There was the sound of the sea, then the cry of the gulls. After that, it’s the old story: music annexed my life via recordings, and here we are at Fanfare. Björling, Barbirolli, and Beecham snaked into my heart and soul from dad’s tiny collection of 78s. Danny Kaye, Tubby the Tuba. Dad also pumped out show tunes by ear on his upright piano, while mum told him to shut up. His fine tenor voice taught me the operatic highlights. That voice could have earned him ovations on some pretty fancy operatic stages, but a life of dead-end jobs swallowed him whole, instead. There was no money for lessons for me, and no music at school in a tough area. So I sat myself down with hand-ruled manuscript paper and tried to figure out music from first principles. I was about eight years old. Alone, I would dismantle the aging piano and climb inside with a cheap mike, doing a Cage/Stockhausen. At 13, I wrote a “Symphony.” One movement was serial, the next free, and the finale played both the other movements concurrently. Go figure.

Cheapo LP deletion sales helped me explore 20th-century music, especially the American and Russian kinds. Prokofiev’s Toccata blew me away (I started writing toccatas on a toy piano), so did the Ives Second Orchestral Set. I planned a clone of the Ring cycle based on polar exploration, finishing the verse libretto when I was 15. I wanted to be Berlioz. I loved Dufay and Josquin. What was I thinking? Above all I had British Radio Three. I learned everything from that station. They were really good at letting you hear alternative versions of the classics in a short period. And they had the Record Review program.

The Oxford Companion to Music and singing in school choirs helped seal my fate. Then I was flattened by blue meanies at school just for carrying a Shostakovich LP, and I got serious. Contemporary music claimed the biggest part of me, and still does; mainstream, jazz, rock, indie—I hear all kinds live, when I can. Like many, I assembled a way-too-big collection of everything. Years later I ran a serious collectors’ store in London, and began to match what I knew to the habits and extraordinary knowledge of crazy and passionate people all around the world.

Oh, yes, my life. I’m 50, British, two kids, run for pleasure. I took a degree in English and American Studies (to learn to write), and qualified in education and management post-grad. I studied music the whole time, and wrote songs for kids. I’m a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. But I don’t like the arts/science distinction. So I’ve done most jobs and a good deal of teaching, but I also took up electron microscopy, design, research and development, and photography in a big way. I had a record label, long-gone. I write on Russian music and issues, and am a sometime biographer and editor. Latterly I ran training courses at the Royal Academy of Music, working with some of my long-time string quartet heroes and fantastic student musicians. Currently I am progressing work on the world’s largest arts project (coastline project), planning a film documentary about Michael Tippett, and composing a couple of extended pieces to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Vaughan Williams. It sounds busy, but I seem to have spent most of my life doing nothing and/or worrying about it. It’s a huge privilege to be here.