Music, magic and transformation

For me, performing music is making a little bit of magic. You go up on stage, take your excitement and inspiration with you and let your skills and preparation do the work. Whether it is a huge amazing experience or something sweet and intimate, music has the capacity to take you away from your present world into another state. I feel that transformative power is real magic.

Discussing teaching with a friend last night, it was brought home to me how different teaching is to performing. Totally, completely different focus. You might need the same knowledge but you have to understand that information in a completely different way and give your attention to different levels of it. Additionally, you need your teaching skills: the relatively selfless discipline of working with someone else, in their mind, for them. Whilst on stage you are also working for your audience, but you don't have to keep a calm and controlled state in the same way - in fact it's better that you don't.

Essentially I have trained to do two things - my daytime weekday job of teaching and my evenings and weekend preoccupation of performing, of creating those magic spaces.

However distinct I've just made those two occupations sound, I feel at their heart they have a crucial similarity: that magic of transformation, the slow revealing of how the world can be a different place. Some of my favourite times are quiet morning lessons, with many small discoveries and moments of magic.