Exactly one month until Light Flowing is released: a love project which has resulted in such beautiful music which I am immensely proud of by Edmund Finnis, Emily Hall, Nick Martin, Natalie Klouda, Alex Mills and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch.
Recording, editing, mixing and mastering by Vidda Lefeber
Art work by David James Grinly
Design work by Jamie Currey
With thanks to PRS Foundation Open Fund, RVW Foundation and Hinrichsen Foundation
To be released by NMC Recordings on 25th April 2025 and you can pre order your own copy now!!
The link is in my stories and on my bio site.
Thrilled to be performing Natalie Klouda’s work for solo cello ŪhtĊeare in my next Behind the Mirror concert with harpist Eleanor Turner this coming Sunday, alongside works by Delius, Vaughan Williams and Henry Purcell.
I commissioned and recorded this with NMC records two summers ago, and yet it is still essential to me to give as many repeat performances as possible, allowing the music not only to be heard again live but also to live and breathe and evolve.
This work is a passionate through composed movement mirroring the emotional rollercoaster and progression of a looming and yet enchanted midsummer’s day. Beginning the hour before dawn, with a delicate opening the piece itself wakes up gradually flowing and growing with increasing intensity.
The word ŪhtĊeare is an old English/ Anglo Saxon word meaning “sorrow before dawn.
It appears in the poem “The Wife’s Lament” from the Exeter Book compiled 960-990 CE.
Please join us on Sunday 3 May at 4pm in Berkhamsted to hear this piece alongside other works devoted to and inspired by the English landscape.
In just one week I play a completely new programme with my dear friend and collaborator Eleanor Turner - a celebration of English music old and new arranged for cello and harp.
Join us for an afternoon of music by Frederick Delius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Henry Purcell and John Dowland amongst others, music given a new life through the sound world of cello and harp.
Also in the programme is Natalie Klouda’s Uhtceare for solo cello - a piece which evokes the English landscape in the moment before dawn and R M Schaefer’s labyrinthian work for harp and percussion - The Crown of Ariadne.
4pm Sunday 3 May 2026
Berkhamsted town hall
Tickets:
This Friday 27 March I join chamber choir Londinium for an evening of luminous and meditative music exploring themes of conflict, loss, resilience, and hope.
Our programme is anchored by two masterpieces for cello and choir: John Tavener’s haunting Svyati, in which the cello represents the Ikon of Christ, and Richard Rodney Bennett’s warm-hearted A Farewell to Arms, in which it embodies a war-weary soldier. Woven around them is a sequence of classic motets by Tallis, Dering and Schütz, heartfelt works by Joubert and Mauersberger, and radiant recent music by Gabriel Jackson, Howard Skempton, and Lucy Walker.
Looking forward to this very much!
St John’s Church
Waterloo
7.30 pm
Ticket link in my stories
📷 @ycatttt
Very excited to be performing at Presteigne Festival Springboard Weekend on Sunday19th April 2026:
Between Heaven and Earth: Sacred Music for solo cello
a recital which brings together very old and very new music by J S Bach, Dietrich Stoeffken, Marian Marais, Edmund Finnis, John Tavener, James MacMillan and Natalie Klouda.
I’m also really looking forward to working with composers Sam Buttler,
Matthew Elderton-Lewis, Delyth Field, Niamh O’Donnell, Richard Peat, and Ella Roberts on their new works for cello during my stay in Presteigne. A brilliant scheme set up by the festival to support a new generation of music creators. 📷 Amadeo Castellani
I am beyond excited to be making my next Behind the Mirror concert with my amazing friend and collaborator Liam Byrne.
We are creating an afternoon of music and words, read by Nada Sharp, which celebrate a different side of the French court of Louis XIV, a world of cultivated beauty, secrecy, devotion and quiet sensuality, with music that breathes, whispers and glows.
A programme in which music by François Couperin and Marin Marais is entwined with the hushed voices of Linda Catlin smith and Hildur Guðnadottir - music shaped by patience, fragility and an almost tactile sense of time - creating an atmosphere of intimate dialogues and darkly glowing timbres.
Please join us on March 22nd at 4pm in Berkhamsted
For tickets visit:
📷 by @claireshov
Design by @jamiecurrey
Some pictures from our concert yesterday - huge thanks to @hutchings.tony for taking them, to Eva Nick and Mark for their brilliance, and to our lovely audience for supporting us.
Also to Ashlyns School for hosting - we couldn’t have wished for a more beautiful acoustic to perform in, and hope to come back soon!
I am so thrilled that Mark Bonnar is going to be joining Eva, Nick and I for our concert celebrating the life and works of Mozart next weekend.
I can’t think of a more perfect person to read the extraordinary letters which Mozart prolifically wrote to his family, wife and friends during his short life.
Delving back into Robert Spaethling’s sparkling translations, I am reminded of his wildness, his fun, his foul mouth, his wit and humour, his kindness, his responsibility towards his loved ones and ultimately to music. What an extraordinary man he was and what a legacy he has left us.
We will be performing his transcriptions of three preludes and fugues by JS Bach- “I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied” - followed by his great string trio in Eb major, a gift to his friend and benefactor Michael Puchberg, to whom he wrote the most heartbreaking letters begging for money.
“Oh god, the situation I am in, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy; and if you, my best friend and brother, foresake me I … will be lost, together with my poor sick wife and child”
Please join us if you can!
4pm Sunday 1 February Ashlyns school, Berkhamsted
Tickets:
Very excited to announce “Mozart, a life in letters”, Behind the Mirror’s first concert of 2026 which will be happening on Sunday 1st February at 4pm in the beautiful oak panelled Main Hall of Ashlyns School in Berkhamsted.
I will be joined by Eva Thorarinsdottir (violin) and Nick Bootiman (viola) to play a programme of sublime music for string trio: a selection of preludes and Fugues from JS Bach arranged by Mozart, followed by a performance of possibly the greatest work in the string trio repertoire: Mozart’s Divertimento in Eb major K. 563.
Interspersed will be extracts from some of Mozart’s most intriguing, funny and heart breaking letters read by incredible actor and friend Mark Bonnar. Please do come and join us for what will be a beautiful afternoon of music and storytelling!
For tickets please visit
“Madame Bernaskoni is here; she is getting a salary of 500 ducats because she sings all her arias a fraction higher than everyone else. It’s true art because she manages to keep in tune. Now she said she would sing a 1/4 tone higher still, but she wants twice the money. adieu.”
Design work by @jamiecurrey
It is a total joy that my first post of 2026 is this picture of Abbey Hall in Eye, the most vibrant and unique creative space which also happens to have the most sublime acoustic.
I’ve just spent two wonderful days recording some new music and some very old music and couldn’t have hoped for a more hospitable place to do this.
Olivia Pomp and Gary Rowland are the consummate hosts and I’m incredibly grateful to them for making me feel so welcome and at home.
Huge thanks as well to fabulous recording engineer Vidda Lefeber whose support and insights were and are invaluable.
Very excited to hear and (eventually) share what we have made!
#cello #newmusic #oldmusic #abbeyhall
Today @eleanorstrings and I release a new track: Ductia, from Cantiga de Santa Maria by Alfonso X El Sabio, featuring our dear friend Joe Danks on percussion.
The Cantiga de Santa Maria (Canticles of Holy Mary) are 420 poems with musical notation, written in the medieval Galician-Portuguese language during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile (1221-1284) and often attributed to him.
This Ductia was made “so that it may lead and give joy”, and that has also been our intention with it. Its devotional aspect has inspired us to release it to celebrate Advent.
Find it at
The link is on my bio site. Art work by me!
