NEW: 'Düssel'

The story behind my new piece and how music brings us together

May 24, 2025

Listen to my latest piece ‘Düssel’ on Spotify below, or on a platform of your choice here…

Let me set the scene. It’s 2021, early-November, eighteen months in to the pandemic.

It was the stage when we had all become so accustomed to it, I think many of us had wondered if it was ever going away.

As someone who enjoys travelling, seeing new places alongside my touring schedule, and sharing ideas and experiences with my peers, this was something I was really missing. Piano-ing can be a lonely business at times.

Overseas travel had been somewhat eased, though not without fairly stringent testing and things to do. My dear friend

Garreth Brooke

, who some of you will be familiar with (see this from earlier in the year), was working on a series of higher-level pieces for a performance, and was venturing to the Brandenburg countryside to an incredible, isolated rural property which happened to have a piano.

Would I like to come and join him for a few days?

I think I very much would, yes.

I do love Germany, and I have many great memories of numerous trips there. From Brandenburg, it wasn’t too tricky to make it across to Düsseldorf, where Tom Blankenberg - another dear friend and musical connection - lives and works.

It’s a great place, and somewhere where I have enjoyed playing on many occasions, often in some really fun and interesting environments. As a Düsseldorf native, Tom has done many good things in the city across music, film and culture, and the area in which he lives, Flingern, is a vibrant and exciting place to be.

Whilst the concept of the living room concert has certainly become increasingly popular in many times, the Germans have a proper word for these occasions: Wohnzimmerkonzert. They are always so warm and friendly occasions, and Tom arranged for us to play one of these cosy events in a friend’s apartment. Having spent so long not being able to do things like this in the previous eighteen months, it was such a treat.

It felt like a safe place to be, even though it was far from home; my first trip abroad since the pandemic began, and amongst good people. As guests were arriving and mingling, I was playing around and experimenting with some different ideas and this wistful yet almost content-like melodic phrase began to form. It was quicker and significantly more rhythmical than much of what I had been working on at that time.

I did what I usually do when a moment of magic occurs - make a voice memo recording and try and write something down; even if there is not much to it.

It wasn’t until weeks later when I came back to the voice memos I remembered what a lovely evening it had been, and, crucially, the recordings and the ideas were actually quite good!

In April the following year in 2022, and with restrictions easing and vaccines changing everything, it felt possible and achievable to try and resurrect a set of tour dates across Europe which Tom, Canadian pianist Nathan Shubert and I had had postponed from various earier moments.

We set off on tour around Europe, taking in a delightful set of places, not least Copenhagen, my favourite city of all-time, where we had managed to arrange a similarly fun and quirky performance in the studio/atelier-space of Tom’s artist friend Julien Deiss. Tom had made contact previously with a Danish company called Keybird Instruments, who had set out to make an extremely lightweight and portable acoustic piano.

I must admit, I was sceptical. It only had one string per key, made use of a modular design (was it Ikea for pianos?!) and with so much focus on being lightweight and portable, I was unsure of whether it would be come through as a viable instrument to play, let alone perform or record on.

It was a special evening, and the Keybird did a great job. It was still in a quite an early stage of development at the time, so there were a few niggles with it (not least an especially squeaky pedal), but it was very impressive to see, hear, feel and play an instrument with such portability, which had a convincing and stable piano sound and tone.

During 2023, word quickly spread about the Keybird and they began shipping out plenty of instruments across the world, one of which found their way to Tom’s studio in Düsseldorf.

Tom has lots of nice microphones and a lovely studio space which he shares with brother Kai, and they developed an idea to create a small compilation of pieces performed and recorded on the Keybird.

In February 2024, I was playing a show in the east of Belgium, and it presented an excellent opportunity to head back to Düsseldorf and record my contribution.

I had already decided I was going to record this piece, which I had roughly titled Düssel back in 2021. It just felt right to be recording a piece inspired by the locality, in the same city a few years later.

I mentioned earlier about Flingern, the area of town where Tom lives and where his studio is. It’s a quirky area, the part of town where interesting people are. Having lived there for most of his life, Tom seems to know everyone too.

There’s a vibrancy to it, but without the overwhelming sense of gentrification or taking-itself-too-seriously which can often be found in larger urban areas.

I’ve always enjoyed visiting and being in this part of town (apart from when I was almost arrested on my first trip back in 2018…whoops), and I think the piece displays a sense of rhythm, movement and urgency which isn’t always heard in my music.

Düsseldorf is actually named after the river Düssel; a smaller tributary of the Rhine which flows through this region (bestowing on it the name of Nordrhein-Westfalen).

This is a shorter, more concise version of how I tried to explain what and where this piece came from, and what it was influenced by.

It’s not just about geography or the fact that it is a nice place to hang out, though.

In many ways, this piece is a documentation of friendship; a meeting-point of like-mindedness about music and many other things and interests which have drawn people like Tom and I together, and the other contributors to this compilation, regardless of language, age or knowledge.

A confluence is a geographical term for the meeting point of two rivers, perhaps a tributary meeting a larger river (stem) as is the case with the Düssel meeting the Rhine, whilst other confluences might refer to two streams coming together to form one bigger, connected stream.

This feels especially meaningful in that this release is a compilation; a combining of efforts from a number of musicians, composers and performers - some German, some Brits, united by music, shared interests and friendship. It reminds me of what is good about music, and what I love most about it: its ability to bring people together.

Here is the compilation in full. Titled Fugle (the Danish for ‘birds), it’s a rather lovely collection of piano music which I hope you enjoy and appreciate, not just for the music, but for the heart and behind it too.