On Thursday 22 January 2026, I played the trumpet and took part in an on-location recording for BBC Radio 3’s The Early Music Show at St Paul’s Cathedral. The programme, presented by Dr Hannah French and produced by Ben Collingwood, will be broadcast in March.This episode of The Early Music Show explored music by John Blow, William Croft, and Jeremiah Clarke, and was framed around the rebuilding

It was a pleasure to perform Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (Z. 692) with Vox Luminis at De Bijloke in Ghent on Thursday 13 November 2025 and at the Teatro Real in Madrid on Saturday 15 November 2025. We began rehearsing in Belgium on Armistice Day—Namur was particularly quiet on this poignant day. It was great to explore the historic old town in Ghent and fantastic to revisit Madrid. My last performance

I played first trumpet with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAEducation) for an education outreach project on Tuesday 21 October 2025 at the Corn Exchange in King’s Lynn. The project featured music from The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell with additional music composed by James Redwood, who was also an engaging animateur and leader. The project brought together the Orchestra of the Age

Dartington Hall is a very special place to me; it is where I attended summer school (2007–12), met Jo (2012), proposed (2017), and got married (2018)! So, it was a pleasure to return to Dartington to play in Devon Baroque’s 25th anniversary concert, which took place in the Great Hall on Sunday 28 September 2025.I was one of the soloists in the concert and I performed ‘Mr Handel’s Water

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Croatian Baroque Ensemble (Hrvatski Barokni Ansambl), as well as the 50th birthday of the trumpeter Krešimir Fabijanić, the Croatian Baroque Ensemble performed an instrumental programme entitled ‘Tromba Gloriosa’, featuring music by Biber, Purcell, Telemann, Bach and Handel. The programme began with Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Sonata Sancti Polycarpi

I was delighted to rejoin the Brandenburg Baroque Soloists with the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and the Old Royal Naval College Trinity Laban Chapel Choir for a reprise of a programme from a concert given in April 2024 at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. This concert, on Thursday 26 September 2024 was part of the Chelsea History Festival and took place at the Royal Hospital

I performed with the Brandenburg Baroque Soloists at the Chapel of St Peter and St Paul at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich on Tuesday 30th April 2024. The performance featured two choirs, the Old Royal Naval College Trinity Laban Chapel Choir (directed by Ralph Allwood) and the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea (directed by William Vann). The concert was a choral celebration

I first visited Malta in January 2013, stepping in at very short notice to perform Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 [BWV 1047] in the Valletta Baroque Festival. (Incidentally, one of the violinists in that orchestra recalled that I could ‘jump in’ at short notice on that notorious piece, and she put my name forward to record that iconic concerto at very short notice as part of the Ansbach Bach

I played in an education project with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) which was based on Purcell’s Fairy Queen. This community opera, called The Fairy Queen: Three Wishes featured music by the composer and animateur James Redwood with lyrics by Hazel Gould. The performance took place at Northgate High School in Ipswich on Wednesday 22 November 2023 and it featured students from Northgate

Exactly one week ago, also at 15:00, I was standing right here in Boughton Aluph playing in the Stour Music Festival. I was glad to be back on Sunday 26th June 2022: it has been a busy intervening week. I’ve been doing a lot of work on my book (www.justnaturaltrumpet.com) but also trying to make time to enjoy nature and the good weather; I've been memorising Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 ready for

I was called in as a last-minute replacement first trumpet player (during the so-called pingdemic) for the Gabrieli Consort’s performance of Purcell’s King Arthur at the Three Choirs Festival. The performance took place in Worcester Cathedral on Monday 26th May 2021. I had performed this version of King Arthur at short notice once before with the Gabrieli Consort in Groningen and in Hamburg in

I especially missed Germany during lockdown, not just because of the cancelled festivals I had been looking forward to in Göttingen (Handel), Halle (Handel) and Bonn (Beethoven), but because I just love spending time in Germany. It was with great pleasure that Solomon's Knot could visit Hamburg for a concert at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg on Monday 26th October 2020, returning to a programme established

A performance to celebrate the 75th birthday of the celebrated trumpeter Crispian Steele-Perkins took place at St. James’s Piccadilly in London on Saturday 22nd February 2020. As well as featuring a number of trumpet solos from Crispian the performance also showcased the English Chamber Choir and the orchestra (the English Players), under the direction of Guy Protheroe. St James’s Church is a

The Thomas Tallis Society Choir & Orchestra performed a programme of music by Capperauld, Finzi, Purcell, Vivaldi and Williams at St. Alfege Church in Greenwich on Saturday 18th December 2020. The programme began with Purcell's Come Ye Sons of Art (of 1694). I began playing the natural trumpet part, and I was asked to play the second alto part (one octave higher) in the movement 'Sound

Alison Balsom: “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen - welcome to England at the end of the seventeenth century. Don’t panic. I’m not here to talk. I have this (she holds the trumpet). And, you know, some people hear in this only one thing - a call to arms, a military fanfare, the triumphant crow of a proud and patriotic soldier. But in the 1680s and 90s, Henry Purcell, a composer who means the whole

Solomon’s Knot’s Purcell Pageant programme - which we first aired in the Ryedale Festival just one week ago - was in fact devised to celebrate the golden wedding anniversary of two of Solomon’s Knot’s loyalest supporters. The couple invited Solomon’s Knot to the Cambridge Buddhist Centre on Friday 2nd August 2019 to perform a musical pageant in celebration of their wedding anniversary

Solomon’s Knot gave three performances during a residency at the Ryedale Festival in Yorkshire. The festival has been described by the Guardian newspaper as ‘the jewel in Yorkshire’s cultural crown’ and browsing though their brochure, it was evident that this is an exceptional festival. The first concert of Solomon’s Knot’s residency took place at Ampleforth Abbey and it featured

I performed Purcell’s ‘Hark! the echoing air’ from the Fairy Queen with Clare Lloyd-Griffiths (soprano) and Solomon’s Knot as part of a special Proms edition of the BBC Radio 3 programme ‘In Tune’. The live broadcast took place just after the 17:00 news on Friday 19th July 2019 (the First Night of the Proms) in front of an audience at Imperial College London on Prince Consort Road. The

‘Snape Maltings, Snape Maltings, Thank Benjamin Britten for Snape Maltings’ was the specially-written encore of Vox Luminis’ King Arthur performance at Snape Maltings in 2017. That memorable performance, exactly two years ago, was my first appearance with the group and there have been many exceptional projects in the interim, including performances at Versailles, the Utrecht Early Music Festival,

Following the OAEducation's workshops and performances in Plymouth last week, the group gave two consecutive performances in two different Boroughs of London (Merton and Wandsworth) on Thursday 9th of May 2019. The story included many young performers from Cricket Green School in Merton (next to the picturesque 18th-century Mitcham Sunday and National School, as pictured above) and Greenmead