Thank you Eveline for this unique interview opportunity. Today, I'd like to go back in time and revisit your career as a video game composer. Before that point though, could you please tell us how your love for music started?
Music has been part of me for as long as I can remember. Memories of my dad sitting for hours at the piano, listening to some of the jazz greats – Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, Fats Waller – breaking down the notes, repeating the parts until he'd unpicked the pieces for himself, he had an amazing ear!
My love of classical music began later. Learning the piano, violin and (slightly randomly) the church organ gave me the opportunity to discover different types of music. My time with a youth orchestra, church choir and symphony chorus consolidated this. Encouraged by my mum, I was able to get the most out of these experiences, with concerts in some of the great venues in London and trips playing abroad all serving to fire up my enthusiasm. Singing Carl Orff's Carmina Burana for a concert with a stinking cold is a memory that has stuck with me .. I still feel goosebumps when I hear that piece performed now.
This was followed up with five fantastic years at uni; first studying music at Durham, then a Masters in medieval music at Newcastle and, the eventual stepping stone to my position at Rare, a PG Dip in Electroacoustic Composition at Bournemouth. During this time I was able to broaden my musical tastes, immersing myself in as varied a musical background as possible – inevitably I developed not only a deep love of music but also a pretty eclectic taste. Jazz and blues greats rubbed shoulders with some of the classical giants, throw in an unexpected affinity for medieval music and a chance encounter with fantastic percussion group, Amadinda, and you have me in a nutshell. Rachmaninov, Poulenc, Fauré, Liszt, J.S.Bach, Widor, Carl Orff, César Franck, Marie Claire Alain, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, John Williams and Hans Zimmer, just some of the artists and composers who have shaped what music is to me today.
