A well-known fact: I’m a trumpet player. To be phoned up and asked to play trumpet in a new show is a happy but unsurprising turn of events. But to be asked to play a part that’s half trumpet and half theremin, and told that I seemed like the obvious person to ask to learn such an instrument, is rather more surprising.

My prior knowledge of the theremin had been, exclusively, the famous video of Clara Rockmore playing The Swan (look it up if you haven’t seen it) and Bill Bailey. From watching these two performers, it’s fairly evident that playing a tune is the hard part. The show is a new arrival from Broadway, a high school techno sci-fi called Be More Chill. In contrast to many shows out there, it has music practically throughout – tons of pop/rock songs with an impressive variety of styles chucked in, including reggae, funk, disco and even dubstep – but the theremin is, naturally, the star of the show. I get to make a load of weird sci-fi noises and play some wailing tunes (both of which, in succession, open the show).

I picked my theremin up from the producer a week before the first rehearsal. Day one consisted of me being so confused that I thought the thing had been wired wrongly. I couldn’t make sense of the manual and ended up texting two physicists and emailing Moog to ask what on Earth was up with my theremin. That was all I managed. Day two, I realised the purpose of the knobs on the side and had to send an embarrassed please-ignore-my-folly email to Moog. The rest of the day was spent on YouTube finding out what to do with my hands. A melody was a long way off.

On the third day, I played a scale...roughly. I had learnt the eight hand positions and could get firmly within a minor third of each note. And seriously, I had vibrato nailed. Day four came with the sudden realisation that this was a two-handed instrument. My left hand had been hovering politely just above the loop antenna, which didn’t make me look much like the experts with their precision hands movements on both sides. The common saying that a violinist’s bow hand is the important one started to hit home.

Day five: staccato and long note shaping – it’s beginning to sound like music! Day six is a regression, when the conscious incompetence kicks in…music, just about, but I have a long way to go. By day seven, I can stumble through what I have to play in the show, just in time for the following day’s rehearsal. I then have a couple of weeks to iron out what I can. Learning a new instrument is an eye opening experience – I now know what it feels like to be a beginner in music. Mind-boggling; but honestly, so much fun.

For as long as I can remember, it has been my main goal in life to wear bright red tails and a top hat on live television.

Ok, maybe it wasn't planned, but I was thrilled when it happened, anyhow. We got the call the night before (as is the case with TV) to appear at the end of Friday's The Last Leg show and play a song that Adam Hills had written. The sticking point was that only the vocal part and a bass line actually existed, so we had a few hours in the afternoon to write the rest of it. Unsurprisingly, that challenge was loads of fun and (perhaps more surprisingly) the producers having something dreadfully vague but sincerely demanding to say after every rendition we put forward was also very enjoyable.

What made this special was how it was so different to what I'm used to doing as a musician. Normally, I'll arrive at a session and there will be a part waiting for me on a music stand or an iPad, written by someone else. Maybe there will be an element of improvisation, and things will probably change a bit with some discussion, but the basic part exists before I get there. Or if I'm playing with a pop artist or band, there will often be a completed song for which we'll devise a part for me or a horn section at a rehearsal. On Friday, however, neither of those scenarios happened. There were the bare, bare bones of a song in existence just a few hours before it was performed, and the whole band had to write all of the music (except that bass line and the chord structure). Some might find that scary, but I find it so exciting – and I love that the industry expects us musicians to do that with no questions asked.

As my career has progressed and I’ve been finding my feet in it, I’ve found myself branching out, like so many musicians, into wider musical areas. Specifically, I’ve been focussing on writing, arranging and orchestrating music. With my time doing Fiddler On The Roof approaching a year now, the steady playing work (which I’ve balanced with depping on the Calendar Girls and Saturday Night Fever UK Tours) has allowed me to direct my energies into these areas much more easily.

Last week held a particularly fun project for me, when I was challenged by two amazing multi-woodwind players (Jack Reddick and Sophie Creaner) to orchestrate something for “as many woodwind instruments as possible” that they could video themselves recording. Challenge quickly accepted, I looked to the 2010 Sondheim revue Sondheim On Sondheim, which contains a white-knuckle arrangement of Something’s Coming from Bernstein’s West Side Story. Between eight parts, I managed to fit in a grand total of 25 different instruments (11 flutes, 3 saxophones, 4 clarinets and 7 recorders) and we made this video. Admire it — some of those instrument changes from Jack and Sophie are truly expert.

Almost four years ago, I approached Eclipse Trumpets to find myself an instrument that would solve all of my problems and make me sound the best I could possibly sound, and to my surprise, I found it. I’ve been with my Eclipse trumpet ever since, and could not be more impressed with it still (when buying it, I tried so hard to find another trumpet which was better in any respect and failed miserably).

Well, the years have progressed and now the lovely guys at Eclipse have just made the relationship even more special by making me an Eclipse Artist! I’m joined by a collection of truly elite trumpet players; you can see me on the Eclipse artists page, pride of place. This means I’ll be able to work much more closely with the brand and I’m really looking forward to what that might bring. For now, Eclipse, it’s officially reciprocal.

A career in London’s West End has been my most defined dream since I was a teenager. The West End is indisputably the pinnacle of British theatre, if not Europe’s. And now, I am proud to say that I am a part of it.

After our sold out run at the Menier Chocolate Factory over the last few months, Fiddler On The Roof will go into the Playhouse Theatre for most of the rest of the year. It’s been thrilling to be in such a highly acclaimed production, and with an opportunity to explore a bit of the klezmer style too. Childhood me will also be very excited that I make an appearance on stage in the West End! On top of all this, I can feel nicely smug in the assumption that I play the longest wind note in town...

