Very excited to be planning another concert at Sherborne Abbey this year with a beautiful and inspiring program of music. It will be on similar lines to the last very successful concert ..
fabulous international soloists with a wonderful orchestra and a mix of the very best classics in the repertoire and premieres of my latest pieces.

TALK
Jim Mc Neil and I are also planning another pre concert talk teaming up with at least one other speaker. Our aim is to share our passion of our natural world and to hopefully inspire others to raise the awareness of the need to respect and protect our beautiful planet. More on this soon! Below is a little background on how we first came to meet:

I met Jim randomly in the Warren Inn pub on Dartmoor about three years ago. I’d been for a swim in the sea in late November and suddenly had a big inspiration to change our plans (I was with my husband Richard) and persuaded him to stay the night in Devon.
I asked Jim and a couple of friends if we could join them on their table as it was the only one by the fire. When I told him I was still a bit cold from the sea he told me they were looking for rivers to swim in the next day! My ears pricked up as it wasn’t the usual ‘pub talk’! and I said I was surprised to meet another ‘nutter’ like me! I asked him why they were doing it and he said it was for training as he was taking them off to the North pole the following month!

We then had an absolutely brilliant talk and discovered that we both had a huge passion for our natural world and both cared deeply about trying to do whatever we could to raise the awareness of its importance and of inspiring others to do the same.
We kept in touch and discovered that we both felt we’d met for a reason but weren’t sure what it was.
The idea of doing the talk came to me suddenly.. I woke up one morning early last year and had an inspiration that our coming together in this way could be even more powerful than working separately .. that the more people of similar intention who come together from different parts of society the more powerful it would be. And what could be more different than a composer and a polar explorer?

We had wonderful feed back from our first pre concert talk in Sherborne (Sep 8th last year) and I was absolutely delighted when Jim recently officially appointed me as Composer in Residence to his incredible Ice Warrior programme..with an invite to fly to the North Pole next year!! Very exciting and I’m already working on some pieces (next album) with a winter theme which reflects the feeling of raw nature.. the planet in its purest form.

Watch this space!