In September 2004, and having spent three years in "the City", I decided to leave a lucrative career (and wonderful colleagues!) in the finance industry to pursue explore opportunities in the performing arts. Such a decision might appear somewhat rash and risky to an outside observer, but from an early age it has been apparent that my passion for music was far from casual.





Initially starting on the piano at the age of six, I first saw a guitar being played onstage at the age of nine, and it has been my instrument of choice (most of the time) since. Following some initial guidance from friends, I taught myself to play my father's classical guitar over the course of several years (with the aid of my parents' easy listening music collection it has to be said... this relaxed genre has clearly influenced the unusual fingerprint of my fingerpicking style and can still be heard in my playing today).

Not content to learn the guitar on its own, other instruments soon caught my attention. Thanks to classmates in the school brass band, I was soon keen to try my hand at woodwind instruments, and begged my parents to let me learn the saxophone - as a compromise solution, my parents relented and gave me an inexpensive clarinet, and I'm sure my parents were grateful for the silence when I finally emerged from my room, having spent several hours trying to learn to play the thing from fingering charts.





Boarding school proved a fruitful time of development for me, and I was asked frequently to accompany others on piano or guitar. But it was when classmates needed someone to play bass for a school event that I once again found another instrument to get my teeth into, and I just managed to pick up enough to perform with the school's crusty bass onstage a few days later. Finally, for my fifteenth birthday, and having just finished my secondary school exams, I was given a beautiful blonde Ibanez semi-hollow electric guitar, and quickly set to work trying to figure out how to use a pick (I still have that guitar, and love it dearly)!





Amazingly, when I left for univerity in September 1998, I didn't bring a guitar with me (whether this was because logistics were a challenge or whether I simply forgot is a detail I can't really remember), and so I ended up taking an enforced break from the guitar for a year. In my second year however, I managed to make two somewhat dubious decisions:

1. I bought myself a doubleneck acoustic guitar with my first term's food money. Boy was that something I regretted at several points throughout the year! Perhaps it was as a way to distract myself that...
2. I decided to take on the challenge of writing, composing for and directing a student musical production, and spent the first two terms doing this. This was manic, intensely fun and incredibly stressful... fortunately, the show turned out to be an unprecented success for a production of its type at the time (and the subsequent cramming for the second year finals showed that actually the aforementioned stress had - relatively speaking - been nothing to moan about).

After my exams, I was fortunate and surprised to land an internship at a rather glamorous investment bank in the City, and after my final year at university I decided to accept their offer to join them.





Within the first few months of beginning my career, an event took place which would change my life (and many others around the world): during my training course in New York, the infamous events of the 11th Sept 2001 took place. Like (undoubtedly) many others, I decided that life's too short to do something your heart's not into, regardless of how well paid it might be, and I explored many options (including mooting various business plans with friends, and going so far as buying enough psychology textbooks to screw with both my head and my back).





It took me three years, and a lot of time thinking, talking to God and consulting with wise friends, to figure out what I wanted to do. At this point, 11 months on, I can say that it has been the most exciting year of my life!

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Leaving the issue of money aside, if you could do anything, any career, any job, for the rest of your life... what would it be?

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I dare you to dream!