Biography
Born in New Zealand, Cora Renata's musical journey began at the age of four when her father sat her down with a piece of manuscript paper and showed her, step by step, how to draw a treble clef. It was, she says, a key unlocking a whole world — and fittingly, the word "clef" means key. By six she had chosen her instrument — the violin — teaching herself to play by ear before formal training began, and was already performing in concerts.
At nine she was awarded the highest marks in New Zealand by Trinity College London, with the examiner telling her teacher she would have a glittering career as a violinist, if she chose to pursue one. At twelve she was awarded the highest marks in New Zealand for her grade by Trinity College London. At fourteen she performed for HM Queen Elizabeth II. At fifteen she became the leader of Wellington Youth Orchestra, and made her first live radio recording for Radio New Zealand — in an era when live meant getting it right first time.
At sixteen she performed the Mozart Violin Concerto as soloist with the Wellington Regional Orchestra (now Orchestra Wellington). At sixteen, both her violin and piano teachers independently gave her their overflow students to teach — an early sign of the teaching career that would run alongside her performing life. At nineteen she played in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and created concert tours — violin with piano accompaniment — approved and endorsed by the New Zealand Education Board, introducing children to music from around the world. The Board recommended her fee — approximately twenty times the minimum wage — and advised her to increase it to nearly double that figure over time. She then left for Australia, performing with the Australian Opera Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Bolshoi Ballet on its Australian tour. In 1986, at the suggestion of international violinists Carl Pini and Julian Quirit — who had independently heard her play in Melbourne — she travelled to New York to audition before the legendary Dorothy DeLay at The Juilliard School of Music. She went, she says, expecting nothing. DeLay offered her a scholarship. She was also awarded a scholarship to the New England Conservatory in Boston, which she elected to attend.
In 1987 she arrived in London, where a remarkable career unfolded across two decades. Orchestral credits include the City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, the Orchestra of the Phantom of the Opera, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra, London Concert Orchestra, and Leader of the English Concert Orchestra. She performed the violin solo part of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 with a London chamber orchestra, and appeared as violin soloist in Vivaldi's Four Seasons with the English Concert Orchestra, conducted by Martin Merry of English National Opera. She made recordings for Classic FM and appeared on BBC1 Television with the Taringa Quartet — a string quartet she led, named with the Māori word for ear. The Taringa Quartet performed at Princess Diana's birthday party at Kensington Palace, played for the Queen's visit day at the Chelsea Flower Show, recorded by five television channels including the BBC, gave a recital at the Barbican, were flown by helicopter to perform at the Cannes Film Festival, and were frequent performers at the National Theatre on London's South Bank.
She recorded and performed live on television throughout her career — among them her earliest appearances in New Zealand at eighteen, a performance with the Westminster Chamber Orchestra, London, at Seville Cathedral in the presence of Pope John Paul II broadcast on Spanish National Television, a live broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall, numerous televised summer concerts in Hampstead, and playing with the string ensemble that appeared on Top of the Pops on several occasions — with many more televised concerts across Australia and the UK.
On one occasion, performing at Lauderdale House, London, Cora glanced into the audience moments before the concert began — and found herself looking straight at Brian May. She turned to her quartet. "Programme change," she whispered. "The arrangement of Bohemian Rhapsody? It's off the menu."
Those same London years revealed another dimension entirely. In 1997 Cora performed as a violinist at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club alongside a visiting South American band — the culmination of a tour that included Glastonbury, Reading, and WOMAD that summer — and she later returned to that same iconic stage as a performance poet, accompanied by the Ronnie Scott's band.
Alongside her musical career, Cora qualified in Craniosacral Therapy and Head Massage, and became a Member of Independent Professional Therapists International, establishing a practice in London and the Cotswolds where she treated patients for twenty years. Her work with children included treating premature babies in incubators at Lewisham Hospital — a calling she describes as impossible to refuse. The results she witnessed over two decades confirmed her belief in the body's innate capacity for healing.
One mother brought her four-month-old, who had suffered six weeks of colic while the family went without sleep. After a single treatment, the mother rang the next morning — her baby was sleeping so soundly she had woken her in fright, afraid something was wrong. There was no relapse; one follow-up appointment was all that was needed.
Another patient, an adult who had been told she required lifelong thyroxine medication for an underactive thyroid, came for treatment instead. Cora asked her to request a six-month deferral before starting medication. After six months of Craniosacral Therapy combined with Head Massage and dietary guidance, the patient's hormone levels had returned to normal — and no medication was ever needed. For Cora, such outcomes are not miracles but evidence of what becomes possible when the body's own anatomy and physiology are supported to work as nature intended.
Cora also built a teaching practice as wide-ranging as her performing career. Concerned by the rising pressure on young performers and the erosion of arts funding, she began arranging and staging concerts that celebrated music for its own sake — creating space for beginners to perform without pressure, and quietly protecting the childhoods of her students at a time when cultural and political forces were pushing in the opposite direction. It was at one such concert that a former Mayor of Islington, moved by what she witnessed, invited her to bring that same philosophy to one of the capital's most deprived estates — and told her to name her price. Her teaching practice extended from private students and the Bromley Youth Music Trust to tutoring an orchestra at Oxford University — a breadth that reflected her lifelong belief that music belongs to everyone.
As successive UK governments cut music education funding, Cora became increasingly inventive in finding ways to teach children to read music. The result, decades later, is her Rainbow Notes series — simple, step by step activity books teaching children as young as three to trace, read and write musical notes, with no prior knowledge required from child or parent.
She is now back in New Zealand, where it all began.