'Music was my passion and it never stopped feeling like that special, magical thing that I got to do.'
Music was always one of the things that I was drawn to because it felt special and magical. There wasn't an abundance of music in my early years at school, so every time we had a simple music lesson of group singing it felt like a reward for sitting through all the maths lessons. Maybe once a year, however, there was a classical duo who did a special hour-long assembly. They made silly jokes and stomped around in a way that captivated all our six year old attention – but they also showed us about these amazing instruments and played us fascinating music, and even played their own violins right there in our assembly hall. I obviously had known that musical instruments existed, but they had always seemed something complex and mysterious for grown-ups, and us children had to just sing or bang on saucepans. But now I was captivated, I had to get one!
As I continued to go through primary school I started to learn recorder and sing as much as I could (to the annoyance of pretty...