Where are you from?

I grew up in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. It's an idyllic town in the North of England which is steeped in history. Typically I only really appreciated its loveliness after moving away.

How did you first get involved in music?

When I was about 7 years old I became a chorister in the local church choir. Around the same time I took up piano and clarinet. The sounds from my chorister days are deeply ingrained in my music, and even though the saxophone seems a world away from that heritage, those are the sounds I've always sought from the instrument.
My parents are both music lovers, and I remember growing up with a hefty dose of The Beatles alongside classical recordings, notably the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and choral music.

When did you first take up the saxophone?

When I was about 13 there was a spare saxophone in the store room at school. I asked if I could take it home for the holidays. It was a pretty battered tenor, but there was something about it that really drew me in.  This was in the 1980s when every song on the radio seemed to have a sax solo, so I began by transcribing those and playing along with the records.
Soon after that I put a band together at school and would teach the members of the group how to play those songs. We'd perform them in assemblies and at school events.

When did you decide to pursue a career in music?

It came about almost accidentally. A very good friend of mine, Mick Foster (who is also a professional player and fellow Professor at the Guildhall School) told me there was a wonderful clarinet and saxophone teacher over from the US and teaching at Harrogate College of Arts & Technology. This was when I'd just turned 16 and was all set to become a vet, but Mick managed to pursuade me that this was a good option. I did a late audition and got in to start from the September of that year.
The teacher was Dr Cecil Gold and he was a great influence, helping me to really get my chops together on clarinet and saxophone.
The course in Harrogate was run by two incredible teachers and musicians - Harry Gibson and Chris Roe. They had an infectious energy for music and that was the first time I'd ever listened to classical music with scores. They made it spring to life, even for a group of teenagers, and I would say that those 2 years were among the richest of my musical life.

How did you come to choose saxophone over clarinet?

In my late teens I saw the sax very much as my jazz/pop option, and the clarinet as the classical option. I found an affinity with the freedom of sound on the saxophone, but when playing jazz I always felt I was wearing someone else's shoes. It wasn't my music, even though I really enjoyed listening to it. After being in Harrogate for a few months the same friend introduced me to John Harle playing the saxophone in a classical context. I had heard classical saxophone recordings before that point, but always found the sound to be very tight and thin, not containing the same expressive power I heard in the jazz and soul players I was listening to (Sanborn, Brecker, Coltrane). Harle seemed to combine the things I wanted from music and the saxophone - a really expressive sound but placed in a more classical context. So I decided I wanted to study with him, and moved to London when I was 19 to study at the Guildhall, following in close pursuit of Mick Foster who'd started a couple of years earlier.

Tell us about your time at Conservatoire?

The first thing that struck me was how far behind I seemed to be. I'd only really been practising properly for 2-3 years, and there were people in my year group who'd been heavily immersed in music since they were very young. For me it had only been a passtime until the Harrogate College years. So I got my head down and worked as hard as I possibly could for the 4 years. I'd always be amongst the first in in the mornings in order to get the best practice rooms. I really wanted to take my playing as far as I possibly could and I suppose I was prepared to work to get there.
There were some exceptional players around the Guildhall at that time - Will Gregory, Simon Haram, the Apollo Quartet, Bradley Grant, Paul Stevens & Nick Moss. I was like a sponge and used to copy the sounds around me.

What were your first steps when embarking on your career?

When I graduated I was fortunate enough to fall into the freelance scene. Simon Haram (who graduated about 4 years before me) used to pass a lot of work my way. I worked with the London Sinfonietta, the Liverpool Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Michael Nyman Band etc, and learnt a huge amount during those first few years.
At the same time I realised there was a part of me that was unfulfilled as a musician. I didn't want to be a straight ahead recital player, but at the same time I wasn't finding repertoire in the work I was doing which allowed me to play the way I really craved.
I was looking to play soaring melodies with real emotional intensity, but that kind of thing rarely came up for me in a freelance context. That is the huge millstone of choosing an instrument where the existing repertoire is quite narrow in its outlook.

How did you address the lack of repertoire?

