Friday
I wake up feeling rested after lying in until 9 a.m. Although I’m opening the Black Voices Festival tonight, my mind is focused on next Monday’s performance at No. 10 Downing Street. I have time to run through my programme before setting off for Bedford. I manage to fit a large bag of tambourines, whistles and percussion instruments into my already very full car boot. These items are a new feature that I’m adding to tonight’s concert “Classic Women”. It’s a mix of classical and jazz, where my unsuspecting audience will be asked to look under their seats and use the percussion instruments they find there to improvise with me during my final jazz number. It feels risky, but I think it will work!
I arrive at All Souls Church in Bedford at 4 p.m. to meet my jazz bassist and drummer, Matt Home and Matyas Hoffecker. The set-up for us to play in the round by candlelight looks good. Between each jazz trio piece, I’m playing a classical solo, so Matt and Matyas leave the stage so I can run through my solo numbers.
Suddenly the piano decides to give up the ghost on its mid-range G sharp. In light of needing to play the first movement of the “Moonlight” Sonata, Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” and his Waltz Op. 64 No. 2, all of which revolve around G sharp/A flat, so this is a desperate problem. It’s surprising this should happen, as the piano has been tuned just before I arrived! The Artistic Director calls for the piano tuner, but there’s no answer. Thankfully the Chairman finds another technician who manages to restore the G sharp, saving the day. Seeing that everything is resolved, I put on a Raye track in my dressing room and change into my sequin dress.
The concert goes brilliantly, and the audience gives my jazz trio arrangement of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 a standing ovation. I’m impressed by how good the audience was at improvising with us on our Nina Simone number with the percussion instruments. They’ve got rhythm! It’s then a long drive home thanks to motorway closures and diversions.
Saturday
Driving back to Bedford the next morning, I start to feel the tiredness of a six-day work week. I also miss my family and realise that unless I make a deliberate plan, I won’t see them for a month. I call my sister, and we quickly arrange half a weekend together, with Mum and Dad joining us too.
Leon Bosch and I begin our rehearsal for his programme “Spirituals Reimagined”. He has arranged 18 Negro Spirituals for double bass and piano. He plays them with such freedom and passion, so I’ve tried to memorise as much as I can so that I can be in the moment with him.
At the concert, people are visibly moved by Leon’s performance. His re-telling of the stories behind the spirituals, coupled with his own story of being a political prisoner in South Africa during his younger years, is profound.
I make the two-hour drive to Suffolk to see my family. As soon as I see them, I forget the tiredness, and the weekend becomes filled with love, laughter, good food and listening to my niece’s reading homework.
Sunday
I receive a call from composer Deborah Pritchard, who has asked me to perform as part of a midweek London church service where she is Music Director, and to be interviewed on my Christian faith in connection with my music. I’ve chosen to perform Four Seasonal Sketches by the African American 1930s classical composer Betty Jackson King. Last summer I had the honour of interviewing people who knew her first-hand. Everyone I interviewed mentioned her Christian faith and how spiritual she was – almost mystic. Although Four Seasonal Sketches is a secular work, you can feel her spirituality in the music. It feels like the right choice for the service.
Monday
It’s 6.30 a.m. and I’m in bed musing. It’s the day of my No. 10 Downing Street event, and I think my three-year-old niece has given me her cold. I decide to lie in until 9 a.m. as I know the repertoire I’m playing like the back of my hand, and at least I don’t have to leave London for the performance. Also, the Downing Street staff are superbly organised. Once up, I visit my tailor who has made a marvellous adjustment to my off-the-shoulder black evening dress, which I’ll pair with a Ghanaian kente cloth sash.
I spend the afternoon going through the programme for today’s event, which is a mixture of works from my Black and Classical EP release (classical music by Black women), my jazz arrangements of popular classics by Liszt and Chopin, a Jed Distler arrangement of Art Tatum and George Gershwin. It all sounds good, but I decide to make some adjustments to the cadenza I wrote for Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.
By 3 p.m. I feel more energised and change into my concert dress. I catch an Uber to the Raffles Hotel to meet my publicist, Olivia Brown, for some tea before we head to Downing Street. At No. 10, the door opens and Larry the cat meets us. A member of staff shows us upstairs via the historical staircase where portraits of every prime minister, from Sir Robert Walpole to Boris Johnson, are hung.
Guests arrive and I play the background music for Downing Street’s reception. It is hosted by David Lammy, the Deputy Prime Minister, who I meet after his speech, and I present him with my signed Black and Classical CD whilst photos are taken.
I travel back home feeling happy and end the day catching up with my next-door neighbour over Prosecco and Hula Hoops.
Tuesday
I start the day with exercise, a bowl of porridge and responding to messages from concert promoters. I then drop in on a piano student to see how she is progressing, before returning home for my own piano practice and then tackling a large amount of admin related to the 2027–29 concert seasons in the US.
An afternoon tube ride takes me into central London for a meeting with Olivia, where we talk over our next steps with recordings, press and concert itinerary. The day ends in a noodle bar with my friend, Polly Gibbons, the jazz singer.
Wednesday
Except for a short performance tonight, today is totally dedicated to practice and admin. After breakfast I start work on new recording proposal documents, my social media content, the contracts I need to sign off and get clear on the legal advice I need to seek. I evaluate the latest live video recordings of my September and October performances and practise accordingly.
This evening,I give a short concert, performing Jackson King’s Four Seasonal Sketches, before taking part in a Q&A hosted by Deborah Pritchard. We discuss Jackson King’s faith, as well as my own, and talk about Dr Geneve Handy, to whom Jackson King dedicated her Four Seasonal Sketches. Handy was the musicologist who preserved the legacy of Blind Tom Higgins, the 19th-century blind African American slave pianist whose slave master took him around America on concert tours. It made Higgins a household name in his time, yet he died a slave, never receiving a cent of the money his performances generated.
Thursday
I start the day with my usual routine of exercise and porridge before visiting another piano student. She’s progressing nicely and has baked me Halloween cookies. I head into town for a meeting with the Lang Lang Foundation, then once back home I complete various PR tasks for my upcoming “Beatrice the Amazing Astronaut” piano concert for children at Blackheath Halls, where I will perform wearing an orange space suit. It’s incredibly popular and is already sold out, so we have another concert booked for March 2026.
No concerts this weekend, so I fall asleep looking forward to a weekend of home-cooked food, movies and going to The Royal Ballet & Opera at Covent Garden.
