Vetta Wise comes from South Africa (of British and Greek parentage), studied at the University of Cape Town and, on the Ernest Oppenheimer Scholarship at the Royal College of Music in London (postgraduate and opera school). She sang as soloist with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra and the SABC National Orchestra, and gave many recitals throughout South Africa and England. She was Chorus Master of Cape Town Opera for 11 years, where she established the Choral Training Programme for talented but disadvantaged young singers in the nearby townships. In this post, and as Director of Music of the Philharmonia Choir of Cape Town and several other choral groups, she gained valuable experience working with visiting conductors from all over the world. She lectured at the University of Cape Town, teaching singing in the Opera and Musicals departments, and choral and class singing teaching methods in the Music Education department.

She was invited to travel throughout the country presenting workshops and adjudicating festivals, and co-ordinated and trained massed and other choral performances for Yehudi Menuhin, Seiji Osawa (the Winter Olympics), the LPO, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sir David Willcocks and Pavarotti. She was on several committees, such as the Caltex Massed Choir Festivals (in which she also conducted choirs of 1,500) and the Musica Mundi Choir Olympics.

When her husband, a fisheries scientist, was offered a position at the Marine Laboratories in Lowestoft in 2002, he, Vetta and their son moved to the Waveney area, where she now lives and teaches. She has sung as soloist with the augmented Beccles Chamber Orchestra, the Waveney Sinfonia and the Halesworth New Cut Orchestra, as well as in several solo recitals with piano.
Vetta founded Pakefield Singers in October 2002, and the popular vocal harmony group “Aurora” of promising singers (aged 16 and upwards) trained by her. “Aurora” have won awards in the Gorleston, Suffolk and Norfolk Festivals, and are now in demand locally singing at weddings, concerts and functions. She was appointed Director of Music of the Beccles Choral Society in 2003 (www.beccleschoralsociety.co.uk).
Vetta has been a Voice Tutor for the University of East Anglia for the last three years. Since September 2005, she has worked part-time at St Felix School, Reydon, where the Senior Choir, grown now from 12 girls to a mixed choir of 43 members, won the Senior Schools Trophy at the Gorleston Festival in 2006, and has recently returned from a Tour to Rome, singing at various churches, including St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. From September 2008 Vetta will be Head of Vocal Studies at Saint Felix.
Vetta presents Voice Workshops and Sing Days for choral and solo singers, which have elicited an unprecedented response, with attendance always from 50 to their limit of 100 singers. Vetta is sometimes “trouble-shooter” for choirs (including the Britten-Pears Chamber Choir, the Framlingham Phoenix Singers, the Norwich Philharmonic and the Aldeburgh Music Club), who invite her to deal with vocal and technical aspects of works they are to perform. She hopes to continue this kind of work whenever her schedule allows.
Her work during the past five years in the UK, with adults and children, and in the past in South Africa, has led her to feel the need for a Youth Choir in the Waveney area, and a committee of music leaders and teenagers was formed to spearhead this idea. The inaugural workshop for this project, entitled “Sing!” was in February 2008, with 30 enthusiastic young singers from 11 to 19 attending. This project continues to grow.
MAY 2008.

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Alison is a graduate of the Royal College of Music and a post-graduate of the Philippa Fawcett College, London. She has spent her career teaching music in both the public and private sector, from pre-school children up to those taking A Levels. She has been the Assistant Director of Music at Abbey School, Reading, St Mary's, Calne, St Felix School, Southwold, Bishop Luffa Comprehensive School, Chichester and Harris Middle School, Lowestoft.