Our musicians

Emma Dogliani

Emma Jüngling

An alumni from the Royal Academy of Music, Emma is a mezzo-soprano from Switzerland. The winner of numerous prizes, she enjoys a busy schedule of performing, teaching and outreach work. Emma has worked with companies such as English Touring Opera, Opéra de Lausanne, Wexford Festival Opera, The Grange Festival, Geneva Opera House and English National Opera. Her interest in working in prisons started when she began a penpalship with an inmate on Death Row in California. For the past 6 years, she has exchanged letters with her penpal and it gave her an insight into prison life. Ever since then she has wanted to be involved in prison work to bring some joy back to life on the inside.

Charles Stuart

A singer-songwriter and musician, Charles enjoys working with both analog and newer digital technologies. As a freelance music tutor he has been involved with Epic Arts and Lewisham College. More recently he has been performing in ‘The Fish Police’, a band made up of both disabled and non-disabled musicians from the Heart n Soul creative arts company, in addition to playing in Grace Jones’s band. Charles is passionate about the power of music to transform lives for the better, as revealed in his interview featured in a film made recently about Music in the Ville’s work in Pentonville. A link to the film is on the home page.

Olivia Ray

Olivia has been working as an opera, concert and oratorio singer for over 25 years. She has enjoyed a wide variety of performing experiences in the UK and abroad, including education projects and commercial work. From a young age, she had a curiosity about injustice, punishment and prisons. After chatting with Emma in rehearsal breaks and reading Andy West’s book The Life Inside about teaching philosophy in prisons, she became increasingly keen to be involved in Music in the Ville to bring creativity, through music, into HMPP (His Majesty’s Prison Pentonville).

Kate Conway

Kate is a Suzuki violin teacher based in East London, and founder-director of Suzuki Hub. She teaches on various workshops and summer courses, as well as performing as a soloist and with chamber groups and orchestras in and around London. Kate also runs Hackney Proms, a charity which brings live music to people of all ages around Hackney. Kate has known Emma Dogliani for many years, performing with her in their classical band Three4. From the start, Kate has been a regular member of Music in the Ville team, inspiring the men with her virtuoso playing.

Harrison Blackamore

Harrison is a London-based guitarist and graduate of BIMM London (BMus Hons). He has a diverse career spanning performance, session work, and education. Harrison has performed under the musical direction of Levi Yarde (Stormzy), played in Jimi Hendrix’s bedroom at the Handel and Hendrix House, and toured with rock band Marisa And The Moths, performing at the O2 and Barrowland Ballroom. He’s also collaborated with the Brixton Chamber Orchestra on South London Estates tours. A dedicated teacher, Harrison began contributing to Music In the Ville’s workshops at HMP Pentonville in 2025, helping inmates find self-expression and voice.

Kate Shortt

Kate is a freelance cellist, vocalist and workshop leader. Her work covers a huge variety of genres, including Portuguese fado, Classical, Jazz, Theatre, Rock and Contemporary. Kate’s one-woman show of original songs, impressions and comedy, ‘Shortt and Sweett’, has graced the cabaret and comedy scene in London, Edinburgh and abroad. She has been leading the Music in the Ville workshops since its inception.

Alessia Piermarini

Alessia is a Rome-born, London-based singer-songwriter, pianist and loop virtuoso whose sound blends Jazz, Nu-Soul, Hip Hop and Spoken Word. Her recent single ‘Not Mine’ - a reflection on the climate crisis featuring leading musicians from London’s jazz scene - earned international radio support, including a broadcast on the BBC. Deeply committed to social impact, Alessia has used music to support vulnerable communities, working with women survivors of domestic violence and international crime. She now brings her practice into one of London’s oldest male prisons, sharing the transformative power of music with those who need it most.

Dom Stichbury

Dom is a choir director, singer, arranger and group-singing advocate. Since 2009 he's been encouraging people to engage in this life-boosting activity through his choirs and workshops. In 2013 he founded Chaps Choir to get more men singing and to challenge the traditional male choir presentation. Dom tours regularly with The Spooky Men’s Chorale and a cappella duo ‘Ben & Dom’. He is passionate about bringing the power of singing and music into prisons and witnessing its power to transform those who take part.

