About me

I’ve worked in the arts for thirty-five years and currently divide my time between the roles of musician, researcher, producer, and teacher.

Primarily, I am a pianist who performs improvised accompaniments for silent films. I work solo and with a variety of collaborators - including as a founder member of Frame Ensemble. I perform in music venues and concert halls, in theatres, and cinemas, and for arts and film festivals. Current and past performances are listed here. If you’re interested in booking me as a pianist, click here to email me. If you’re wondering what my performances are like, there are a few film and music clips here.

In 2016 I founded Yorkshire Silent Film Festival which became Northern Silents in 2022. Northern Silents has become the UK’s busiest producer of live-scored silent film, providing programming for a growing portfolio of professional venues, commissioning new music, developing new approaches to audience and community engagement, and training musicians (professional and amateur) in the art of improvising with moving image. An important part of Northern Silents’s work is our ongoing role as a Creative Partner of Morecambe Winter Gardens, with whom we create the annual Silents by the Sea festival.

In 2024 I completed a music PhD which focuses on improvised silent film accompaniment. I continue to research and my main interests are early film keyboard accompaniment practices and the history of silent film accompaniment. This research entails both performance-based practice and historical musicology.

Improvisation pedagogy also interests me. As well as teaching the improvisation module at University of Huddersfield for three years, I lead practical improvisation projects with young musicians, and masterclasses with improvisers at all levels, including Northern Silents’ programme of professional development for improvisers.

I studied piano at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester and read drama and theatre studies at the University of London. The combination of music and dramatic storytelling has run through my career ever since, as I’ve moved between working in theatre, musical theatre, opera, orchestral music, arts festivals and silent film.

I began my professional career in the 1990s as a musical director and keyboard player on musicals in the West End of London and regional UK theatres, and as a cabaret pianist in London and New York. I played in the pit orchestra of the original production of Les Miserables at the Palace Theatre. Since then, I've mixed working as a musician with work in theatre and opera as a director and producer and as a leader of arts festivals. I joined the Royal Shakespeare Company as an assistant director before going to the National Theatre as Associate Director on the award-winning revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!. I directed the UK premiere of the Gershwins’ musical Of Thee I Sing, and spent time on the directing staff at Opera North, English National Opera, and the Royal Opera. I’ve also devised and staged music-theatre collaborations with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia and BBC Radio 3.  I’ve produced mixed art form and classical music festivals across the UK, and led Queer Up North International Festival, Holmfirth Arts Festival, Festival of the North East and Classical Sheffield Festival, as well as every edition of Yorkshire Silent Film Festival, Northern Silent Film Festival, and Silents by the Sea.

I'm a Clore Fellow (sixth cohort, 2009), and a member of the Royal Musical Association and Incorporated Society of Musicians.