professional careers, underscoring the festival's role in talent development.

Tim Blinko is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Hertfordshire, now living in Shaftesbury. He is a full-time, multi award-winning composer and film composer. Having been Bliss composition Scholar at the Royal College of Music, he became a Professor launching the UK’s top film and games music programme. Now a full time composer and songwriter his music is performed, recorded, published and broadcast worldwide. He writes for all media, including the feature film Mates, screened worldwide in 2024 on Prime Video. Working for Hollywood and collaborating with South African-British and Indian-British directors, he has commissions for 2026-7 for three new movies. He has signed with BMG and four other music publishers, and always works hard to bring a fresh and original perspective, creating music that transforms and resonates with people.

Michael Bochmann is a professor of violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and Director of the Orchestra Pro Anima as well as concertmaster of the English String Orchestra and English Symphony Orchestra, a soloist and teacher. In 1977 he founded the Bochmann String Quartet, which made over 50 BBC Radio and Television broadcasts. In February 1990 Michael partnered Sir Yehudi Menuhin in the Bach Double Violin Concerto in a tour of 16 concerts throughout the USA and Canada. Michael’s services to music were recognised with an MBE awarded in 2015.
Michael has passionate beliefs about the way in which music is thought of in the present day and this has led him to develop various educational projects. These include setting up several series of masterclasses and since 1994, he has coached young professional quartets and string players on intensive residential courses held at his home.

The day after leaving school Theresa went to Berlin to play in a European Union broadcast performance of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall! Theresa then studied violin at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she was the first person to receive a diploma on the baroque violin.
Theresa regularly leads The Hanover Band and plays with The London Handel Orchestra and The Monteverdi String Band. She also runs and directs her own ensemble Canzona in many performances of the great baroque masterpieces by Bach and Handel with many wonderful singers such as James Bowman, Emma Kirkby and Peter Harvey. Theresa has led many other orchestras such as The Sixteen, English Touring Opera’s baroque orchestra, The Old Street Band, The Drottningholm Court Theatre Orchestra and the Polish group, L’arte dei Suonatore. She is also the leader of Orpheus Britannicus, resident ensemble at Trinity Hall College, Cambridge.
Theresa has coached at The Royal Academy of Music and at Birmingham and Leeds Universities and has been a specialist examiner for final recitals at The Royal Academy and Royal College of Music. She runs several courses in baroque playing styles at Benslow Music Trust in Hitchin and at Jackdaws near Frome, and is artistic director of “Baroque Week”, held at Queen Anne’s School, Caversham.

Like many children of my generation I learned to play the piano.  But at 14, I really fell in love with music at a recital in Chester Cathedral given by internationally famous cellist, Paul Tortelier. My parents then bought me a cello which I played until university days, only taking it up again in the last two decades – and then played in the New Holland Quartet, and with the South London Sinfonietta, mainly in Sicily.

As a teenager, accompanying my mother to local chamber music concerts I asked her what I should be doing as an audience member, feeling guilty about merely daydreaming, especially during French Romantic music! When she told me that that was fine and just enjoy it, I felt free to listen in whatever way it affected me. I so wish people did not say they don’t understand or know about classical music when they could simply let the pieces work on them, enjoying some more or less than others.

During my varied career, largely as a theologian, editor and CEO of an animal charity, music was always in my life. I sang with the Debenham Festival Singers; composed, played and sang at church; was a music critic for the East Anglian Daily Times and a music editor for a hymn book publisher. I fell in love with Handel operas and music of the Baroque era, and now wish nothing more than to share my passion for music with other people.

My childhood home was filled with broadcast and recorded classical music, and with my father playing Beethoven on piano.

My first experience of performing music was playing recorders as a seven year-old, when my family were living in Hamburg in Germany and on returned to England, playing with the family in four part harmony with the various recorders we had gathered by that time. But I swapped to clarinet after hearing jazz, when a clarinettist I had heard in Hamburg filled the whole building with lively, creativity inspiring music that I have never forgotten. So I joined a local youth orchestra and at school joined a trad jazz band, and experienced my first real conflict between the importance of studying for exams and the joy of playing for a professional musical engagement.

After graduating with an Engineering science degree, I played every week in the worship band at church in Exeter. It was at that time that I bought and began playing a saxophone. Then, when working, my musical activity was clarinet teaching in the evenings.

It was when I retired that I really began using my musical talent. I joined the iSax Saxophone Quartet, the Cadbury wind band, The Bon Accord duet and began playing solo shows, including my 'Music from my desert Island' show and my talk 'Stranger on the Shore - an Acker Bilk Tribute' which sold out at the 2026 Shaftesbury Fringe.

I was delighted when Deborah invited me to join the trustees for the music society, and I look forward to many more happy years in my retirement promoting live music in Shaftesbury and the surrounding district.

I hold no claim to any expertise in music, only that I have enjoyed attending classical music concerts, especially over the past few years when I have been living in Shaftesbury and have them “on my doorstep”! I am one of those people who thought that not knowing much about different composers and genres of music meant that such music was inaccessible. But now, having attended several concerts and meeting musicians (even enjoying a private viol da gamba recital in my flat!) I now feel that music is an important part of my life, and am keen to support its provision locally.

I have played the piano all my life and now still enjoy learning. I cannot live without music.  Opera and choral music are essential and I must listen to Handel most days. Chopin and Bach on the piano, Radio 3 each morning.

It is with great pleasure and excitement that I am supporting the launch of the Shaftesbury & District Music Society and experiencing the depth of musical talent that surrounds us.