Nicola Lisle talks to a local music teacher and founder of East Oxford Community Choir

The fact that I’m sitting chatting to Mel Houldershaw is little short of a miracle. Just over two years ago, the Sunningwell-based music teacher nearly died after suffering a brain aneurysm and now counts herself lucky not only to be alive, but not to have suffered any long-term effects.

“I don’t have any recollections of it except that I am still here!” she laughs. “I went to a house in East Oxford to teach and apparently I just keeled over. The next thing I remember is opening my eyes and thinking, ‘Oh, I seem to be in the JR!’.

“There was 36 hours between that and a lot of praying and a lot of goodwill. I think I stopped breathing a couple of times. I was in the West Wing, and I couldn’t have been in a better place.

“I was very lucky, and I do feel now that every moment is a bonus. I just hope there’s many more bonus years to come!”

There are many people in and around Oxford who would echo that, because over the last couple of decades Mel has become something of a local hero — an enormously popular and energetic lady who has founded two choirs, an orchestra and a youth theatre group, as well as becoming one of the driving forces behind the Oxford-Grenoble Twinning Association, which this year is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Unsurprisingly, music has been part of Mel’s life since she was a child. She had piano, recorder and violin lessons from an early age and sang in her primary school choir.

In her late teens she moved to Anglesey, and played the violin in the school orchestra and the North Wales Youth Orchestra.

“I was just one of those people who would go to school and be involved in things,” she says. “I don’t think that’s changed, actually — I’m just like that!”

She came to Oxford in 1981 to study for a degree in maths and physics, choosing Oxford Polytechnic (now Brookes University) because it was one of the first to offer modular courses — which meant she could slot in a few music modules as well.

As a taste of things to come, while at the polytechnic Mel became chair of the choral society and was soon organising concerts. Gradually this extended outside the poly, and she began making contacts in the local music world which were to prove beneficial later on.

After graduating in 1984, she did a PGCE, which led to a full-time teaching job at Peers School (now Oxford Academy) in Littlemore.

“I went into teaching because I’ve always been able to be in front of people,” she says. “I did my teaching practice at Peers and then taught maths there for three years, but in the middle of that I did my old thing of getting involved with the music department and putting on shows.

“I’m glad I did it when I was young because it was a school that took all of your energy, but I did enjoy it.

“There were some tough kids but I liked them and also I think children generally know if you like them. You can’t be a teacher without liking children and liking the age group. And it was fun then.”

A chance meeting with local musicians Chris and Marga Emlyn-Jones expanded Mel’s musical activities outside the school.

Together, Mel and the Emlyn-Joneses formed the Divinity Singers and a recorder group, Cantus Firmus.

Crucially, Chris and Marga encouraged Mel to focus more on her music, and her life began to move in a different direction.

“I thought it was time to improve my music, so I left full-time teaching, took it on as a part-time role and started teaching young kids to play the piano. At the same I started having lessons again myself. So that’s what I’ve done since.”

Mel’s life now centres entirely on music, and she counts herself lucky to be earning her living doing what she loves.

“It’s an all-consuming passion. It’s not like having a job and doing this outside that; for me it all works into one whole thing.”

In 1991, Mel formed the East Oxford Youth Choir with some of her pupils, and realised that many of the parents seemed keen to get involved.

This led to the formation of the East Oxford Community Choir, and this has been hugely successful, exploring a wide repertoire from medieval music to modern commissions and tackling major choral works such as Mendelssohn’s St Paul.

All money raised from concerts goes to charity.

But the EOCC’s biggest success story has been the links it has established with Oxford’s twin towns of Bonn, Leiden and Grenoble, which has resulted in a number of exchange visits and joint concerts with the towns’ choirs and orchestras.

This, in turn, led to Mel taking over as chair of the Oxford-Grenoble Twinning Association in 2006, at a time when the association was floundering and in desperate need of rejuvenation. Now she is busy with the association’s 25th anniversary celebrations, which take place later this month.

It is a perfect fit for Mel, who is passionate about the way music can unite people.

“The international language of music makes it so that you can go anywhere and you’re still singing the same music.

“I guess it’s the same in the art world, which is maybe why the cultural exchanges between the cities is somehow slightly easier to produce than some of the other ways.

“But there’s always people on the committee here in Oxford thinking of different ways to take it forward.”

Meanwhile, Mel is delighted that she is back to full fitness, and as full of energy and enthusiasm as ever.

“It’s taken me over a year to feel exactly as I felt before,” she says. “I cycle a lot and have a suspicion that helped save my life because I was reasonably fit. But I’ve been very lucky.”