What do you do when you've been learning instruments since the age of 9 and have written 100s of pieces ranging from plays, songs, rock, orchestra, choral, jazz and theme tunes?  One answer is not to keep them secret for 40 years . . .

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So here starts the story of humble talent, ambition, rationale prevailing over passion and finally passion winning the day.  A journey of many opportunities that experience tells us we should have had the courage to pursue but getting a qualification and a job to pay the bills always seemed to be more important.

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Blessed with exceptionally talented musician friends and a family whose mantra of "why don't you do something with your music", action has finally prevailed. This is the first step to shine a light on the many compositions that started all those years ago.

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The Early Years

The journey started when I was nine when I started to learn the violin and piano.  Whilst struggling with both, I discovered almost immediately I enjoyed writing tunes and this was much more fun than the drudgery of playing dire Grade 1 pieces that challenged the will to live.

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The first song I wrote on the piano was a simple blues melody later to be called "Blues for John" after my eldest brother who spent many frustrating years trying to play it.  The first songs I wrote when I took up guitar at 14 still stand inspection and I'll include those at some point.

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I was fortunate enough to attend two very musical schools and was encouraged by two exceptional teachers who pushed me to see and exploit the extraordinary opportunities in front of me.  The result was playing with some great musicians who set a standard above anything I had experienced before.  This included choristers from the great choir schools and elsewhere who are now well established professional musicians, band leaders, Music Directors and singers.

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After this grounding, there was no doubt in my mind that music was going to be my career until I consulted with a number of professional musician friends.  They persuaded me that this was the very last thing I should do due to the vagaries of an unpredictable life that it could be.  So finally I relented and pursued education and getting a "proper job" (!) leaving music as a hobby.

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It wasn't until we put most of our band back together after 23 years of not seeing each other and sitting on hundreds of pieces of music that I'd written and never performed that the passion started winning again. Thanks to the help of many outstanding musicians and friends from the business, this has become a reality which you can hear at last.  I hope you enjoy.