At primary school, the bullying I received only increased my resistance to the piano, as I became afraid to excel at things, to stand out from the crowd. As a teenager - replete with a teenager’s attendant insecurities and confusion - this resistance grew to the point where I was on the verge of quitting the piano altogether.

But I stuck with it, and over time my relationship to music evolved.  At 15, now at the Royal College of Music Junior Department, I began lessons with the late John Barstow, and he changed my life by being the first person to impress upon me the awesome power contained within those innocuous-looking black dots on the page. 

And what was my entry-point to this hidden world?  Stories.  The symphonic repertoire was the first genre to take hold of me, and I was particularly inspired and delighted by Mahler’s grand heroic tales, or the subversive political messaging deployed by Shostakovich.

Over time, I gradually developed a love of music that had hitherto eluded me.  I came to realise how it could serve me on a deeply personal level, as a vehicle for me to express all the weird and wonderful emotions that were bubbling away inside of me.

In my late teenage years and early 20s I put in the necessary long, hard hours of practice and won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where Charles Owen was the most caring and inspirational teacher I could have wished for.  This all allowed me to reach a level of mastery where I could finally begin to express myself freely at the piano, to tell the stories that were in my heart.  These were stories of struggle, pain, love, loss, joy and awe at the human condition, stories that I marvelled to find reflected in the extraordinary music that I was playing.

For years, my career grew steadily: I was successful in international competitions, winning as many as 19 prizes and scholarships; I had the honour of being presented to her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; I even twice fulfilled a lifelong dream with concerto performances at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Then COVID-19 happened, a period of upheaval and transformation.  All of a sudden, we were locked down, my concerts were suddenly cancelled, and my career that had been growing for almost a decade was put on hold. 

In response, I set up an online concert series called Cats, Chats & 88 Keys (Ch88k) to raise money for the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). Joined in my home music room by my housemates and (often) three cats, I presented piano recitals with a difference - in this way, Ch88k afforded me the freedom to develop and personalise my performing style, which over time came to feel increasingly authentic. 

These shows raised over £5,000 for the NHS, and you can watch them on my YouTube Channel here.

But then came personal crisis - a broken arm threatened to end my career for good, and my marriage came to an end.  Those were difficult times, and life felt frightening and uncertain.

However, as I have found so often, times of crisis also provide opportuntities for growth and transformation.

I had for many years been interested in psychology and the human condition: this had begun as a desire to understand myself and my story better, and had then taken on wider searching.

I was fascinated in how and why we are the way we are, the the stories that we tell ourselves, and their power to keep us mentally imprisoned or to set us free. 

As I found myself standing at this life crossroads, I decided to pursue this passion and begin a three-year training as a psychotherapist.

As the Covid-19 lockdown eased, my broken arm healed, my musical career took on a new lease of life, and I found love once more. 

My psychotherapy training (and the compulsory personal therapy required along with it) proved transformative: I emerged with broadened perspectives and greater levels of self-understanding and self-compassion, therefore being able to relate more intimately to the existential joys and travails of life. 

Unsurprisingly, it made sense to tie all of this to the one thing that had consistently enabled me to transcend this mortal coil… Classical Music, with its storytelling of the universal tales of being alive, of existing as the human beings that we are - deeply feeling, and painfully aware of our transcience and mortality.

A long-held ambition of mine had been to perform aboard cruise ships, and I was suddenly presented with just such an opportunity.  This seemed the perfect moment to design a show that could combine all the different elements of my life experience together: to combine the emotional and the psychological, to host and entertain and share and move, all as a way of bringing people closer together, with my piano playing of these life-changing works of music as the focal point.

Classical piano music is my friend and ally. It keeps me company in those moments when I feel scared and alone.  It helps me makes sense of things that otherwise only hurt, and allows me to process difficult emotions so that I might come to feel the joy that lies beyond them.  Above all, time and again, it says: “Yes, I know. It’s ok. I’ve felt it too.”

Music and the piano is the vehicle through which I can share with others that which is most vulnerably personal to me, and that feels like the greatest gift imaginable.

Thank you for reading. I hope that we can share some of these experiences together in concert sometime.