I realised I had two options: either ask composers to write for me in a specific way, or begin to write and arrange for myself. The first option would have been a lot less work, but it was ulikely they would be able to come up with exactly what I was trying to find. So instead I began to experiment for myself. I had a phobia of pen and paper, so getting my first computer with some music software was a liberating moment for me. I went back to the sounds I knew were a part of me, the sounds of church music, and started to devise a way of adapting that to suit my playing. That was the beginning of the Sanctuary project, where I tried to combine floating, ethereal soprano sax lines with more emotionally intense alto lines.
It took a few years in my late twenties, but I realised I had then found my voice.

You released Sanctuary in 2004. What was the recording process like?

It was all very much working it out as I went along, and took an age to complete because of that. I didn't know in advance what would come out, and it was only after months of re-records that the identity of that album began to emerge.
I booked the Choir of King's College, London for a weekend, and we recorded the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. They were the first original compositions of mine, and I was really nervous about the way they would come out. The choir were very patient with me, and David Trendell, the director, was very helpful. I asked him to suggest a singer from the choir who could record some solos, and he put forwards Aimée Green. Aimée was from a very similar background to me (Yorkshire chorister roots!) and has a very folky quality to her voice which brought a tremendous amount to the album.
James Pearson (now house pianist at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in Soho) played the organ and contributed an arrangement.
I released the album on a small independent label, and it very quickly took off. Classic FM picked it up and played the lead track more than 200 times. People kept requesting it which for me was the hightest compliment.

Where did you go from there?

After the success of Sanctuary I received a lot of interest from some major record companies including Sony and Universal. I got quite a long way down the line with Sony and was about to sign, but something didn't feel right. My music was always incredilby personal and not something I could manufacture on demand in order to meet sales figures. If I was a straight-ahead concert soloist with a wealth of repertoire to record, then that model might have worked. But because I was the creator as well as the performer I didn't feel that I would suit that environment. Instead I set up my own label, Integra Records, and have released all of my subsequent recordings through them.

You've released a further five solo albums since Sanctuary. Many feature the voice of Grace Davidson. How did you two begin to work together?

Grace was booked as part of the vocal ensemble for my 2nd album, Renouncement. The singer originally taking the solos was sick, so Grace stepped up. She has an effortless, soulful and human quality to her voice, and her reading of Dowland's None but me for that recording really took my breath away. Our sounds seem to match, and we've found a way of working together over the years which seems quite unique. We work more like pop artists, with the studio becoming part of the creative process. We'll often record a rough version of a piece and then go away and live with it for a time. Then we come back and do it again. We may go through that process 4 or 5 times before we settle on an arrangement we are both happy with. That's the point we go and record the final version in a church near my home.

Your most recent release together was something of a departure of style. How did that come about?

I've done a lot of work with the organ, and love the majesty of that instrument, and the way the saxophone can sit within its ranks. But I wanted to expand my sound canvass and incorporate bass clarinets and mallet instruments. During lockdown I did a lot of experimenting with those sounds, and that is where Lost Child Found comes from. It's me as a producer and multi-instrumentalist, and for that I felt that I needed to give it a unique identity. When we perform this music live we bring in other musicians to play everythihng I did on the recordings.
The first release was Exit Music [for a film] by Radiohead. That's a track I've loved for over 20 years and always thought I might be able to bring something to it. The original has a Mellotron choir (an early sampling instrument), and on our recording we layered up Grace's voice to do the whole lot. The original track gets its intensity from bass guitar, electric guitar and drum kit, and I tried to get that weight from bass sax and bass clarinets, combined with the organ. Grace sang an incredible vocal line, really capturing the shivers of that song. The greatest compliment was when Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead wrote to us to say how much he liked it.

What other projects do you have on the go?

We're currently touring the When Sleep Comes project with Tenebrae and Nigel Short. We've performed in France, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland and a number of dates throughout the UK.
We also have a few performances of Histoircal Fiction this year, including a trip to Northern Ireland in the autumn.
Further recordings are in the pipeline continuing the journey into the Lost Child Found soundworld which I'm really enjoying. I have about 90 minutes worth of music that I haven't released yet, so that will be coming out over the next year or so.
You may have noticed that I don't release things very quickly! I prefer to let things settle and only release when I think the time is right. It's a business-person's nightmare, but I'm not in it for that reason.