Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A pianist who champions contemporary composers and blurs boundaries between jazz, classical, and pop music.
On the island
Eight records
my mum had a lovely recording of Peter Peirce singing John Dahland and I grew up with this and I've I've picked one of these songs, but the instrumental version played by Fretwerk.
I did a show with my theatre director husband of The Mystery Place last summer. Huge, epic production. And the music all the way through was a cappella gospel. And I've taken with me Clive Rowe singing Lord I've Tried.
I didn't quite know which pop group or piece of pop music to take, because I listen to pop music all the time and I've taken a classic, which is Tomorrow Never Knows, to me it's got the same orchestral texture as, you know, a symphony.
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variation No. 25 in G Minor
the man I would have most liked to have taken to dinner, Glen Gould. He was uh not around any more. But uh, you know, Glenn Gould this baffling and frustrating and wonderful pianist. And it's his seminal recording of the Goldberg variations, which I think he made when he was twenty two and really sort of changed Bach playing forever.
Don Giovanni: Act II, Scene 2: Trio: Ah taci, ingiusto core
I love all Mozart operas, and I think Don Giovanni is my favourite. I I remember going to see the Joseph Losi film over and over and over again just as a way to get to learn this opera.
Wozzeck: Act III: Orchestral Interlude (Invention on a Key)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi
I think the the greatest opera written in this century, in my mind, Albenberg's Voltseck, which is a painful piece of work. It's about um, you know, the terrible life of a The Soldier Vottek, and I've chosen the bit um the orchestral interlude after Votsek's death, which it really sums up the whole emotional impact of the opera.
Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On
The great John Lee Hooker, the the small man with the huge voice. Here's some improvisation. Yeah, this is a holler. Send me the pillow that you dream on.
The Unanswered QuestionFavourite
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein
I've chosen the unanswered question. Which I think is a real piece of music to just lie back and look at the night sky to.
In conversation
Presenter asks
9:34What sort of upbringing was it [with your Seventh-day Adventist parents]?
It was a very, on one hand, rather eccentric, but also very loving and colourful and fun upbringing. We went to church every Saturday, which is where I heard all this music, sort of all day. It was a black church and wonderful gospel music, and I had this sort of classic thing of playing the piano at church and playing all the hymns and everything.
Presenter asks
10:45How were you educated at home?
Well, they used to buy all books, uh, school books of maths and English history, and uh say, Write, okay, this morning you're going to do two hours of maths. Now, you know, that's quite interesting. Say it's a six or seven-year-old you're doing two hours of maths. Here's the book. Now, start at this chapter, here's the answers, mark yourself. If you have a problem, come to me and ask.
Presenter asks
11:24What did the kids think of you when you got [to school at eleven]?
I wonder if I was. I you'd have to ask the kids. I took to it like a duck to water. I couldn't believe that a teacher was standing up in class and telling us what to write, telling us what to put down. It seemed to me so easy that a teacher would tell you what to think.
The keepsakes
The book
Arthur Koestler
It's a book that I read years ago and I want to re-read called The Sleepwalkers by Arthur [Koestler]. It's a really wonderful history of astronomy.
The luxury
Very hard. I have this vision of an island that would be full of rustles and squeaks and marvellous, you know, weird bird sounds, and I'd if I could record those, say, on a sampler and bring them back, I could get a composer to write a piece that would include all those island sounds.
Presenter asks
23:16Were you worried that you'd never play again when [your newborn baby daughter Miranda died]?
No, I wasn't worried. I was surprised that I stopped playing in a way, because I always see playing as you know, it's the way I express myself, and it was interesting that I just stopped. I had no desire to play at all, and obviously I was devastated, I'd been ill for a very long time as well.
Presenter asks
24:55Do you think the whole experience [of losing your daughter] changed the way that you play?
Uh possibly. I mean I can't see how it how it didn't because I think I you know, I think every performer walks on stage with their history and uh inevitably uh you know um how you are is how you play. You know, there's no doubt that you can't separate the two things.
“I learned from a very early age to to work very hard and to enjoy working on my own. And of course this is what you do as a pianist. You just work on your own a lot of the time.”
“I think every performer walks on stage with their history and uh inevitably uh you know um how you are is how you play. You know, there's no doubt that you can't separate the two things.”
“performing, after all, is about the moment. You know, th you know, I'm interested in spontaneity, basically. I mean, this is why I am very interested in working with jazz musicians. And spontaneity is not about stopping and starting and recording a bar at a time.”