Barry D'Souza

Barry D’Souza is the Director of Sound Futures, an organisation which supports music-making for young people across Birmingham through working with a number of partner organisations and musicians. He is also a consultant and lecturer at the Birmingham Conservatoire coordinating the PgDip / MMus Community Music programmes and the BMus community music elective. Before this he was a Youth Development Officer for Sound It Out where he was responsible for the strategic development of the organisation’s work with children and young people.

Prior to focussing on community music strategic development Barry was a professional musician; a director and the viola player in the AMCA String Quartet, Principal Viola with the Orquestra do Norte in Portugal and also a soloist and assistant conductor for the same orchestra. He has also taught and played with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra.

In addition to his work with Sound Futures and the Birmingham Conservatoire he also regularly undertakes consultancy work most recently with the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation in Madrid, the Fundacao La Caixa in Barcelona. In 2008 he will be working with the Universities of Jaffa and Estonia.

Barry is married with two children and lives in Wolverhampton.