James Smith has been a guitarist for over 30 years, performing in many different styles. Since the mid 90s James has been involved in recording and composition. After completing a BSc in Music Technology, James went on to work and incorporate new technologies into the teaching environment whilst maintaining his personal recording projects.
The last 20 years have been spent teaching music and music technology in secondary schools, with 6 years spent as Head of Music in a Lincolnshire Performing Arts School. During his time as Head of Department James worked alongside Universal Music UK Sound Foundation to create exciting projects that brought students, teachers and schools together to experience and share music.
Now with a new position within the Lincolnshire Music Service James is looking forward to many more years supporting and promoting music in education.
Jonathan Ward’s love for composing and music technology stems from a self-confessed inability to play quite as well as he’d like to on a number of instruments. Technology, more specifically keyboard based sequencers, initially allowed him to realise his compositional ideas and on leaving school he went on to study for a BA in Music at LIPA specialising in songwriting. He will happily bore you about Paul McCartney singing one of his songs and continues to claim that Paul co-wrote a very small part of said song.
After university Jonathan went on to teach music in secondary schools for over 20 years and is looking forward to continuing within the education sector, sharing his love for composition, and music technology.