Our Music Team

Contact the music team via music@queensbridge.hackney.sch.uk

Michelle Woolfenden  Music Coordinator at Queensbridge and Mapledene

Mrs Woolfenden teaches over 400 children at Queensbridge and Mapledene, and loves getting to know them all. She is passionate about helping everyone to get involved in music. She also loves to plan trips and visits so the children at school get to sing at special events and hear orchestras and bands playing live. Mrs Woolfenden plays violin, piano, recorders and guitar and loves to sing. She is learning to play the mandolin and bass guitar. At school, she runs the orchestra and junior choir, and loves to arrange music for them. 
As well as teaching, Mrs Woolfenden runs Morris Folk Choir and Morris Minors parent and baby singing sessions. Before coming to Queensbridge, she was a class teacher in Hackney Primary Schools, worked with English Pocket Opera Company delivering school opera workshops, she taught violin, piano and singing in Thailand and was a choral scholar at Royal Holloway University. 
FUN FACT: Mrs Woolfenden has had a No. 1 hit in the classical charts! As a member of the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, she recorded The Armed Man: Mass for Peace by Karl Jenkins, which topped the classical charts in 2000 J

Osnat Schmool  Music and Drama Teacher and Chamber Choir leader
Osnat has worked in theatre and music for the past 20 years. When she’s not at Queensbridge she writes music and lyrics for her theatre company, Filament and also conducts and directs The Roundhouse Choir, a youth choir for singers aged 18-25yrs. She has collaborated with some very exciting singers and musicians including Angelique Kidjo, Ronnie Spector and Jamie Cullum and has performed at many of London’s famous concert halls like The Royal Albert Hall, The Barbican Concert Hall & The Royal Festival Hall. Osnat has also performed as a singer for the National Theatre in stage plays and is currently providing musical direction to actors in the cast of The Welkin which will open at the Lyttelton Theatre in January 2020. 
Her favourite show that Osnat has worked on is called Earth Makes No Sound and is all about the elements and the planet and how it is precious and under threat. It involves 30-40 singers all singing in harmony and moving together in a graceful and interesting way. You can see a little bit of it here: https://vimeo.com/126483913

‘Osnat Schmool’s mesmerising score (for Earth Makes No Sound) … as transient and full of change as the planet it illustrates.’ - Musical Theatre Review

Read more about our visiting tutors from Hackney Music Service! Please see Instrumental Lessons