I am delighted to announce that composer Charlotte Harding and I have been awarded a grant from the Vaughan Williams Foundation for our new collaboration. Charlotte is writing me a new commission - a piece for solo (unaccompanied) flugelhorn, based on the ideas of openness, connection and flow. I thought it might be helpful for me to give some context to this new work, so here goes… 

In December I wrote a blog post for YCAT (Young Classical Artists Trust), about the concerts that my husband and I gave for the neighbours on our street during Lockdown.

Later this week I will begin rehearsals with Aurora Orchestra for some upcoming concerts in Singapore (April) and around the UK (June). We’ll be performing a brilliant programme including Thomas Adès’ Violin Concerto and Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. However anyone who’s heard of Aurora Orchestra will be aware of their unique and pioneering practice of playing symphonies from memory! These concerts are no different and we’ll be playing both the Mozart symphony and a short encore without music. I thought I’d share my process for how I have gone about memorising the Mozart in case it might be interesting or helpful for anyone else...

In March this year, I performed the Dodgson Trumpet Concerto at a recital for the Lincolnshire International Chamber Music Festival. When I notified the Stephen Dodgson Charitable Trust about this, Leonora Dawson-Bowling asked if I would be interested in writing a blog post about my experience of the piece. She sent me a list of questions which I decided to turn into a Q&A-style post, so here it is...

In this second post, I wanted to give you an insight into the various techniques and sounds effects that Alex has incorporated into the ‘Threads’ flugelhorn concerto.

Next week I will be performing the World Première of Aleksandr Brusentsev's Flugelhorn Concerto: Threads. In the first of this two-part blog post I give the background behind the concerto and explain how this project came to fruition...

Recently I was fortunate enough to spend a week at Snape Maltings, Suffolk, participating in masterclasses with Håkan Hardenberger.  Described by The Times as 'the best trumpet player in the galaxy', Håkan was kind enough to let me pick his brains on his approach to trumpet playing, music and life in general...  

Performing John Maxwell Geddes' work 'The Reform of Rank Bajin'...

Last month I performed Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring with the Multi-Story Orchestra - so called because their main performance venue is actually a multi-storey car park in Peckham!

Earlier this week I gave a French-inspired lunchtime recital at the Chapel Royal Brighton, alongside my pianist duo partner Jen Hughes...

In November 2017, I collaborated with composer Aleksandr Brusentsev and filmmaker Sky Ainsbury on a recording and film of solo trumpet piece '...what's left when...'

One month after returning from Oslo, I thought I'd take some time to reflect on my trip. The first night that I arrived in early January, I sat in my apartment looking at the calendar on my phone and saw that it was day 1/49. I was excited to finally be in Oslo, but 7 weeks was already starting to feel like a very long time... In reality, the weeks absolutely flew by!