In the beginning...

As I write this, I'm 30 (and a half), and I've been involved in music more or less full-time since my teens. Along the way I've met and played with a lot of amazing people, and I've also created a lot of work of my own, as a composer, arranger, performer and educator. I've also spent a lot of time thinking about music, but until now I've not given much time to organising and sharing my thoughts. I'm planning for 2020 to be a year in which I engage with a lot of different ideas about music, and so I'm setting up this blog so I have an impetus to set down some thoughts on a fairly regular basis. Here's what I plan on including over the next year:

• Research into compositional techniques, improvisation, music and language, music psychology and music history, especially focusing on the musical ground falling in between classical and jazz music.

• Music I've been listening to, or artists I've seen performing, and thoughts about their music and aesthetics.

• Comments on music education, particularly filtered through my experiences as a teacher and director.

• Examples of my work as a composer, performer and musician in general, both from my current activities and from various projects over the past 10+ years.

I hope to post something about once a week. Sometimes they'll be quite brief, and sometimes (I hope), they'll be more substantial, with examples and references and such. I'm not expecting an audience for this as such, but if you are interested in something I have to say along the way, please leave a comment.