Following an extraordinarily long run of consecutive work, in Croatia, London and Oxford, I returned to Oxford to record choral works by Mozart and Haydn under the baton of Paul Brough, with Instruments of Time & Truth and the excellent Choir of Keble College Oxford. Adrian Peacock was the producer. We recorded Mozart’s Missa in C major [K. 258] on Saturday 2nd October

Immediately after performing George Frideric Handel’s Ariodante at the Göttingen Händel Festival, I segued into another Handel (pasticcio) opera project, Il Muzio Scevola, with Il Gusto Barocco in Stuttgart. This opera featured a Prologue which had been specially written for the occasion by Th. W. Leininger in 2021 to a text from 1723 (Hamburg). The first act was by Filippo Amadei, with a second

It was brilliant to return to Göttingen for the International Handel Festival in September 2021. The festival usually takes place in May each year, but it has been displaced by the coronavirus pandemic. The last time the festival took place was in May 2019, when we performed Handel’s Saul [HWV 53] in Hannoversche Münden. Getting to the first rehearsal was challenging; the Lufthansa flight

Now that I have had both vaccinations, and France has moved to the UK’s amber list (and vice versa), travel has become significantly more straightforward. Having had the vaccine I did not have to quarantine upon arrival in France, nor did I have to quarantine when I returned to the UK. There were still passenger locator forms, declarations from high incidence areas, an antigenic test to be undertaken,

On Saturday 31st July 2021 I performed for a wedding celebration at Avington Park near Winchester. A couple of classical music lovers from New York state celebrated a wedding ceremony at this fantastic venue in the Itchen valley, and hired the quartet Leos Strings for their special day. I played Purcell's Trumpet Tune for the entrance of the Groom and Groomsmen, with Leos Strings - led by Laura

I was called in as a last-minute replacement first trumpet player (during the so-called pingdemic) for the Gabrieli Consort’s performance of Purcell’s King Arthur at the Three Choirs Festival. The performance took place in Worcester Cathedral on Monday 26th May 2021. I had performed this version of King Arthur at short notice once before with the Gabrieli Consort in Groningen and in Hamburg in

During the first lockdown in 2020, I had the idea of organising a natural trumpet course to take place as soon as the restrictions would allow. By September 2020, the inaugural course had taken place. It had been a great success, and demand for a future course was evident - so I decided to organise another course in 2021 (as soon as restrictions were suitably relaxed) with a new programme of music.Again

I performed Bach's B Minor Mass [BWV 232] with the Gabrieli Consort in the Great Hall at the historic St Bartholomew's Hospital in London on Thursday 8th July 2021. The hospital was founded by Rahere, a courtier of Henry I, in 1123. An astonishing 900 years later, the hospital is still caring for patients on the same site. This YouTube video explains the fascinating history of the hospital: 

Having isolated in France before rehearsing and performing Mozart’s Idomeneo in Würzburg, I returned to Paris with Les Talens Lyriques, instead of going home as I usually would. These are still not usual times and it was not pragmatic for me to return to London (to quarantine in England and then to have to quarantine again upon return to France). So, as it happened, I had ten isolation-free

It all began with doubt as I boarded the train towards London St. Pancras. In light of the coronavirus situation French entry requirements had changed just 10 hours before I travelled, which left some doubt as to whether I would be permitted to get even as far as the Eurostar lounge. Luckily, entry was permitted. I travelled to Puteaux, to the west of Paris where I would be in quarantine. Other Parisians

While flying over the Alps somewhere in the vicinity of Venice, it occurred to me that it has been around eight months since I last left England. Even despite the extra epidemiological challenges at the moment it was a huge morale boost to travel to Zagreb in Croatia to perform Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.2 with the Croatian Baroque Ensemble (Hrvatski Barokni Ansambl) for a performance, with a

After last month’s abridged video recording (for television broadcast), The English Concert made an unabridged audio recording of Handel’s ‘La Resurrezione’ [HWV 47] at the Sage Gateshead. The orchestra and vocal soloists were conducted by Harry Bicket. In light of the improving pandemic situation, musicians were able to travel to the UK to play in the project (having followed the restrictions

Prof. Dr. Edward Hankins Tarr (b.15/06/1936 Norwich, Connecticut, USA - d.24/03/2020 Rheinfelden, Germany) was a pioneering performer and one of the most esteemed modern scholars of the natural trumpet. His research, editions, articles, dictionary entries, and books are indispensable to any student of the trumpet or natural trumpet. His translations of Bendinelli, Fantini and Altenburg’s treatises,

Following last week’s B Minor Mass [BWV 232] video recording, I returned to Oxford to play first trumpet for another video recording with the Oxford Bach Soloists; this time we recorded Bach’s Easter Oratorio [BWV 249] and Der Himmel Lacht! Die Erde jubilieret [BWV 31], two of Bach’s exemplary works with trumpets. The recording took place on Friday 12th March 2021 at Christ Church Cathedral -

It has been three months since my last performance, which took place in York in December 2020. I am fortunate enough to have performed even this 'recently'; despite all adversity, just enough performing work has come my way to keep me physically and mentally agile as a trumpet player. I am also fortunate to be healthy, and physically unscathed by the coronavirus. Recent months seem to have passed by

On the 11th March 2020 I performed Israel in Egypt, in York Minster. I remember winding down in the nearby Guy Fawkes Inn with the trumpet, trombone and timpani players, and somebody commented that ‘it might be our last gig for a while’. I had not realised the implications and the severity of the unfolding pandemic. Even though handshakes and hugs had been off the agenda for a week or two, by that

Last year I had the honour of playing the Last Post at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. One year on, I spent the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month listening to the silence on the radio on route to Birmingham Airport. The airport maintained a similar silence on account of travel restrictions; just a few passengers presented for the Frankfurt flight. As I waited to board I thought about

I played in the trumpet section for the Gabrieli Consort & Players’ video recording of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio [BWV 248] at St. John’s Smith Square on 8th and 9th of November 2020. The subsequent videos will be released on the liturgically correct occasions between Christmas and Epiphany as part of a series of six ultra high definition video releases to a ticketed online audience, part

I especially missed Germany during lockdown, not just because of the cancelled festivals I had been looking forward to in Göttingen (Handel), Halle (Handel) and Bonn (Beethoven), but because I just love spending time in Germany. It was with great pleasure that Solomon's Knot could visit Hamburg for a concert at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg on Monday 26th October 2020, returning to a programme established

During lockdown I had the idea of organising a natural trumpet course, when restrictions would allow, to ‘blow out the cobwebs’ after these many months of isolation. Finally, in September, I was able to invite a hand-picked selection of amateur, semi-professional and professional natural trumpet players to two venues in Bedfordshire where we would play natural trumpets (without finger holes) as