About two and a half years ago I was teaching a piano lesson at the Conservatoire (Blackheath). My adult student (who seemed to have plenty of talent but very little application to his piano studies) showed me some publicity material for a project he was setting up. The project sounded great, but I noticed that they had no website so I offered to help, as web programming is another string to my bow, as it were.

Dominic gave up his piano lessons and I joined the growing team at Ginkgo Music, making lots of great friends and discovering some amazing music that I may not have otherwise found. Anybody that knows me will know that it’s not often that I say things like that - but this music is genuinely high quality stuff, whilst still being open and engaging.

Two years down the line and I’m in another piano lesson - or at least I’m in my teaching room at St Dunstan’s College waiting for my pupil, who is late. Whilst waiting I pull out my headphones and grab a sneaky listen to a track our producer Peter has sent me that morning, entitled “This is the Waltz” by Valentin Gerlier. I’m completely entranced, so when Georgina arrives (rather late and a bit out of breath) I just smile and offer her one of the headphones… “Coooool!”, she says and I tell her about the project and what I’m up to. I trained at the Royal College of Music as a composer and orchestrator and I’ll be adding some orchestral touches to some of the tracks on Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador - an exciting project for the summer! I’ll keep you posted how it’s going…

Ben