It was great to be part of the RSNO chamber series in Glasgow yesterday afternoon in its first ‘live’ concert for an in-person audience since the pandemic.  That’s a gap of almost three years! Photo shows (L to R) cellist Pei Jee Ng, me, violist Tom Dunn, violinist Lena Zeliszewska, violinist and RSNO concertmaster Maya […]

I’m preparing for a solo recital at Kettle’s Yard museum in Cambridge on November 24th. Kettle’s Yard is a beautiful little museum which began in the 1950s as a personal art collection by Jim Ede, who used his own house as the display venue. It was the first gallery I visited where art objects were […]

BBC Young Musician 2022 reaches its climax tonight when the winners of five categories – strings, wind, brass, percussion and piano – compete to be crowned ‘BBC Young Musician of the Year’. The competition is on BBC4 at 7pm. I think if it were up to me, I’d stop at the point where I had […]

On Saturday, I appeared at the Wigtown Book Festival in Dumfries and Galloway in the west of Scotland (see photo of me being interviewed by Stuart Kelly). Wigtown is Scotland’s ‘national book town’, boasting an astonishing number of bookshops for a small town which is difficult to get to. Yet as several people pointed out, […]

I often tweet about music and related matters. Usually the response is small – I’m thrilled if my tweets reach a couple of hundred people. So my experience yesterday was exceptional. I was watching The Queen’s funeral which, as you’ll know, had a variety of music in it – pipe bands, regimental bands, organ music, […]