Jane Edis
Recorder Player & Early Music Enthusiast

Jane has played the recorder in concerts from the age of 10  as part of a quartet and learned also the Clarinet, playing with the National Youth Wind Orchestra.  She studied Mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge  ( They do say that Mathematics goes with Music ). After University she found that it was her interest in Early Music and recorder playing that took her attention although she did teach clarinet for a few years.  She joined the Beds & North Herts Society of Recorder Players and was Chairman for many years alongside an IT career, until her children were born. 

She developed a interest in early music playing with the Bedford Waits (adding a Shawm to her collection of instruments).  The Waits played early music for the Dolmetsch Historical Dance Association with notable demonstrations in the foyers of the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Barbican in costume, and provided music for events such as Twelfth Night Revels and Medieval Banquets and Fairs.  She played with the Elizabethans in an early music concert at the Purcell Room. 

As part of the Byrd Consort with which she played with for 27 years she gave dozens of concerts for charitable causes including music festivals locally and as far away as Beaminster in Dorset and learned to play the Treble Viol allowing for more variety in music performance. A recording of a CD of early three-part music followed (which didn’t quite make the charts!).  Latterly she has started teaching recorder to a group of enthusiastic recorder players at the Rothsay Education Centre in Bedford.

Her passions are to enable would-be recorder and early music players (It’s never too late to learn) to achieve the great satisfaction of playing ensemble music with others, and for presenting early music in context, using a lecture-recital approach to ensure her audience can gain not just a musical but a historical experience. Nothing gives her more pleasure than reviews such as this from January 2020 after a performance of Squire Dennis’s Revels – “The recorder consort take a bow – several people said that above all it was the consort sound which made them believe they’d stepped back in time.”

A bit of a tech guru, she has turned her recorder group from a face-to-face to an online session during the COVID19 lockdown using Zoom. By recording multi track recorder music to use during the lessons she allows participants to experience a sense of ensemble playing.

Jane , “a genuinely lovely and professional person” is married with 2 grown up children, hands on grandma, part time IT Architect for IBM – thought leader, problem solver and decision making expert, genealogist, archaeologist, and owner_manager of an Apartment in Lanzarote. She is a “anything is possible” sort of person who has always felt that Education for all was important and has a wealth of involvement in Educational Charities (from Archaeology, SRP to the WEA).  In her leisure time she might be found sitting with her husband and cats by the fireside with a glass of red wine, or ringing  the church bells in the local church.

If you are looking to connect with other recorder players who are unable to play with each other in person and could do with some support or music to play along to  please join the Reach for your recorder facebook group, by clicking the link below.