Music and Performance

I had a pretty life-changing musical beginning. Chosen as one of 4 boy soprano soloists, I spent a year with Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group, appearing in two of his church operas – Curlew River and Burning Fiery Furnace – and his truly magical version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Touring the world as a 14-year-old was a formative experience and led to the title role in the first UK TV version of Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, which the BBC archives have apparently managed to lose! A kindly violin teacher at my school, realising that I needed a musical outlet after my voice broke – I was left with a sad croak – thrust a violin in my hand. Progress was rapid, and I found myself studying at the Royal Academy of Music, then in Geneva and finally in Soviet-era Moscow with a year in the Munich Chamber Orchestra in between.

Breaking my wrist in the depths of a Russian winter didn’t exactly advance my progress, but I returned to join the English Chamber Orchestra, then one of the top groups, travelling constantly and working with some of the best names in music. I soon found myself exploring contemporary music with the London Sinfonietta as well as immersing myself in the semantics of authentic music-making with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the London Classical Players.   With pianist Melvyn Tan, I founded the New Mozart Ensemble – a chamber orchestra and small ensemble specialising in the Mozart piano concerti which we performed in. halls from New York, Amsterdam and Berlin to Hong Kong, Glasgow and London.  

In 1993, I founded the Festival de St Agrève in a great barn high in the hills of the Ardèche, France. The festival became an important cultural landmark in that remote region, attracting internationally renowned artists and a public ranging from local farmers to visitors from Lyon and Paris.

Alarmed by the state of music education in Britain, in 1998, I founded the charity “Young Musicians at the Tabernacle” to bring to state primary school children in London at least some idea of what music is. Year 4 kids had workshops with remarkable choral trainer Suzi Digby, while I presented year 5 pupils with workshops on various themes animated by many of my top professional colleagues. Kids from all kinds of backgrounds experienced Mozart and his Queen of the Night, Instruments of the Orchestra, Carnival of the Animals and much more. We saw at least 15,000 pupils over the charity’s lifetime, and I like to think we made some difference. An unforgettable moment was when an 8-year-old came up to me after a session and said, “So, music is what feelings sound like.” That made it all worthwhile!