Kate studied piano with Harold Parker and viola with Alberni founder, John White. She studied music performance with Professor Dennis McCaldin at Lancaster University, whilst reading for a degree in Linguistics.

She has played viola with the Salomon, Westminster and Kensington orchestras in London, and sung with various choruses, including the Philharmonia Orchestra Chorus.

Kate was invited to work with David Willcocks at the first ever Seychelles Festival of Classical Music and returned to the islands twice more to take part in the Festival. This ignited her interest in working with singers and, since the mid 1990s, she has directed choral workshops, "Come & Sing" events and choral concerts in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire. She is the Musical Director of the Great Milton Singers, a choir she was asked to establish "from scratch", whose membership is drawn from villages centred around Great Milton.

She was Maestra di Coro with Shoestring Opera for performances of La Cenerentola in Umbria and Oxford, and she worked with singers preparing a re-enactment of Lewis Carroll's Caucus Race at Christ Church, Oxford for Alice's 150th Anniversary.

Kate's orchestra, "The Billimore Ensemble", was the focus of an entire episode of the TV drama "Lewis".

Kate juggles orchestral trips abroad and home-based musical projects with a career as a copywriter. She has also qualified as a Oxford Green Badge Guide and is regularly to be seen taking groups on walking tours around the city.