Welcome!

So, I’ve launched a new website…at a time when there is no music! I joke, of course - there is plenty of meaningful music being made, albeit either solo or collaborative in only a virtual sense. Having said that, I am starting to make music with real human beings again here and there. I’m “rehearsing”/socialising (ahem) with the Big Firkin Band weekly, plus I had my first almost-gig for 5 months with the Violet Jive and it was enormously therapeutic. It was supposedly just a get-together with a few guests, but it felt eerily like the G-word at times. People danced and said things and breathed and everything! It felt so real I could have reached out and touched them. Socially distanced, of course, and I tried not to shower them with bodily matter from the end of my horn, but then I like to think that I always make some sort of effort in that regard, if on a less conscious level most of the time. More real gigs to come, thank God, both with the VJ, so check my upcoming shows for those.

In the education world, the fruit of the recent Animate Artists project for Trinity Laban is now available to view online. Led by the fabulous Sarah Freestone, we worked with the young people on a series of weekly Zoom sessions to create a brand new composition, inspired by the classical composer, world-class fencer and incredible all-rounder, Joseph Bologne Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The young people were brilliant as ever, and rose to the challenge of the online diversion with the aplomb that we should expect by now but somehow never do. They are tirelessly and ceaselessly brilliant. Here they are…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5SHNdz18JE&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1ME-V3Hu4nzog8A9yA5DorgNAZWIf_2JiFBiymtYMbOhzc7MvgdmtgvAU

Otherwise, some very exciting developments with Deal Music & Arts in collaboration with NYJO in preparation for the annual Creative Jazz Weekend in November (online this year, of course), and the forthcoming NYJO South East academy…but more on that to come. Bye for now!