Musically, this is pretty different from my last album but just for you, here is a secret recording of Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again from The Phantom of the Opera. I promise I didn’t set fire to anyone’s hair while recording this (see last week’s note!).

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From Andrew Lloyd Webber to another genius who wrote musicals… Shakespeare. Did you know that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was originally a musical but we have lost the music?

The text for this Friday’s Book Club is a wonderful recent production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on YouTube. The Book Club meets on the first Friday of the month. It’s at 8 pm UK time via Zoom. If you would like to join, you can get the sign in details on my Literature Courses Facebook group. If Fb isn’t for you, you can also visit the Literature Courses website. The Book Club is completely free of charge, btw.

I’m sorry this is all a little pluggy this week!

I would really love it if a few of you could shout out and say whether you would like some music tuition via this list, performance and recording updates or more about literature (because I could talk about singing or Tolkien until someone fits me with a mute button).

So, this is the amusing and occasionally horrifying story of how my new project came about…

When I was 17, I appeared in the school show singing the title song from The Phantom of the Opera with my sister playing the Phantom and me playing Christine (it was an all girls school and Paula is 6 ft tall with a 4 octave vocal range, so she tended to be cast as men where there was a need). My dress, a tight fitting 70s bridesmaid’s frock bought from a local charity store and fitted with an enormous net skirt, did not hold out to the second top C in the piece. It split down the side infront of 700 people but – no fear! – for I also had a velvet cape. I swooped it round myself, knocked over the candelabra and set fire to one of the backstage crew’s fringe (what Americans call ‘bangs’). I heard this same 2 words repeated over and over, the second one being, ‘you’. The girls on the sound desk smelled the burning hair, and since they had used far too many adapters assumed the hall was on fire and evacuated. I doubt anyone remembers that E6…..

Despite the onstage disaster, I very much wanted a career in music theatre in my teens. What I didn’t know at the time was that my neck was fusing and that I had a lifelong rheumatalogical disorder, Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, which developed into adult rheumatoid arthritis and axial (spinal) arthritis with spinal fusion. That seemed to close the door on that particular dream, and on being a professional singer generally. I went on to study for an Honours degree in English Literature and then a Master’s degree in Old English. Many years later, a friend of my mother’s noted the emotional effects of my condition and commented that if I made music again, I would be happier. I ended up with a Master’s in Songwriting, a commercial music degree. I signed a music publishing deal at the unheard of age of 36/37 and have worked in the music industry ever since.

I’ve been a singer, a songwriter, and an A&R rep (Artists and Repertoire, i.e. the person who finds and signs new talent for labels and publishers) and a vocal coach /singing teacher. It was in this role that The Twist started to come to life.

Several of my students are music theatre professionals. I set up Bank Holiday Broadway, a music theatre concert series, to showcase their talent and just couldn’t help joining them onstage out of a burning need to sing Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again and Defying Gravity, as out there as that seemed when compared to my last album. It felt joyously like going back in time, and I loved being part of a company. I’m used to working with bands, but it’s nice to be on stage with other singers, too. It reignited my love of musical theatre.

I went to see a production of Oliver which featured two of my students, one as Nancy and one as Mr. Bumble. While watching it, I realised there was an interesting story there that Dickens didn’t tell: the story of Agnes Fleming, Oliver’s mother.

Dickens wanted to talk about the plight of children easily trapped in a life of crime if they were without a guardian to look after them, and the correlation between crime and poverty. There is also the hidden theme of the treatment of women, especially unmarried mothers in Victorian society. Poor Agnes finds herself cast out by her father after she falls pregnant to Edwin Leeford, who is trapped in a difficult marriage. Agnes had absconded to the continent with him, and he had agreed to try and free himself and marry her when he learned of the pregnancy, but sadly he dies before that can happen. Agnes is forced back to England where she gives birth to Oliver in a poorhouse, and then dies, an anonymous ‘fallen woman ’.

That is the story I tell in my upcoming musical, The Twist. Agnes and her half-sister, Rose Maylie, take centre stage: one giving birth to Oliver, the other finding and rescuing him. Mrs. Maylie, Rose’s mother, is the secret lover of Agnes’ father. Agnes reacts badly when she learns this secret, then later believes her father will understand her situation because he too has an illegitimate child.

The score is quite sweeping but there are some fun singalong songs in there, too. Paid subscribers can hear the songs as they are recorded with ‘making of’ videos. The Twist won’t be the only thing I’ll be writing about, but I will keep you up to date and if you happen to be local, you’ll get a priority invite to the première. If you are not, you can access it exclusively online.

Sometimes the road to our dreams is a twisting one. I hope you are following yours!

Disappointment is part of being alive, and it’s a huge part of the creative life. The publisher you were sure would want you. The gig you were certain to get. The audience who talked all the way through your set. The course or the job you applied to get a ‘thanks but no thanks’ letter. It really sucks.

Naturally, I could be glib and say, ‘but just look at all that you have achieved and how far you have come’. Certainly, that’s a good thing to do. I sometimes say to my students. ‘It doesn’t matter if a hundred people say no, as long as the right one says yes’. The point is, just keep going – but here are some tips on going in the right direction.

