After a period playing in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Judy became interested in early music and its performance through playing the harpsichord and viola. After running her own chamber group Brighton Baroque for some years in the seventies, she became involved in the early Academy of Ancient Music recordings of the complete Mozart symphonies. 

Judy was principal viola of The Hanover Band for 20 years, recording much 18th- and 19th-century symphonic music on original instruments. Judy was a principal member of The Brandenburg Consort (director Roy Goodman), and also led the band of Opera Restor'd in performances and recordings. Judy led the Cambridge Baroque Camerata (director Jonathan Hellyer Jones) for many years, both in concerts throughout the UK and France, and recordings.

Judy has described 40 years of playing in The Parley in ‘Working with Peter Holman: From a Seat in the Parley of Instruments’, her contribution to Musical Exchange between Britain and Europe 1500-1800: essays in honour of Peter Holman, eds. John Cunningham and Bryan White, The Boydell Press (2020)

She has been a tutor for the European Union Baroque Orchestra, and lectured on Baroque style at Cambridge University, The Royal Academy of Music, The Royal College of Music, The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Trinity College of Music, London and the Birmingham conservatoire. She has been an examiner for post-graduate courses in historical performance practice at Trinity College of Music and The Royal Academy of Music, and an adjudicator for the Historically Informed Performance solo recital prize at the RAM.

Judy is also in demand as a coach for groups playing both modern and Baroque instruments in search of more stylistic performances, and has given master classes and lectures in musical rhetoric at the Universities of Veracruz, Mexico and Utrecht, The Conservatories of Music in Oslo and Amsterdam. In Autumn 2010 she undertook her first teaching tour of the USA, visiting Juilliard and Longy schools of music, Oberlin and Harvard Universities. In November 2012 she returned to the USA to teach at the Jacob's School of Music, University of Indiana, Longy School of Music, Boston, Yale and Juilliard School of Music, New York. Judy helped the Gotham Early Music Scene celebrate their fifth anniversary with an illustrated lecture on the rhetoric of Happy Birthday. Judy established a relationship with the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil and returned there in 2013 to direct a series of concerts.

She is actively engaged in research into performance style and has written two very well received books: Baroque String Playing 'for ingenious learners' was published in March 2000, and is now being recommended by the leading teachers of Baroque instruments worldwide. Strad magazine recognized the aim of the book to be a relaunch of the spirit of discovery in historical performance. Her second book The Weapons of Rhetoric: a guide for musicians and performers (2004) has opened up this difficult subject and made it approachable for performing musicians. Both these books have become indispensible resources for historical information about performance, and are used by all the major conservatoires, as well as by already established musicians, as an introduction to baroque style. Handel's Messiah: a rhetorical guide was published in 2014, and in May 2019 was recommended on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Composer of the Week’.

Judy is the orchestral tutor/leader at the Baroque Opera Project at Little Benslow Hills, where she has taught Baroque style on modern instruments. She has been the violin/viola tutor for The Parley of Instruments International Summer School in Cambridge since its inception.

On both these courses she has been involved in introducing players to Baroque instruments and style. Judy has led the Essex Baroque Orchestra resident at the Suffolk Villages Festival from its inception in 1988. She led the orchestra of Leeds Baroque for 20 years since its foundation in 2000 and directed The Consort of Twelve in Chichester (2000-2012). These groups are a mixture of amateur and professional players, music teachers and students, many of whom are having their first experience of playing on Baroque instruments.

Judy has a first class honours degree in The Humanities with Classical Studies from the Open University and achieved a distinction in MA Garden History. Her dissertation was about the garden of Constantijn Huygens near The Hague. Her latest book Landscapes of Eloquence? finding rhetoric in the English landscape garden will be published autumn 2020 and will be sold through this website's books page.