If you play bass clarinet, or even if you don’t, you should go and listen to Michael Lowenstern, because he's amazing. He’s got new music...

Sight-reading - performing a piece having never seen it before - is often the most feared part of any music exam for inexperienced...

For student clarinettists, Grade 5 is where it starts to get really interesting both in terms of technique and the things we get to play,...

Apparently when you’re nine, turning your teacher into a pirate for your Zoom lesson is the best thing ever. So says clarinet student...

Recently, ABRSM introduced an alternative exam pathway: the remotely-assessed Performance Grades, some may cynically say to recover lost...

Not the tidiest of endings, but who's tidy in lockdown?!

Bass duties with the LGSW Clarinet Choir for the 2020 virtual chamber concert back in November, when they finally let us out to play,...

Most of the standard classical clarinet repertoire is meant to be performed on the Bb clarinet (and sometimes the A clarinet). But what...

Proof that band music isn’t stuffy and boring – I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of this! London Gay Symphonic Winds perform Bowie’s...

Bass clarinet duties with London Gay Symphonic Winds at our Christmas concert, performing André Jutras festive medley ‘C’est Noël’. I’m...

A few weeks ago during a break in rehearsal, the music director of one of my symphonic wind bands asked me if it would be possible to...

Scales. Some love ’em, some hate ’em, and one of the things I get asked most often by my (usually younger) students is “But whyyyyy do I...

I received an enquiry today from a potential student who asked me “Do I actually need a clarinet of my own to take lessons?” While the...

In many respects, instruments are a bit like cars. Sometimes they’re simply a tool to get you from A to B – reliable and exactly what you...