Brenda Stewart

Brenda Stewart read music at Manchester University, studying viola with Roger Bigley of the Lindsay String Quartet and as a post-graduate at the Royal Academy of Music with John White, also studying chamber music with Sidney Griller and the Amadeus Quartet. She has been violist of the Bingham String Quartet since its formation in 1985 performing in this country and abroad and taking part in regular BBC broadcasts. She has had an active career in freelance orchestral playing and has also had wide experience in education; on the staff at the junior department of the Royal Academy of Music, as Head of Strings at Radley College, Abingdon, for nine years and for a short time at Culford School, Bury St Edmunds. In June 2009 she was ordained as a minister in the Church of England. Having recently retired from full-time ministry she continues to perform professionally with the Bingham String Quartet and in Duos with a Difference with her husband Steve Bingham. She is also a tutor at the NLMS summer school and several courses at Benslow Music Trust.