Izabella Gaczynska

Principal

Izabella Gaczynska was born in 1977 in Poland. She pursued a master’s degree in Classical Music and Education after her graduation. She has worked for four years as violin teacher in North London’s Colourstrings Music School. In that music school she had chance to perfect and practise the internationally renowned Kodàly Method. During those years, she has completed the Colourstrings course at The Szilvay Foundation in order to improve her teaching skills, and gain a strong insight on early childhood music education.

Soon after, Izabella started teaching for Harrow Music Service as a primary and secondary violin and piano teacher, delivering lessons to both small and large groups of students. She has also led the chamber music, ensemble and orchestra of the school. Izabella Gaczynska has also taught Methodology of Music, which is a course for primary school music teachers. In the last 5 years she has been part of Hertfordshire Music Service, teaching violin and piano in local schools and at the Watford School of Music.

As performer Izabella has collaborated as first violin with numerous musicians and orchestras in UK and abroad, some of her collaborations are the Gratz Opera, Notting Hill Orchestra and the Watford Philarmonic orchestra.

Ilario Ferrari

Vice Principal

Ilario graduated with Honours in Jazz Piano in 2015 at “Licino Refice” conservatory in Italy. Right after graduation he has won a bursary as part of “Working with music” European Competition in 2015. This has allowed him to work as composer and pianist at “Quadra recording studio” in London for seven months. During this experience he had the chance to write arrangements for musicians from the BBC Sympony Orchestra. Ilario has started teaching in Colours in Music school in November 2015 and started a formal career in education in 2017 gaining a PGCE and QTS in secondary education at Hertfordshire University. He has worked in Kings Langley Secondary School as Music and Math teacher, teaching GCSE and A level composition courses and leading the school Jazz orchestra for more than 2 years.

Along side his passion for Music Education, Ilario is consistently working as pianist/composer and leader of various ensembles. He has arranged several pop/orchestral albums between 2009 and 2015, published an album as band leader in 2016, premiered his first orchestral work “Awakening” in UK with Letchworth Sinfonia in 2019. In July 2020, he will be premiering his second Piano quintet called “Be yourself” with musicians from the Viennese “Freestyle Orchestra”