Since 1999 Alison has been on the teaching faculty at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, home to one of the very few Historical Performance programs in North America. As Assistant Professor of Recorder, she teaches all students whose major is the recorder, coaches Renaissance recorder consorts and Baroque ensembles, and co-teaches performance practice courses. Oberlin offers Bachelor’s and Master's degrees in Historical Performance. 

Alison is also on the teaching faculty at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, where she currently teaches traverso, recorder, and seminar classes on early flute literature and repertoire to students in the Master’s and DMA programs. She is also regularly sought out by modern woodwind students for coaching in Baroque style and performance practice. Alison is available as a teacher to any recorder or traverso player interested in the Master’s program run jointly by the Faculty of Music and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra.

In the past she has taught at the Glenn Gould School, University of Western Ontario, Wilfrid Laurier University, London’s Royal College of Music, and the Allgemeine Schule of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Basel, CH.

Her private students in traverso, recorder and/or Baroque performance practice have included a wide range of players including members of the Toronto and Niagara Symphonies.

Also in demand for workshops and master classes, she has taught many times for Early Music Vancouver, Amherst Early Music and the Semaines de Musique Ancienne (CAMMAC), as well as for the San Francisco Early Music Society, Amherst Early Music Winter Weekend,  Montréal International Recorder Festival, and other early music societies across Canada and the United States.

For her own education, musical and otherwise, Alison is particularly indebted to Hugh Orr, Jeanette van Wingerden, Stephen Preston, Frans Brüggen and Barthold Kuijken (for their inspiration), and the late, great Greta Kraus. And special thanks are due to the late Isabel Smaller, the late David Marsden, and Mr. Green, formerly of Westfields County Primary School, London SW13.

For more information on Oberlin’s Historical Performance program, click here.

For more information on the University of Toronto's music offerings, click here.

If you wish to contact Alison about having a lesson, click here.

"Alison had helpful insights in a wide variety of areas related to ensemble playing, from interpretation of phrasing and techniques for handling rhythmical problems, to practical tips for combating nervousness and fascinating bits of historical lore. And all presented in a wonderfully natural and humorous manner..."
—CAMMAC (Ottawa-Hull) newsletter

Photo Credits: Paul Orenstein (banner); Colin Savage