Our Trustees and Advisers

Emma Dogliani, CEO

Emma made her solo professional debut as a soprano in 1998 with the Royal Opera House as a Flowermaiden in Parsifal with Placido Domingo. Over the last 30 years she has sung many operatic roles and oratorios around the UK. She has appeared on Radio 3 In Tune, won an international singing competition, and made a CD of Handel arias with London Mozart Players. Partly inspired by her grandparents who were penal reformers, in 2017 she volunteered at HMP Pentonville as a Prison Visitor. Meeting a prisoner who was a song writer and had been inspired 20 years earlier by a prison music project, she had the idea of developing a project herself in Pentonville and Music in the Ville was born.

Victoria Holt, Chair of Trustees

Victoria has had a long career as a GP based in Hackney and is one of the clinical leads for the GP Out Of Hours service based in the A&E department of the Homerton Hospital. She has long been aware of the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences on people’s physical and mental health and on their life chances. She is actively involved in several choirs and is acutely aware of the benefits of music to mental health. She therefore jumped at the chance to be involved in improving the lives of prisoners in Pentonville.

Louise Walport, Treasurer

Louise is an Associate Professor at Imperial College London, where she teaches undergraduate chemistry and runs a research group interested in early stage drug discovery. Outside of the lab she is a keen amateur musician and has had a long standing interest in prison reform and initiatives to reduce recidivism. Having been introduced to Emma's amazing work at Pentonville she was delighted she could combine these two interests by playing a small part in ELMO's work as its treasurer.

Olivia Kilmartin, Secretary

Olivia has lived in Hackney for more than 40 years. After a career in music publishing, she became a school librarian, working in two Hackney secondary schools. In 1997 Emma recruited her to take part in a community opera project at the Hackney Empire which was the start of East London Metropolitan Opera. Now a charity, ELMO’s sole project is Music in the Ville - being involved in it from the start has been hugely inspiring and rewarding.

Paul Julian

Paul is a retired doctor who has been living and working in east London since the 1960s. An interest in playing early music saved Paul’s sanity while working on call as a resident doctor. As a GP in Hackney, he met patients who had served prison sentences, often for very minor offences. John Allin, an artist, is a former patient and neighbour, who learned to paint while serving time, and is a good example of how time in prison can be productive. When Emma, a regular soloist with the choir in which Paul sings, asked him to be a trustee of East London Metropolitan Opera which runs Music in the Ville, it was a no-brainer.

Emily Ward

Emily has extensive experience developing and delivering campaigns for organisations at all scales, with an emphasis on collaboration, inclusion and social justice. As a communications specialist, Emily believes in the transformative power of connection through music, art and culture. Everyone deserves access to culture and live music, no matter where they live. Music in the Ville punches above its weight in changing lives and perceptions of life at HMP Pentonville and within the penal system more broadly.

Bill Miller

Bill is a retired Chartered Surveyor who seven years ago became a volunteer Humanist Chaplain at HMP Pentonville. There he met Emma Dogliani and was inspired by the Music in the Ville group, helping out with some of the sessions and seeing first hand how the activity brings out the good in people, to cooperate, share with others, be inventive and take responsibility. When the session ends everybody leaves in a better mood. Outside prison Bill is a keen choir member and enjoys music of different kinds, it is certainly good for wellbeing. Life and the justice system can be unfair and small contributions such as being a trustee can only help.

Diana Sternfeld

Diana has had a long career in the law. When she retired she took the opportunity of her free time to visit people in Pentonville prison as she had previously visited women in Holloway prison. During the course of her visits she met the Music in the Ville team and was delighted when her request to join was accepted. She was very happy not only to assist with the musical activities in the prison, which are a great diversion and bring a lot of joy to all those taking part, but also to act as a trustee of the charity.

Lee Brown, adviser

Lee is a lived-experience adviser for the charity. Lee also works as an operations coordinator for the Howard League for Penal Reform. Lee is therefore deeply passionate about reducing the prison population and creating a system that is able to make our society safer, fairer and happier.

East London Metropolitan Opera Charity number 1185310 Registered September 2019

Our musicians

Our Trustees and Advisers