Corazon Renata

Corazon Renata's musical journey began at 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.

At fourteen she performed for HM Queen Elizabeth II. At sixteen she played the Mozart Violin Concerto as soloist with the Wellington Regional Orchestra (now Orchestra Wellington) at the Opera House, in the presence of the Governor-General of New Zealand — and that same year became leader of the Wellington Youth Orchestra, while both her violin and piano teachers were independently asking her to take on their overflow students.

She was already making live recordings for Radio New Zealand at fifteen, in an era when live meant getting it right first time. At nineteen she played in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and created concert tours — violin with piano accompaniment, endorsed by the New Zealand Education Board — introducing children to music from around the world.

In 1986, following the encouragement 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. She has performed as a soloist with London orchestras, including Vivaldi's Four Seasons with the English Concert Orchestra, conducted by Martin Merry of the English National Opera. Orchestral credits include Leader of the English Concert Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of the Phantom of the Opera and recordings for Classic FM.

She appeared on BBC1 Television with the Taringa Quartet — a string quartet she led, named with the Māori word for ear — performing at Princess Diana's birthday party at Kensington Palace, London's Barbican, and the National Theatre on London's South Bank.

Those same years revealed another dimension entirely. In 1997 she performed as a violinist at Ronnie Scott's — perhaps the most legendary jazz club in the world — alongside a visiting South American band, the culmination of a tour playing Glastonbury, Reading and WOMAD that summer. She later returned to that same iconic stage as a performance poet, accompanied by the Ronnie Scott's band.

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. Her teaching 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.

Alongside her musical life, Corazon qualified as a therapist and became a Member of the Independent Professional Therapists International (IPTI), practising Craniosacral Therapy and Head Massage in London and the Cotswolds 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.

As successive UK governments cut music education funding, Corazon 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.

Known to many as Cora, she is now back in New Zealand, where it all began.