I was wondering wat I would talk about in my first post on this great new service. I was considering about talking about The Odyssey and the profound impact of Greek myth on art. I could also have looked at ways to care for your voice in the summer… but one topic keeps coming up again and again in my social media, in my emails, with my students and in my life, and to be honest, it isn’t a comfortable subject. Disappointment.

Disappointment is part of being alive, and it’s a huge part of the creative life. The publisher you were sure would want you. The gig you were certain to get. The audience who talked all the way through your set. The course or the job you applied to get a ‘thanks but no thanks’ letter. It really sucks.

Naturally, I could be glib and say, ‘but just look at all that you have achieved and how far you have come’. Certainly, that’s a good thing to do. I sometimes say to my students. ‘It doesn’t matter if a hundred people say no, as long as the right one says yes’. The point is, just keep going – but here are some tips on going in the right direction.

I Have Had to Disappoint People

I have been both an artist and an A&R (Artists and Repertoire professional, in other words, I found songs and songwriters and offered them contracts on behalf of a music publisher). Not only have I had the odd knockback, but I’ve had to give them as well, and it’s horrible – BUT how you react is very important.

For example, one person presented to me a track of decent if not outstanding quality, which sounded like something out of the 1990s when it was well into the 2010s. This person was unfortunately very emotionally attached to the track, and had a strong belief it had the potential to be a massive hit. I suggested lyrical changes and points in the vocal which need to be re-recorded, but the person refused to make any changes whatsoever and insisted on it being presented to a publisher. I agreed to do so, because I knew the publisher well and intended to tell him I was sure the person would make the changes if he asked. But publishers aren’t interested in receiving unfinished tracks, especially ones which don’t sound current (I had thought it might work as a ‘sound-alike’ track for a project set in the 1990s). The answer was a firm no, so I told the songwriter. The response was, well memorable.

He sent me thousands of words of insulting ranting, even proclaiming that he had given my Udemy course 5 stars and deserved a bit more from me in return and that I had not even sent the song to the publisher. I had told him it needed to be edited. I had given him advice. I had told him that publishers look for current (or future) sounds – but his complete refusal to take any kind of criticism made him very hard to get through to. And, now for the difficult bit, I was wrong for not telling him straight out. I should not have submitted it anyway. I should have come straight out and said, ‘This is not as good as you think it is’ from the start.

Naturally, the ranty email broke the songwriter’s relationship with me. I am not a home to verbal abuse! But I could understand his disappointment. He had been so sure publishers would want his track. It made me realise when my tracks were turned down, that sometimes the A&R has to give it to you straight. It’s kinder in the long run. If you send me your songs or creative writing for feedback, I will always be positive and I will always engage, but if you’re not quite ready for the opportunity you want, we have to look at how to get you there. It’s not helpful to just launch in.

Disappointed and Confused

Sometimes, however, professionals do have their own tastes and you can get confused by consulting too many opinions. I have a song that ended up doing well for me and has made me spot of cash. After I wrote it, I sent it to 2 A&Rs I trust. One said it was ‘very powerful’ and ‘impressive’, the other said it was ‘too linear’. Fortunately, the one who liked it worked for a major label and so was higher up the tree than the one who didn’t. At that point I had to ask myself, ‘Can I improve this? Do I believe in it the way that it is?’ That took some thinking about, but it worked out well in the end.

If You Just Aren’t Where You Thought You Would Be

It’s not always rejection that causes disappointment. Sometimes it’s just a sense you’re getting older and you thought you would have achieved more. If that is you, I would like to point out that my artistic hero, J.R.R Tolkien, did not publish The Lord of the Rings until he was 62. It takes time to percolate genius! The road goes ever on and on, it hasn’t come to an end, my friend.

So, if you are at a low point on the emotional rollercoaster which is creativity (or most careers!), that just means there are more opportunities ahead, there is work that you can do and, most importantly, there is still fun to be had. In times of disappointment, yes, go ahead and have a game plan, but it’s important to remember the joy your area of knowledge brings you. Just look for the fun.

Oh, and my final thought, you are not someone else and you can’t aspire to another person’s career. You are you and your timeless and talents are unique. Celebrate that!

are unique. Celebrate that!

Paid subscribers can send me songs, creative writing and audio tracks for feedback on singing, songwriting and commercial potential. I always look forward to hearing your work. Sorry I can’t offer it to everyone, but I would be swamped!

After an epic struggle with chronic illness (type 1 diabetes, idiopathic juvenile arthritis, Cushing’s disease and a heart attack in 2025), I found that teaching online kept me connected with the outside world, not just staring at my own 4 walls. I taught singing, songwriting, piano, music industry, English Literature and World Literature on Udemy and SkillShare until SkillShare imploded and Udemy became a bit, well, shaky after its merger with Coursera. I had made alot of digital content, but I had also run Zoom book clubs and a monthly Songwriters’ Circle (please do come along! They’re free and I send out invites from Substack). Through these groups I realised I love the community side of education, and the community that was created with people with the best of the best - kind, warm, pleasant and helpful individuals. I anted to find a home for the community and my online content, and Substack is it!

I’m also going to share my own music here, and perhaps do some live feed gigs. There’s just a world of possibilities here.

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