About

I'm a pianist and accompanist based in Windsor. I work mostly in chamber music and art song — the repertoire where the piano is half of a conversation rather than the whole of it.

I've performed the major song cycles, and I keep coming back to Schumann, Chopin, Bach, Mussorgsky and Janáček. Before that I conducted opera with groups in London and the South East: Donizetti, Gounod, Verdi, and in 1980 a Meistersinger in the East End that I still think was the most useful thing I've done. I worked as accompanist for Anne Howells' postgraduate classes at the Royal Academy of Music.

I came to this late and by a crooked route — microbiology, then molecular biology, then theology, then twenty years building school networks for a London education authority. I left in 2008 to play the piano full time. I don't recommend the route, but I don't regret it either.

B.Sc · M.A. · P.G.C.E · LLCM · FISM

Collaborators

Ash Powell — flute. Ash read music at Cardiff and specialised in flute performance at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama under Elizabeth May and Jonathan Burgess. He grew up in the South Wales valleys, played with the National Youth Orchestra of Wales, and now works as a freelance musician in Bristol. We programme awkward things on purpose. Most of the duo repertoire on this site is ours.

Mike Colechin — photography. Mike and I built a Winterreise that runs the cycle against his photographs. It is not a slideshow with piano accompaniment, and I'd rather you came and saw it than took my word for that.