What I’m doing now
Updated Dec 2022, Jamaica.
(This is a /now page, inspired by Derek Sivers. If you have a website, I recommend making one too).
Funded entirely by my loyal Patreon subscribers, I released an album on 9 September called Live to Tell: Queer Anthems Vol. 1. I'm really proud of how much it's developed and taken on a life of its own. I will definitely make more volumes of these covers albums as the process taught me a lot about my own musical roots and influences.
I am working with choreographer Joseph Poulton on a ballet adaptation of a famous piece of literature (it's covered in NDAs, but will be public soon).
Collaborative dance work is a deliciously slow process (mostly because all the workshop performers and creatives are on national tours with other fantastic shows) but I’m enjoying the revelation of each section being created, workshopped and filmed. It’s by far the biggest thing I’ve ever written and it’s very different than anything I've done before. When I'm allowed to reveal it, you'll know.
I travel the world performing my piano-vocal shows on stunning cruise ships (docked in Jamaica today) thanks to having the best agent in the world, who not only signed me mid-pandemic but filled my diary with incredible gigs through to 2024. I worked hard to get to here, but it taught me that everything happens at the right time and not before.
Since lockdown, singers have come out of hiding needing new music charts for their shows. I’m managing four clients at a time now, crazy but brilliant, and I'm starting to see some fairly big names in my inbox. I love seeing them soar and the feeling I get from hearing other people perform my work is unbelievable.
I’ve been chipping away at a song-cycle work that’s been in my head for months. It’s an artistic response to the climate emergency and involves a lot of musical forces. I have a few funding applications on the juggle (not my favourite task) but it will reveal itself when the time is right.
Anything You Want by Derek Sivers (I have a spare copy if you’d like one?)
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
24 years in Brighton and I still adore the place. Eight years ago, I bought a gigantic doer-upper right in town, which I share with two wonderful and two cats. There’s plenty of space - I'm lucky to have a whole music room to myself - and we've built a beautiful space to live, work and create.
My logical family and I follow a druidic pagan calendar. Autumn just became Winter. This is the time of hibernation and backstage work for me: promotion work for upcoming music projects, planning, applying for funding, getting my house in order, germinating the seeds so I'm ready to create anew come Springtime.
My father passed away in September. It was a tough time to be away and working and creating, but I was there at the end and finding a way through it. I was sent everybody I needed to get me through it at just the right time, which also means it was dad's time to go too. However difficult that is, it makes more sense to me the further away I get from that horrible moment in time. I still find a bit of him in everything I do.