Playing by ear

Picture the scene: you’re about to get up on stage to give a presentation or performance. Something feels off – you look down, and realise your shirt is missing; in fact, you have no clothes on at all

Just over four years ago I founded Piano by the Sea, a piano meet-up group for adults in Margate. My then teacher, Graham Fitch, felt it would help me deal with my excruciating nerves. Living in the p

What was your first guitar? I wanted a guitar when I was 10, but it took until I was 12 before my parents gave in. We went to a shop in King’s Cross in North London, and they had guitars hanging up, i

‘We’re going to have a tonal centre and tap our feet, and that’s the way it is.’ Steve Reich is in full flow, talking to me from his home in New York. ‘The big break, the knife down the line, was betw

As part of my research for meeting Seong-Jin Cho, I learned that Korean names tend to have specific meanings. But I also found several variants (in translation, naturally) of his own moniker. One of m

I t was yet another night when ...