Only a few hours after leaving Sheffield the night before, I found myself passing back through Sheffield station the next morning, en route to Oxford.

Oxford is one of those places that can get under your skin. I studied there, I subsequently lived and worked there for a while – and I also have earlier memories from the place, as my brother was a chorister there as a child and I spent many weekends as a teenager absorbed in that world. I’ve been back a lot, but because the city was unusually quiet this week (the usual summer schools and vast tourist parties conspicuously absent) the place somehow felt like a particularly blank canvas for different layers of memories to flit across.

Nowhere was this more the case than in the Cathedral, where I was due to play after evensong for five days. Here I spent formative years as an undergraduate, at that point a first-study organist (and frustrated pianist!). I have so many memories of playing for evensongs, learning repertoire, conducting the choir, turning pages, performing concerts, learning how to be a professional musician, experiencing triumphs and sadnesses, and forming close-knit friendships. (In fact Christ Church have just published an article I wrote about my time as organ scholar, which you can read here.)

Of course, time moves on, so now when I arrive, the cathedral staff have almost entirely changed since my day. But it still felt like coming home! I had a couple of hours of useful practice, witnessed / paparazzied by the tourists. The Fazioli here was bought by the cathedral some twenty years ago and I played it many times as a student – for everything from morning chorister rehearsals to a concerto performance of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

The first Bach performance on the Saturday night was an intimate affair: the audience was tiny in number but meditative and attentive in quality! And amongst a handful of friends was Stephen Darlington, who’d been Director of Music in my time (and for many years either side) – a truly first-class musician and person, to whom I owe a great deal. He’s been a loyal supporter of my work since and it was lovely to have a brief, masked catch-up afterwards.

This should have been the first of five performances but sadly the overdue happened, and covid finally got in the way of the project! On the Sunday I received a positive lateral flow test. We cancelled that evening’s performance and I took a PCR to confirm the diagnosis. The next day came and went with no result from that so we had to cancel the third performance too. By the fourth morning, with still no answer, we took the decision to cancel the remaining concerts. Maddeningly, when the PCR result finally did come through, it was negative – I was one of the relatively unusual cases of a false positive from a lateral flow. So I could have done all of the performances after all! Instead I’d had a boring two days sitting in my guest room – but I had a beautiful view, I corresponded with various friends who’d been planning to come to the later performances, I caught up on some admin, and I had food delivered to the door (thank you Steven!). Given the atrocities unfolding across the globe, it was hard to feel too hard done by. It was just very frustrating – and I’m sorry for the development office team who organised the event and had their time wasted!

Such is the nature of 2021. We are looking to reschedule and it will be great to be back for another attempt in due course!