I arrived at the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles (CMBV) around three hours early for the afternoon rehearsal on Sunday 12th December 2021. I had intended to leave my trumpet in the rehearsal room and have a walk around the gardens at the Palace of Versailles. However, when I arrived at the CMBV, I cupped my hands to look through the tinted window in the door and I was spotted by the musical

I will always remember the performance of Handel's Israel in Egypt in York Minster on the 11th March 2020, with the Yorkshire Bach Choir. That performance would be my last for 172 days. So, it was with great delight to be back in York and – thankfully – in front of a live audience in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall at York University. (I had visited York with Spiritato for a recorded

I played first trumpet for the Installation of the President of the Royal College of Surgeons on Thursday 9th December 2021. The Installation took place at the Royal College of Surgeons of England at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. Prior to the ceremony, the oboists and bassoonists played sonatas and concerti by Prowo and Corelli. The procession, led by a mace-bearer, was accompanied by Handel’s

I performed first trumpet in Handel’s Messiah in Exeter Cathedral on Sunday 5th December 2021. The afternoon performance featured the orchestra Devon Baroque and the singers and young choristers of Exeter Cathedral Choir. It was great to perform Handel’s Messiah with so many young people involved, and congratulations must go to them and to their teachers and supporters. I played first trumpet,

I played first trumpet in a performance of Handel's Messiah directed by Graham Walker at St. John's College Chapel in Cambridge on Saturday 4th December 2021.Will Russell, who was playing second trumpet, mentioned that this was our first Messiah together since before the pandemic. I have only played one Messiah since then, in Evian. It was great to perform it again, and to hear the wonderful choruses

Over the years Will Russell (2nd trumpet) and I have been fortunate enough to come into the possession of several rare and unusual nineteenth-century brass instruments. We were delighted when Les Talens Lyriques invited us to join their recording project – Portrait de Pauline Viardot – as we do not often get the opportunity to play these instruments professionally. The programme featured music

On 20th November 2021, I played first trumpet in Bach's Christmas Oratorio [BWV 248] at St. George's Church in Jesmond in Newcastle with the Newcastle Bach Choir. Their performance, conducted by Eric Cross, marked the choir's first concert since the beginning of the pandemic. It was only the second choral society concert I have done since March 2020, but it is good to see that these are gradually returning.

‘Until about the first third of the nineteenth century, audiences considered themselves in charge of the event. They paid attention and listened as they pleased. […] Performers had to win their audience’s attention before they could win them over.’ – Burgess, Geoffrey – 'The Pathetick Musician' – Oxford University Press (2016) – § '9: To Kindle the Heart: Engagement in Performance'The

The Aurora Orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony was socially distanced and performed without an audience at the 2020 BBC Proms, so it was with great pleasure that we were able to revisit this symphony, to perform it (again from memory) to capacity audiences in Nottinghamshire, London, and Suffolk. The first three performances – at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham (Wednesday

A small number of ensembles in the UK have begun to experiment with using natural trumpets [i.e. without finger holes], although it is still relatively uncommon. It was great to take part in a project that offered enough rehearsal time to develop and explore playing without holes in an ensemble setting; playing some of the repertoire that is thought to have inspired Johann Sebastian Bach. The project,

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