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

‘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

Andrey Gugnin (piano) Hyperion CDA684712 83 mins This album of Russian ballet transcriptions sparkles like a glass bauble hanging amidst the fairy lights. Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky wrote so colourful

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

On entering a room containing a piano, what pianist doesn’t turn white at the command, ‘You can play – let’s hear you!’ You thought you were visiting friends, not giving a performance, so of course yo

PLEASE, Mum, can we get a piano?” Geneva pleaded. Cassie sighed. Her teenage daughter aspired to be a singer-songwriter like her TikTok idols, and it would be the perfect gift for her sixteenth birthd