Category Archives: Commentary

More adventures in China

I’m recently back from my third trip to China, this time with violinist Savitri Grier. I first toured China in March 2017 and have now given 22 concerts there. All but one of these has been in a different city, and in the case of the one hall I had been to before, I only […]

Satie with film, Stravinsky & Milhaud in France

After playing Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in the carpark in Peckham last year, Kate Whitley and I devised an expanded piano duet programme for our concert at En Blanc Et Noir – a magical outdoor festival in the village of Lagrasse, France – this summer. En Blanc Et Noir photos by Barry Lewis Alongside the […]

Bath Festival with Madeleine Thien

I was recently involved in what turned out to be for me a very special event at Bath Festival focussed on Madeleine Thien‘s wonderful book Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which has been the recipient of numerous awards as well as shortlisted for the Man Booker and Bailey’s Prizes. I played excerpts from Bach’s Goldberg Variations – which feature […]

Nocturne premiere & Bartók @ Multi-Story

This summer Multi-Story ran a chamber music series in the Hay Bale Auditorium at Bold Tendencies (the transformed multi-storey car park in Peckham), alongside their big orchestral projects in the larger space. The main focus of the concerts I was involved with was the Bartók Sonata for two pianos and percussion – with Kate Whitley, Jude Carlton and Elsa […]

Michael Cutting commission

Michael Cutting‘s This Is Not A Faux Wood Keyboard is probably the most unusual piece I’ve had written for me so far, and it had an interesting way of coming into being too. A year or so ago I spotted a photo Michael posted on Facebook (below) of an instrument he’d bought himself, a Fender Rhodes […]

Naomi Pinnock commission

As part of the Philip Langridge Mentoring Scheme, through which I was mentored by Rolf Hind, the Royal Philharmonic Society were able to commission a new piece for me. I took the opportunity to ask Naomi Pinnock to write me something. I’d wanted to ask her for a solo piano piece since hearing her arresting, […]

Old dogs, new tricks, new dots

On 3 November we had our biggest New Dots event so far – an evening concert at King’s Place showcasing four new pieces by composer-filmmaker pairs plus a new work by Dutch composer Jan Vriend, performed by Ensemble Matisse. We called it Interference Patterns. The idea behind the project was to have composers and filmmakers working together on equal footing from […]

Ed Nesbit Interview

I interviewed Ed for the New Dots blog. You can read the full post here. It proved to be a very satisfying thing to do, and I was able to ask many of the questions I had about what it’s like being a composer today and about Ed’s music. I’m grateful for Ed’s full and […]