Helen then worked as a free- lance musician in the Somerset area, organising creative and improvisation workshops in special schools, and with adults with mental health problems. She also played in a string quartet performing new music, and in a ceilidh dance band.

In 1995, whilst pregnant with her second child, Beatrice, Helen and her partner Ken and young son Sam moved to West Wales, initially to try community living on a biodynamic farm. This proved to be a short-lived venture, but the family fell in love with Wales and decided to make it their home. Helen began to learn Welsh traditional music, and was soon playing regularly in twmpath bands. This music has been a continuing source of inspiration in her compositions. She also studied Welsh intensively, and is now a reasonably fluent speaker.

Helen has been writing extensively whilst in Wales- the majority of her output has been music for folk band- in ensembles such as fiddle, accordion, whistle, guitar, and bodrhan. She has also arranged Welsh traditional melodies in innovative and often very contrapuntal ways! These pieces are frequently performed at festivals such as Cwlwm Celtaidd, Gwyl Mai, Small Nations festival, as well as at folk clubs and other performance venues throughout the country.

As a performer Helen is busy throughout the year. She plays with several bands and works as a wedding musician, dance band member, and street entertainer for festivals and food fairs, as well as performing original material, and playing viola for quartets and orchestral concerts on a free –lance basis. She is very involved in community music-making and organises many local events, as well as being on the committee of 2 festivals.

She has a special interest in collaborations with free forms of dance, and this year worked at Dance Camp Wales- a 12-day festival in South Wales, as well as making 2 trips to Amsterdam to work with innovative teachers of ‘Biodanza’.

Helen has a well-established and busy private teaching practice, teaching piano, violin and theory from home. She is string tutor at Llandovery College, teaching violin, viola and ‘cello, and coaching the string orchestra.

2006 and 2007 have seen Helen embark on larger scale compositions. Inspired by a text by the Venerable Bede in which he describes an image in which life is seen as the flight of a bird through a banqueting hall, and out into the night of unknowingness, she wrote an hour long piece called ‘Gwyl Nos’ scored for 3 violins, piano, recorder, mandola, djembe and conga drums, gong and woodblocks, double bass, and electric bass, SATB choir, Welsh piper and clog dancer. The piece was narrated by a storyteller in early Celtic costume and was rapturously received at its first performance in Sept. 2007. 

Helen is now working on a new piece about the woollen industry in nineteenth century Wales, which aims to exploit the aesthetic qualities of the early spinning and weaving machines, as well as telling a love story. It will involve children and a large amount of percussion in its final performance!

Website: www.myspace.com/helentunes