I was born in Lincoln and spent my early childhood in Gainsborough before moving to Harpenden. When I was eleven, my family headed north, first to Leeds and then to Rochdale. Manchester became home as a young adult, but when I had my first child I found myself returning to the North Yorkshire coast, to a landscape I already knew through childhood holidays. I’ve lived here ever since, on the edge of the North York Moors, where the changing seasons, the moorland and the coastline continue to shape the rhythm of my life.
My fascination with place began long before I had the language to describe it. As a child I would spend hours drawing the solitary trees that stood amongst the patchwork fields of Lincolnshire, captivated by the way they seemed to belong so completely to the landscape around them. I can still remember standing amongst the alignments at Carnac in Brittany and looking across thousands of ancient standing stones stretching into the distance. I was far too young to understand their history, but I remember the feeling of that place and the sense that landscapes could carry stories of their own. Those experiences have stayed with me, and I suspect they have shaped my work far more than I realised at the time.
My mum discovered, almost by accident, that the only thing capable of keeping me, aged three, occupied for any length of time was a recorder book my older brother had brought home from school. She patiently worked through it with me and, before long, I was reading music at about the same time that I was learning to read words. Although nobody else in my family played an instrument, notation simply made sense to me and, once I’d discovered manuscript paper, I spent my pocket money filling page after page with music that already existed in my imagination, long before I had any understanding of what it meant to be a composer.
My grandfather often spoke about an aunt in Germany who could play anything. She owned a harp, and he always said he wished he could find it for me. I don’t know whether the harp still exists, but I do know that I was fascinated by the idea of her, and quietly determined to be like her. Music never felt like something I chose to do. It simply became part of the way I understood the world.
Perhaps it was inevitable that those two lifelong interests, music and landscape, would eventually find one another. Over the years my work has taken many different forms, from composition and performance to community music, cultural leadership and research, but I’ve never really thought of them as separate pursuits. Each has offered a different way of exploring the relationship between sound, place, memory and belonging, and of asking how creativity might help us connect more deeply with the world around us.
Today I divide my time between my own artistic practice and the organisations, communities and musicians I work alongside. I’m Artistic Director and co-founder of Flash Company Arts CIC, where I have the privilege of working with an extraordinary team to develop creative programmes that place culture at the heart of community life. Alongside this, I create and release music as Subphotic, Storm Chorus and Bonfire Hill, and create large-scale visual works that respond to landscape and environment. I’m also currently completing a practice-led PhD at Leeds Beckett University exploring co-creation, music and place.
I’m Chair of Sound Sense, the UK’s professional association for community musicians, and serve as a trustee of both the Association of Mental Health Providers and the Natural Voice Network. I’m also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and, in 2025, was honoured to receive the British Empire Medal for services to music education. More recently, it was a particular privilege to see my artistic practice discussed by Dr Phil Hubbard in Listening to Landscape, recognising the relationship between listening, place and creativity that has quietly underpinned my work for as long as I can remember.
Everything you’ll find on this website grows from those same experiences and interests. Whether you’ve arrived here through my music, my research, a project we’ve shared or simple curiosity, I hope you’ll enjoy exploring further.
A full CV and media resources are available on request.