To those of you who have listened to my music and only know me through this website and from gigs, either solo or with my previous group, this may come as something as a surprise. To those of you who’ve known me longer, it’ll come as no surprise at all. No-one ever said I had to be consistent.

Every now and again I get a bit stale – usually when I haven’t been kept in an airtight bread bin. To this end, I’ve dusted off my piano and decided to try and coax my fingers into playing the thing properly again. I used to be reasonably useful at it, once.

The idea is to be completely selfish about music-making again, and do it purely for my own pleasure – which is, I think, something I lost sight of. And if you stop enjoying something, you may as well not do it.

So, in order to achieve some sort of focus, I’ll be putting the folk music to one side completely for a while, as I continue to resurrect my tuba-playing and also embark on learning some 20th century piano repertoire that I’ve wanted to get the hang of for years. What interests me particularly is that the rhythmic vitality and articulation so necessary for playing folk tunes well has certainly begun to inform my piano-playing already, especially when playing material based on folk music such as Bartók’s Allegro Barbaro.

I may well continue posting details of my progress here. Who knows, I may even make a few recordings if my playing gets back to a satisfactory standard. Equally, I have no doubt that I’ll resume singing and playing traditional material once my “muse” has had time to refresh itself.

In the meantime, thanks for listening.