Born and brought up in Norfolk, UK, I studied recorder and flute joint study at the Royal College of Music in London. With this combination of instruments I was able to study the performance of many styles and periods of music, from renaissance consort playing, through symphonic orchestral repertoire to the avant-garde recorder world. Although I have inevitably since specialised in more specific areas (especially early music), I continue to enjoy this broad range of music and constantly draw these various strands together in my professional life. More recently I have also been working with the band Art of Moog – ’21st century Hyper-Bach’ – on an electronic wind synthesiser (EWI).
I am actively involved with two different early music ensembles. A theme common to both ensembles is to find the perfect balance between historically accurate performance and live entertainment. This is of course largely driven by a genuine passion to undercover the history and stories behind the music we play… but also by the excitement and freedom of live performance with wonderful professional colleagues and bringing ‘old’ music to life again.
Passacaglia is a baroque ensemble with a flexible line up, specialising in music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Founded back in 1992, the group has performed in venues across the UK, Europe and the United States; we have so far made six albums featuring the music of Vivaldi, Telemann, Boismortier, Dornel and Arne, including my solo album with the group, Telemann:Time:Travel. All are available at BCR. For more information, visit my Recordings page.
Fontanella is a recorder ensemble which specialises in varied music from the 16th to the 21st Centuries. We play on a huge array of instruments including a 15-piece renaissance consort and a set of Paetzold ‘square’ basses; our concert programmes are designed to draw in early music lovers and non-specialist audiences alike, featuring many of our own arrangements and friendly spoken introductions.
I have also had the privilege of working and performing with some other superb and inspiring musicians from other fields. These include the members of the Maggini String Quartet, with whom I recorded Gordon Jacob’s beautiful Suite for recorder and strings, and other works (visit my Recordings page for more information). Other exciting projects in recent years have included working on film scores for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Philomena and Fantastic Mr Fox, and performing on TV shows including for CBeebies, Zing Zillas and in 2021, on Channel 4’s comedy show, ‘8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown’.