Ruth Thompson and Cornelia Sawyer

Ruth Thompson

Music education has been at the heart of Ruth's teaching career for over 30 years now. Initially trained as an Early Childhood Teacher, her natural love of music and singing meant offering developmental and sequential musical experiences in all her classrooms. Her career has led her into early childhood settings, infants and primary schools and private colleges, as well as being called upon regularly to deliver music education to teachers.

Taking up full-time work as a Classroom Music specialist in Queensland in the early 1990's led Ruth into further studies with the University of Queendland (Graduate Diloma in Music Studies) and the Kodàly Music Education Institute of Australia (Australian Kodàly Certificate). The philosophy of Kodàly, "music for children, music for life", has inspired her own practice and led her to design her own dynamic syllabus in use at her Early Years Music School.

Ruth's love of music and singing and background in music education have provided her with the skills 



Cornelia Sawyer

Cornelia has been singing all her life, starting lessons at age 8. Throughout high school, she entered many eisteddfods and received a number of vocal scholarships. She joined the Newcastle-based, internationally acclaimed, Waratah Girls Choir where she spent ten formative years consolidating and developing her vocal skills, as well as learning choral conducting.

Cornelia studied an Arts degree at Sydney University where she majored in Music. She became a Primary School teacher in 2006 and started her first school choir.

Since then, she has been privileged to take at least ten of her choirs to Sydney to perform in massed choirs at the Primary Proms at the Sydney Town Hall and the Festival of Choral Music at the Sydney Opera House. she was invited to co-conduct up to 450 students in the Primary Proms concerts in both 2013 and 2023.

Cornelia moved to Orange in 2015. Since 2018, she has been leading various choirs and bands at Orange Public Cchool. As well, in Orange, she has performed in a number of musical productions, and sung with vocal groups.

In 2024, Cornelia was asked to conduct the Orange Male Voice Choir in the Orange Eisteddfod.