MEET THE ARTIST

Alison Balsom, trumpeter

January 28, 2021 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

Keep listening to live music and going to concerts to remind you why this is such a brilliant, powerful, relevant, important, beautiful thing in a human’s life and why you should keep on searching for those memorable, spine tingling occurrences.

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Rowan Pierce, soprano

November 11, 2020 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

Our work is in skills and craftmanship and that takes time and every day you make music is a progression to a day when it will feel easier or different. It’s a life-long process, and it will be ever changing and that’s ok.

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Alec Frank-Gemmill, horn player

October 29, 2020 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

Making something sound exactly how I want it to.

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Bertrand Chamayou, pianist

October 11, 2020 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

It’s a long quest and a process of building. You need to build your repertoire, your personality… to try to learn who you are as an artist. That all takes time. Search inside yourself, as most of what you have to say is already inside you from very early on.

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Nitin Sawhney – musician, composer and producer

September 21, 2020 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

I create a new vocabulary for each project I work on. I don’t believe in stamping my personality all over what is required for a film’s score to compliment the narrative. However, with my own albums I tend to follow my intuition which leads me into a lot of sounds that I love.

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Michael Finnissy, composer

July 4, 2020 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

Music itself is intensely important to me, and I want to try and share it – intensely

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Alice Sara Ott, pianist

October 15, 2017 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

My parents took me a to piano recital when I was three because they couldn’t find a babysitter that night. I don’t remember the pieces the pianist played but I was fascinated by the power of music that made the audience quiet for nearly two hours. I thought that if I learned this “language” people would also listen to what I want to say

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Nathalia Milstein, pianist

March 11, 2017 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

The greatest challenge, which will probably last all my life, is trying to understand how to be completely myself on stage, how to convey my own ideas without getting distracted by anything else and be 100% into the music

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Elin Manahan Thomas, soprano

November 12, 2016 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

My musical heart is definitely in baroque music – anything from Purcell to Handel to Bach makes me feel entirely at home. I’ve always been completely at one with the style and harmonies of the baroque period, and there’s nothing from that age that I wouldn’t love singing.

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Jess Gillam, saxophonist

October 12, 2016 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

I love the versatility and dynamism of the saxophone. It can convey so many different emotions, just like the voice can, and one minute you can be making a hugely powerful, aggressive sound and the next you can be floating the sound

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Peter Donohoe, pianist

October 10, 2016 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

we need to identify in our own minds exactly why we really want to be performing musicians, and what we feel is the true role of music in modern society

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Cheryl Frances-Hoad, composer

October 10, 2016 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

I heard a ‘cello being played on the radio (I can’t remember who was playing) when I was about 6, and just knew that was the instrument I had to play. I fully intended to just become an internationally famous concert ‘cellist (as you do!) but gradually composing took over.

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Hayley Jenkins, composer

May 13, 2021 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

Music is a language and each performer views music through the possibilities of their instrument and technique; I enjoy having conversations about how best something should be played as there are often possibilities, I wasn’t even aware of, and that is exciting.

Nico Pistolesi, pianist & composer

May 10, 2021 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

I search for inspiration in my daily life and treat every gig as if was the first time.

Channa Malkin, soprano

May 8, 2021 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

One of the biggest challenges we face as performers is to find our unique and authentic artistic voice.

Russell Hirshfield, pianist

May 6, 2021 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

Pianists all face the challenge of making a career in a profession filled with a large number of exceptional artists, all vying for a small number of performance opportunities. Post-pandemic, I hope to see an increase in live performances; it’s just not the same listening to video recordings online.

Hamish McLaren, countertenor

May 5, 2021 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

the more I can engage with audiences, and ideally introduce them to more obscure repertoire, the more successful I feel

Fontanella Recorder Consort

May 4, 2021 The Cross-Eyed Pianist

We absolutely adore the blended sound of our renaissance instruments which sound like a magnificent organ when played together, especially in church-like acoustics. We also enjoy playing new arrangements and introducing audiences to contemporary music, and finding ways to connect all these elements for a concert programme.

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