NEW YEAR HONOURS: Former White City pupil honoured for musical success
12th January 2021
|In Local News
A former pupil of Burlington Grammar School for Girls (now Burlington Danes Academy in White City) has been recognised in The Queen’s New Year Honours list with one of the highest-ranking awards
Wasfi Kani, 64, was handed the CBE – or Commander of the Order of the British Empire – medal in the latest honours for her services to music.
Born in 1956 to parents who had fled India at Partition to take refuge in the UK, the family moved to west London and Wasfi attended Burlington Grammar School for Girls, where she excelled at music.
The talented violinist played for the National Youth Orchestra and went on to study music at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, before launching Grange Park Opera company in 1997.
The keen musician went on to create Theatre in the Woods, a 700-seat opera house in West Horsley, Surrey, which is the UK’s first new opera house to be built in the 21st century.
