The bakery smell
Every lesson started with the smell of cinnamon buns coming up through the floor. Rosa said it was the reason none of us ever quit.
Their story
Rosa Lindqvist was born in Gothenburg in the spring of 1934, the youngest of three children of a shipwright and a church organist. Music arrived early: by seven she was playing hymns from memory, and by fourteen she had won a scholarship to study in Stockholm. In 1958 she moved…
Rosa Lindqvist was born in Gothenburg in the spring of 1934, the youngest of three children of a shipwright and a church organist. Music arrived early: by seven she was playing hymns from memory, and by fourteen she had won a scholarship to study in Stockholm.
In 1958 she moved to London to teach, intending to stay a year. She stayed for the rest of her life. She married Tomas Lindqvist in 1961, and the couple settled in Brighton, where Rosa opened a small teaching studio above a bakery on Gardner Street. Over five decades she taught more than a thousand pupils, several of whom went on to professional careers, and many more of whom simply learned to love a piece of music.
Rosa swam in the sea every morning from April to October well into her eighties. She was a fierce crossword competitor, a generous host, and a woman who believed that anyone could learn anything if someone was patient enough to show them.
She leaves her children Anna and Erik, four grandchildren, and a town full of people who can still hear her counting them in.
In their own words
“Play it wrong with conviction. Then we'll fix it.”
To every nervous pupil at their first lesson
“The sea doesn't care how old you are.”
On why she still swam at 86
I remember those buns too!
She taught my mum too.