I’ve long been a fan of historically-informed performances, particularly of Bach and Mozart. I was lucky enough to be in the audience when John Eliot Gardiner performed the John Passion at the Proms with Mark Padmore and Peter Harvey, and my Bach playlist is full of his recordings and those of Masaaki Suzuki & Ton Koopman.

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At the RAM, the mantra was that “the superfluous was the enemy of the necessary” (the coordinator was evidently a fan of Nietzsche), so I earnestly devoted all my time and energy to the modern flute, failing to take advantage of the incredible Lisa Beznosiuk who taught there, unaware of how profoundly the historical instrument was to help my modern playing as well.

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Whilst studying at Yale a couple of years later I met Robert Mealy, who after bravely coaching our modern-instrument chamber group as we made heavy work of some Couperin, gently suggested we might like to try it on historical instruments. Yale has a wonderful collection, including two modern copies of a Palanca flute made by Martin Wenner. The Palanca is a forgiving model for a transitioning modern flautist, and it was with some surprise that I found myself making a better noise than expected. The Couperin suddenly made a great deal more sense, and with Robert’s encouragement, I started taking lessons with Sandy Miller, joining them both later that year at the American Bach Soloists Academy in San Francisco.

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It was whilst there that I first experienced playing in a large ensemble as a baroque flautist. Bach’s B minor mass could hardly have been a more thrilling introduction, and I also found myself really enjoying our other big project: tackling in full the five-act French baroque monster that is Marais’ Sémélé. In short, it was a transformative experience which motivated me to apply to Juilliard’s Historical Performance program, for which I was thankfully accepted.

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Since coming back to the UK I've hugely enjoyed working with brilliant colleagues at Instruments of Time & Truth and the Oxford Bach Soloists, and was particularly proud to play at the BBC Proms with Arcangelo in 2021.