John Helleur is the typical amateur musician with little formal musical training. A Cornishman by birth, he grew up in Bristol, studied Electronic Engineering at Liverpool University and Computer Science at Leeds University, and then had successful careers in Telecommunications and computing with BT and an Indian company now called TechMahindra until retiring in 2004. John moved to Suffolk in 1971 and is firmly established here.

He has been married to Kate for 36 years, has 3 daughters, all musical, and 3 grandchildren. His hobbies include helping at Holywells High School and photography.

John started playing the clarinet at the age of 11. In his teens, he received some basic grounding in playing the instrument from lessons and playing in the Bristol Youth Orchestra. From here on in, he has basically been self-taught, gaining experience from several amateur orchestras (Liverpool University, Liverpool Mozart Orchestra, Leeds University, & Wolsey Orchestra) and working with many excellent conductors (including Chris Adey and John Lubbock).

His local musical experience has largely been with the excellent Wolsey Orchestra, of which he was a founding member in 1972, and its chairman from 1976 to 1989. John was also chairman of the Ipswich Arts Association between 1983 and 1988. John had to give up his commitment to the Wolsey Orchestra in 1994, when career pressures became too heavy due to senior management posts in BT, followed by the challenge of leading an international software services company with a turnover of $200m pa. Unfortunately, clarinet playing did not fit in well with a schedule including 150,000 air miles a year!!

After a 12 year break from playing, John is excited by the challenge of removing the rust, and rising to the standard of his 4 colleagues in Nightingale.