What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Practice is key – I’ll forever be grateful to my mum for sitting me down on the piano stool and getting me to do those scales, because now I can look at a piece of music and interpret it at the piano, and these millions of connections lead to compositional ideas when the fingers find the right spot on the keys.
It’s also important to remember that failure or rejection can allow even better opportunities to present themselves. Having worked with the choristers at Wells Cathedral, I felt I was really suited to the organ scholarship at St John’s College Cambridge, but I ended up at Trinity. At the time I saw this as some kind of failure – I wasn’t quite good enough to get my first choice – but now I couldn’t be more grateful for the time I had and the people I met at Trinity: years which have been instrumental in my career.
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