Welcome to FORTISMERE PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE
Fortismere MUSIC Centre
About
Fortismere Music Centre was founded in 2009 to provide high-quality instrumental lessons and ensembles to the local community. Our music school, community choir and symphony orchestra are bound together by a belief that community music-making should be bold and ambitious, tackling the most exciting themes and composers, with a flair for the theatrical and a sense of fun. Above all else, we invite everyone to join in. We believe that it is in such an experience of joining in, either as an instrumental student or a singer, as an orchestral player or an audience member, that the truest sense of our community flourishes.
Mission
Meet the Team
Thomas Gregory
Community Symphony Orchestra Musical Director​
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Thomas Gregory studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in his hometown London. From then he received a fellowship to continue his studies at the University of Michigan, completing both a Masters and Specialist degree in cello performance studying with the eminent Danish Cellist Erling Bløndal Bengtsson. Thomas performs regularly as soloist with an extensive knowledge of the solo repertoire. As a member of the Marmara Piano Trio, he performs regular concerts throughout the year. Thomas has been Musical Director of the Community Symphony Orchestra since 2009.
John Eady
Community Choir Musical Director​
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John studied music at King's College London, the Royal Academy of Music and cello at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 2002 he started to learn the organ at the St Giles International Organ School and in 2006 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. He is a freelance cellist and organist, manages his string quartet named Four Strings Attached, and is organist at St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge.
Mattie Morgan
Centre Manager
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Mattie has had links with Fortismere music-making for many years. She has played the piano since the age of 4, and sang in the Cambridge University Music Society choir as a student under Stephen Cleobury, performing in venues such as the Royal Albert Hall and King's College Chapel. Having started her working life in the Marketing Department of Trinity College of Music, she spent the intervening years working in editorial roles in non-governmental organisations and then as a teacher, before taking up the Centre Manager post at FMC. She can occasionally be spotted in the percussion section with the orchestra.