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 […]

I’m just back from a week at the Gaudier Ensemble’s annual Cerne Abbas Music Festival in Dorset – my 25th year at the festival, I think. Some of the core players have been doing it for 28 years! But there are always new players and guest players, and this year we had the fabulous wind […]

Today I received this nice photo from the Russian violinist and Moscow Conservatoire professor Sergey Kravchenko. It was taken by his wife and shows me and Mr Kravchenko at the drinks party aboard the houseboat ‘La Platforme’ in the Rhone after the final concert of the 2018 Lyon International Chamber Music Competition.

I’m back from chairing the jury at CIMCL, the Lyon International Chamber Music Competition. It was won by the Trio Messiaen from Paris, who swept the board with almost all of the available prizes. In 2nd place was the Trio Hélios, also from Paris, and in 3rd place was the Trio Mosa, who live in […]