She began teaching when she was 15 and currently has a large teaching practice. Many of her former students are now teachers and professional performers. She teaches people of all ages and all stages, and each year arranges several concerts for her pupils, including one in which the more advanced play concerto movements with an orchestra.

Kate spent three weeks in 2000 adjudicating at the Hong Kong Schools Music Festival, a huge event which had 110,000 entrants! Since then she has returned a number of times to give master classes and help many students with examination preparation. She's been an Associated Board examiner and an adjudicator at music festivals for many years.

Kate loves performing, and has played widely with North Herts Guild of Singers founder John Railton (Three Hands at One Piano) and as one half of Ball and Chain (the other half being her other half, storyteller-baritone Bob Wilkins) presenting Tiptoe Through The Minefield, a hilarious cabaret show which gives her the chance to let her hair down and be really crazy.

She is one-third of the Cantilena piano trio, doing 'proper concerts' and also background music for social functions when not visiting schools to introduce children to the classics with their Magic Carpet programme. She also drives the Magic Music Bus into primary schools with two singers (they're called Cavatina) and in 2000 did a tour of the Channel Islands. In 2001 she performed with Bob for the British Council in China and Sri Lanka.

In 2001 Kate and Bob founded Vivace, a new choir in North Herts which is already attracting attention due to the international renown of the choral conductors being engaged to conduct monthly workshops, and the quality of soloists invited to perform in them. These workshops are offered in addition to regular weekly rehearsals. Plans for Vivace's future include appearances at UK festivals, overseas tours, the promotion of school choirs, and many social events.

1999 brought Kate the award of Associateship of the Royal Academy of Music but (despite winning medals for tap dancing, and playing Ratty in Wind in the Willows on Austrian Radio) she considers the pinnacle of her career to be the first prize she won a few years ago in a yodelling competition in the Austrian Tyrol. Austria's attraction may have something to do with the fact that, as an impecunious student, Kate sold her blood in Vienna to buy food. In her spare time Kate looks after wildlife, walks her black Labrador Emily, takes photographs, reads detective fiction, and keeps well away from the kitchen.

Kate is joint founder of