Tickets
Hard to do this without sounding like a dick. I mean no one wants to hear about my or anyone else’s ‘creative process’ (yawn) and quite rightly. But I’m so bored of classical music being about so much pomp and ceremony with music seemingly taking second or third place to dress codes, audience IQ/bank balance and an ability to know when to clap and understand sonata form in Beethoven’s Vienna. So I decided to make the music front and centre, introduce the pieces myself (handily avoiding program notes which make me puke), turn the lights down and offer something immersive, intimate and, hopefully, a little bit magical.
Until the age of 14, James had no formal academic musical education or dedicated mentoring. Aged 18 he stopped playing the piano entirely for a decade. Since returning to the piano, he has released six albums, all of which have topped the iTunes classical charts.
He has performed in venues and festivals around the world from the Barbican, Roundhouse, Royal Albert Hall in London, major international rock festivals.
In addition to writing regularly for the major UK newspapers and regularly presenting for BBC Radio 3, James has presented TV shows for the BBC, Sky Arts and Channel 4.
His Sunday Times and international bestselling memoir, Instrumental, published by Bloomsbury this week (7th Feb) is a brutally honest, moving and compelling story that was almost banned until the UK Supreme Court unanimously overthrew an injunction in May 2015.
Photography by Richard Ansett
Other Winter Highlights
Bridging the Gap IV
Women in Music: A Tribute to Mercedes Sosa
yMusic: Freshly-Minted
Josh Green & The Cyborg Orchestra
BMP Presents: Sound from the Bench
Philip Glass @ 80 – The Complete Etudes with Maki Namekawa
Lost Spring
The Thurber Theater: Michael Thurber’s 30th Birthday Concert
New York Philharmonic Presents: Contact!
Prototype Presents: Funeral Doom Spiritual