Fiddler On The Roof is currently booking until 28 September 2019.

Of all the projects and performances I have coming up this Christmas, there’s one that I’m especially looking forward to. I’ve always been a sucker for cheese (the musical type, at least), along with lead trumpet in its natural habitat: the big band. Combine a big band, mounds of cheese and Christmastime, and you end up with James Brady’s Swing Into Christmas. Five special shows around and about London will be all the best bits of Christmas with no holes barred.

I find myself most free to let loose as a trumpet player at this time of year. Certainly, I don’t feel restrained in other months, but Christmas is so over the top that it lends itself to energetic, uninhibited playing. This year is also the third year that I’ve depped at the Thursford Christmas Spectacular, an extremely OTT variety show which I adore for all the same reasons. We can play out and exaggerate everything even more there than in regular musical theatre!

Tickets:
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​15 Dec 4.30pm Earl Haig Hall, Crouch End
20 Dec 7.30pm Red Lion, Leytonstone
21 Dec 7.30pm, Mirth, Marvel & Maud, Walthamstow
22 Dec 3pm Mirth, Marvel & Maud, Walthamstow
22 Dec 6.30pm Mirth, Marvel & Maud, Walthamstow

For the same season as last year, I’m back at the adorable Menier Chocolate Factory again, this time for a true classic. Fiddler on the Roof is one of the best loved and most famous musicals there is: when it first appeared on Broadway, it ran for 8 years – almost five times as long as any musical before it! On a more personal level, my very first paid gig in London when I arrived to study at Guildhall was a production of this very musical. This time around will be a very different experience to that 2-week Am Dram version back then (including the fact that this version will be directed by Sir Trevor Nunn, and will star, for example, Judy Kuhn, the voice of Disney’s Pocahontas) but, six years on, I still have the pleasing sense of a full circle.

Over the last half decade, I seem to have got myself into a rhythm of trumpeting in a football situation precisely once every five years. For anyone who knows me, this frequency is astounding.

The last time was for an app, through which I may even still be fanfaring my way through some fans’ push notifications each time someone, somewhere, scores a goal. This time around is a more live ordeal, playing on the pitch of West Ham’s London Stadium with Alex Mendham & His Orchestra, the ‘20s and ‘30s jazz band who are my latest endeavour into authentic performance. We’ll be playing West Ham’s adopted anthem I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, along with a couple of other numbers, before they kick off their match with the Wolves, then again at half-time in the lounge.

We’ve also recorded of I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles to celebrate the song’s 100th anniversary, which is available on iTunes.

For we musicians, who usually play to concert halls and theatres, a 60,000-seater is fairly huge. Until we, undoubtedly, hit the big time and stadiums become our regular hang, this one’s pretty exciting!

Saturday 1 September 2018, 3pm
London Stadium

Two years ago, I was involved in a very special show about one of the most wonderful performers of the Broadway stage, Judy Garland. Then titled Through The Mill (a beautifully relevant quote from her hit song The Man That Got Away), I joined the company when the production upscaled(!) to the Southwark Playhouse. Last year, it transferred again to the Arts Theatre in Soho, which I sadly had to decline because of my tour.

But this June, the show is once again reincarnated for a single concert performance in the magnificent Hippodrome Casino in Leicester Square, under the apt title of Judy’s Back.

Boasting its biggest band yet, this show contains some corkers of Old Broadway, meaning I am happy. Playing the soaring, larger-than-life music of this era is a unique thrill. For me, it’s the timbre and straightforwardness of earlier jazz mixed with the energy and expanse of modern show tunes that really makes the style special. Really though, I live for just the last few bars of Almost Like Being In Love.

Judy’s Back is on at the Hippodrome Casino on Friday 22 June, 8pm.
Tickets £30-£50

For so many reasons, Bach’s 2nd Brandenburg Concerto is the ultimate piece of music. It’s utterly unique in its use of the trumpet – even the fact that it is a solo instrument is shocking, let alone some of the things Mr. Bach asks it to play. As high notes are the obsession of literally every trumpet player ever (fact), there’s another reason for the piece’s significance – it has them in buckets. The concerto is a real undertaking for any trumpet player, given both its range and the sheer number of notes to get through in such a small space of time.

But the main thing is the limelight. Keen readers will know that I grew up on the theatre stage, so being the centre of attention as a trumpet player is a glorious thing for me. Yes, yes, there are three other soloists in the piece but we all know that the trumpet is the one everyone’s interested in, mainly because it’s place is usually at the back of the orchestra – if it’s there at all. Audiences seem to be truly enthralled by the instrument’s appearance at any performance of this wonderful piece.

And one such performance is coming right up, in the beautiful city of Madrid (I hope it’s beautiful anyway, this will be my first visit). Yours truly will be playing Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 with early music group La Capilla Real de Madrid, under the musical direction of Oscar Gershensohn. Oscar is known for putting on engaging concerts, where he talks to the audience about every piece and draws them in, fascinated, before the music even begins. The concert, featuring the 1st, 2nd and 4th Brandenburg Concertos and Cantata BWV 65, is the second of two concerts this year, in which the group will have performed all six concertos. These two concerts in turn form part of a larger series called Bach Madrid, which was created by La Capilla Real.

Integral Conciertos de Brandemburgo II
Auditorio Caja de Música
Palacio de Cibeles
Saturday 12 May, 7:30pm
Tickets 12-15€