I only began to write music in earnest around 2012. I’d been writing book and lyrics for musicals during my involvement with the community plays and with The Mercury Workshop in London and had received encouragement to write songs from mentors like Dave Price OBE and my friend the playwright and librettist Stephen Clark. I’d also contributed songs to the band I played with, Full English Breakfast. But it was only with the support of multi-instrumentalist Richard Ormrod that I started to take my songwriting seriously. Now songwriting is a major component of what I do as an artist who works in a variety of forms (theatre, radio, music, poetry).
Schwa
As a composer, lyricist and keyboard player, the main locus of my activity has been Schwa, a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Richard Ormrod and, until 2020, vocalist Jacqui Wicks. Our work together began in 2012 with Scriptophilia and has so far resulted in a host of performances and three albums, BOUND AWAY (2013), NOW WE ARE SCHWA (2016), and THRESHOLD, alongside text and music performance pieces THRESHOLD (touring West Yorkshire libraries in 2016), A LARK, and HOPE OF A TREE (later a film). Our work together halted, like many others, with the pandemic, but Richard and I are now working together again towards a new project scheduled for late 2024/5.
Edible Tent
My solo songwriting work, often in collaboration with other artists, is collected here. My song Let Her Through (Roller) won the Fields of Music competition 2019 and led to Unsung Sports which you can listen to here. Unsung Sports was followed by Unsung Sports 2023, a Leeds 2023 project. All the songs were arranged by Dave Evans with whom I originally worked on a suite of song portraits of communities in South Leeds: Arrivals and Departures.
As a lyricist, I’ve worked with composers (including Stephen Keeling and Richard Barnard) writing texts for operas, oratorios, musicals, and musical theatre. One of the the most satisfying collaborations has been with MUSIC IN PRISONS and with composer Hugh Nankivell leading songwriting courses for Opera North. I’ve also composed film music for The Halo Trust.
The Weight of Smoke is a cycle of songs about Sir Walter Raleigh, with bass player Dave Bowie Jnr. My cycle of 9 Song Portraits, produced during the pandemic and featured in BBC Radio 4’s Sketches, is available here.
I’ve also been experimenting recently with more abstract musical pieces, particularly some improvisations with church bells after being inspired to do so by a particular bell in Dortmund, Germany. One of these bell pieces was played on Radio 3 in 2023.
