Simeon Smith
Simeon Smith is a native of Dublin, but grew in the western city of Galway. He has achieved a BA is Arts and an MA in Community Development, both from NUIG. In 2006, he achieved a primary qualification as a counsellor in Reality Therapy/Choice Theory. Simeon has been playing samba for almost 15 years, and is a founding member of maSamba Samba School.
Over this period, he has received formal and informal training from many of the top practicioners in the field, and facilitated many top samba artists to visit and teach in Ireland. In this time he has developed a huge musical repertoire, covering many of the popular styles of Afro-Brasilian music.
Simeon has taught for National Universtity of Ireland Galway, University of Limerick, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music, as well as being responsible for setting up over 20 samba bands in Ireland and the UK. Simeon has spent over 4,000 hours teaching samba in his career.
Simeon has developed many of the unique teaching methodologies used by MaSamba Samba School and is regularly asked to deliver workshop programmes with samba bands, music teachers and corporate groups.
As well as performing with MaSamba, Simeon is part of the European touring group of Monobloco and has toured with Dead Can Dance.
Sarah Walker
Sarah Walker initially trained as a fine artist and holds a BTEC General Art and Design Foundation from Nottingham College of Further Education and a Bachelor of Arts Degree Fine Art from University of Cardiff. From this, she developed an interest in teaching and gained a City & Guilds Initial Teaching Certificate from the South Nottinghamshire College of Further Education.
Relocating to Ireland in 1997, Sarah completed the Certificate in Disability, Arts, Training and Employment from University of Hertfordshire, which included modules in group work, workshop facilitation and disability awareness. It was during this course that she discovered samba as a tool for personal and community development and quickly joined MaSamba Samba School.
Through MaSamba, Sarah quickly became a highly respected samba music tutor, working primarily with children and young adults, but also gaining much experience teaching in prisons, disability groups and delivering corporate teambuilding workshops.
In 1999, Sarah was instrumental in setting up the City Quay Youth Samba Project, which went on to become the youth wing of MaSamba Samba School, with many key performances and recordings in its own right. This project is ongoing.
Currently, Sarah is key tutor for the City Quay Youth Samba Project, teaches on a weekly basis in Scoil Treasa NS, and is on the City of Dublin Youth Service training panel.
Sarah has continued to develop her own skills, and completed the Roots Of Brasil Advanced Instruction Project with Dudu Tucci in 2002, as well as attending numerous one-off training sessions and completing several study visits to Brasil.
Jennifer Egan
Jennifer began playing the saxophone at the age of 11 and studied in the Nolan School of music, Leinster School of Music and DIT Conservatory of music. Jennifer’s primary degree is a BA (Mus) from NUI Maynooth, specialising in musicology, awarded in 2002. Following this, Jennifer relocated to the Irish World Music Centre at the University of Limerick and achieved an honours MA in Community Music in 2003 (Youngest person ever to do this). Jennifer is a full time music teacher and has been teaching in a Dublin secondary school, since 2003. She completed a Higher Diploma in Education from TCD in 2005.