About me

I’ve worked in the arts for thirty-five years, in music, theatre, opera, and arts festivals. I began my career in musical theatre as a pianist and musical director in the West End in the early 90s, before moving into theatre and opera directing, and then arts festival production. Then in 2013, now based in West Yorkshire, I returned full-time to music.

My main focus as a performer at the moment is silent film scoring, and I specialise in improvising live scores to film. I perform in concert halls, theatres, cinemas, arts and film festivals—sometimes solo, sometimes with longstanding collaborators, and often as a founder member of Frame Ensemble. Current and past performances are listed here. I am the artistic director of Northern Silents, the UK’s busiest producer of live‑scored silent film. Northern Silents creates programming for a growing network of professional venues, commissions new music, and trains musicians—professional and amateur alike—in the craft of improvising with moving image.

Alongside silent film work, I’m an experienced piano accompanist and musical director, working from time to time with choirs, instrumentalists and singers, for concerts, gigs, and theatre productions. I also have a small piano teaching practice.

My training began as a piano and composition student at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, followed by drama and theatre studies at the University of London—an early mix of music and storytelling that has shaped all my work since. In 2024 I completed a music PhD focused on improvised silent film accompaniment. My research continues, with particular interest in early film keyboard practices and the wider history of silent film accompaniment, combining performance‑based enquiry with historical musicology. I have a particular interest in teaching improvisation and led the undergraduate improvisation module at the University of Huddersfield for three years. I lead practical improvisation projects with young musicians and run masterclasses for improvisers at all levels, including Northern Silents’ professional development programme and occasional community music projects.

My career began in the early 1990s as a rehearsal pianist and musical director for West End musicals and cabaret performers. I worked on a series of new musicals in West End and regional theatre, as well as playing keyboards in various West End orchestra pits, including on the original production of Les Misérables at the Palace Theatre, London. During this period I worked at several of the London drama schools, teaching song interpretation, audition technique, chorus singing, and musical theatre history.

I joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1996 as an assistant director before going to the National Theatre as Associate Director on Trevor Nunn’s award-winning revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!. I directed the off-West End UK premiere of the Gershwins’ 1933 musical Of Thee I Sing, and spent time on the directing staff at Opera North, English National Opera, and the Royal Opera, working on Verdi, Puccini, Bernstein, Mozart, and Handel productions. With Richard Hickox and the City of London Sinfonia I devised and staged a series of music-theatre collaborations over ten years, which included the first live-music version of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus at the Barbican and a collaboration between the RSC and City of London Sinfonia on A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the complete Mendelssohn score, also at the Barbican. I’ve also worked with the London Symphony Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, and BBC Radio 3.

In 2005 I moved into arts festival curation and production as the artistic director of Manchester’s pioneering Queer Up North International Festival, with whom I commissioned and produced a series of theatre, dance, music, film, and literature events. Subsequently, I’ve produced mixed art form and classical music festivals across the UK, including Holmfirth Arts Festival, Festival of the North East, Birmingham Hippodrome’s Wagner-themed ‘Ringside’ festival, the first Classical Sheffield Festival, as well as Yorkshire Silent Film Festival, Northern Silent Film Festival, and Silents by the Sea at Morecambe Winter Gardens.

Since returning full-time to music, I’m based in West Yorkshire and work mainly in the north - though I am occasionally tempted back down south and into London.