Miranda Lisk

As a music scholar at Taunton School, Miranda was a violinist in the National Youth Orchestra from the age of 14 and was also a regional finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition.  She read music at St Catherine’s College, Oxford.  She ran the College Music Society, conducted the College Symphony orchestra and Choir, won the Leask instrumental Scholarship in her first year, and received a special Alan Bullock Music prize for her services to college music. After her degree, Miranda became Head of Strings at Taunton School and was appointed Musical Director of the Taunton Sinfonietta from 1993 to 2004. 

 In 1996, she became Director of Music at St Margaret’s School, Exeter. For five consecutive years from 2002 to 2006, she conducted the St Margaret’s School Chapel Choir in the Finals of the National Festival of Music for Youth in London, receiving Outstanding Performance Awards on all five occasions.  She has also directed the choir in the Finals of the Songs of Praise Celebrate Competition on BBC1.  In 2005, the choir was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as a semi-finalist in the Choir of the Year Competition, and it was selected for the Finals of the same competition in 2006, performing in the prestigious surroundings of Cardiff’s Millennium Centre.

 In January 2008, Miranda was appointed to the post of Director of Music at the prestigious Lady Eleanor Holles School in Hampton, where she has already started to raise the profile of music with her usual energy and enthusiasm. She put on a chamber concert for Sir Richard Attenborough in her first month in the job. In 2009, she invited Emma Kirkby to the school to give a choral masterclass and concert, and Miranda was privileged to conduct Emma in Mozart’s Laudate Dominum with the LEH choir. A few days later, Miranda conducted the joint LEH and Hampton Choral Society in Karl Jenkins’ Mass for The Armed Man. She has just finished a very busy Summer term with the Hampton Court Palace Concert of Brendan’s “King Henry’s Revel” and, a few days later, an outdoor fireworks concert including the 1812 Overture in front of an audience of a thousand ~ the biggest event LEH has ever staged!