Back in 2013 I travelled to Wellington to be part of a recording team of a New Zealand Symphony Orchestra concert. The programme was full of music by acclaimed Chinese composer Tan Dun, lead by the maestro himself. It made me ponder why the bigger and more successful the artist, the more graceful and appreciative they are. An inspiring thought, which led me to absorb some of the power of Tan’s music into my soundtrack for the play Anne Boleyn. Chinese martial arts and Renaissance music? How does that fit?

I must have been ten or eleven years old, when my piano teacher signed me up to play at a recital. A gaggle of piano teachers got together to let their students show off against another. That's what it seemed to me. I was one of the younger ones and the other players were all much better pianists. The whole experience seemed so unnatural. When I told her I hated it, it was like high noon. The stand-off went something like this: “You have to play recitals, otherwise you're not going to improve!” “If you force me to play one of those things again, I'll quit!” And then she signed me up to play the next one…