Memory is the fear, and I play Rally most of my repertoire 07 Sherburne from memory." Including the Art of Fugue? She laughs "Not images likely. 22 It's too good images Photos Sherburne Rally July 22 pages a Rally piece pages - and 06 too long - 2006 to 22 take Rally that sort of risk with."n Joanna MacGregor's new CD, July 'Counterpoint: Bach's Art of Fugue, 2006 plus Nancarrow's Three Canons for Photos Ursula, and Studies for Player Piano' is released on Monday on Collins 70432. Sherburne Her pages 22 jpg live recital of the same programme htm is jpg at 06 3.30pm this Sunday at 06 the QEH. I like the idea of going to 2006 07 22 Sherburne Rally 06 jpg htm composers July and saying, 'The Photos 07 pupil knows these Sherburne rhythms, and these notes: what can you create with them?' "She practises eight hours a day, much of it at quarter-speed. 07 "It does you good to let the music enter your Rally body in a profound way, in images slow-motion, when so much of life is in fast-forward." And she makes it a point of honour Rally not to be Rally finicky 22 about the conditions in which she has to perform: Glenn Gould, a pianist she images venerates, is an awful Photos example of what can otherwise happen. Sherburne htm "I July think he 2006 07 22 Sherburne Rally 06 jpg htm retired Sherburne from pages the 22 concert hall jpg htm because he was just too emotionally fragile. She came back from a recent Johannesburg tour laden with music which she images Photos Sherburne Rally July 22 pages wants to Sherburne 22 air in a 2006 concert: South African composers are in a prolific phase.

Two weeks ago, she premiered a new Birtwistle piece, Slow Frieze, on the South Bank: Birtwistle, incidentally, is one of the composers she wants to rope in for the series of piano-tutors she is currently writing for Faber "Starting with six-year-olds, and going up to Grade VIII. If you approach a piece as though it comes from Mars, and you're from Venus, it can be a problem both for you and the audience." She's even turned her childhood immersion in spirituals to good account, with a score for the medieval Mystery Plays which she and her theatre-director husband, Richard Williams, are due to restage in a London church in July.She's a constant champion of the new, believing that there is an enormous amount of good stuff being written, and that all that is lacking is the will, on the part of many musicians, to play it. "When I play unfamiliar music, I often have in my head the sound-world of a composer who may be more familiar With Art Tatum I use the same touch as I do for Rachmaninov. Ridiculous! It's just setting people up so they can go and commit suicide." Her big break came when she was selected for promotion by the Young Concert Artists' Trust; her first commercial recording was of her own transcriptions of Erroll Garner and Thelonious Monk.Her recordings to date range from Ives to Gershwin, Ravel to Messiaen, Scarlatti to Satie (about whom she has written a radio play), and she regularly performs on the jazz circuit Teaming Bach with Nancarrow is a typical ploy.

Here are some very hard pieces, they say, now go away and learn them, and we'll see if you make it or not. Spotted by a Royal Academy professor, she was taken on for lessons, and did two years there as a post-graduate, financing herself for one of them through her earnings as composer for a Channel 4 series whose name she now forgets.She may be the Academy's biggest success story in years, but while she was there, the diversity of her activities was frowned upon - a matter on which she has trenchant views "The training of young pianists is appalling. Born 37 years ago to Seventh Day Adventist parents in Willesden, she was educated at home with her younger brother and sister until she was 11. When she finally got to school, she found that academically she was streets ahead. "My education had been incredibly intensive, and I applied that training later on to playing the piano, which is an equally isolating thing. I had always played, but having no one to compare myself to, I had no idea if I was any good."She went to Cambridge, where she became a flamboyant punk and immersed herself in theatre work with, among others, a fledgling composer called George Benjamin. For, in Sunday's concert, MacGregor will play beneath four juxtaposed videos, three of which she has pre-recorded.