I’ve just returned from a week in Germany, on the jury of the Joseph Joachim Chamber Music Competition in Weimar (see photo of the splendid Music Conservatory where it all happened). There were groups from most corners of the world. Many of them were living proof of the benefits of cross-European study. Although there were […]

Last weekend I was at a dinner in Christ’s College, Cambridge to celebrate 40 years of women in the college (founded 1505). Women have only been allowed to study at the University of Cambridge since 1869, when Girton College was founded. Newnham followed in 1872, but even for decades after that, women were not considered […]

As the Brexit story accelerates, musicians are still in the dark about what will happen to their freedom of movement after we leave the EU. For two and a half years now I have been listening to colleagues and students worrying about whether they will still be able to study here, or if they are […]

In my new book Speaking the Piano, there’s a chapter about the time I went to America in the 1980s to learn jazz piano. I loved learning about jazz, but didn’t find a way into the jazz world at that time. One of the reasons was my feeling of discomfort at being a female instrumentalist […]

For over a year I’ve enjoyed contributing weather-related photos to the Guardian newspaper via their ‘Witness‘ site, which invited readers to send in images that captured the ‘feel’ of the month. Several times I’ve been lucky enough to have one of my photos chosen by the editor to be published in the print newspaper. Whenever […]