artist

I create across different genres — classical, jazz, using improvisation in both, and piano‑based electronic music. Each project explores a different facet of the same lifelong impulse: to explore the inner realm of feeling using music to bring clarity, solace, catharsis, freedom and pure joy.

I have 4 Projects:‎

• Phil Best — classical-based piano music

• Lewis Harrison — jazz-based piano

• Musometry — house / downtempo with jazzy solo piano

• Tone & Groove — simple, hypnotic music for meditation

teacher

I teach music as a language — following simple principles to express yourself in any style. Using a clear model of rhythm and tonality, I help students develop confidence, fluency, and a deeper connection to music, whether just beginning, returning, or working at a professional level.

Like so many small children, I loved music

Music for so many of us feels essential. I know it has always been that way for me. It provided me with a language for understanding the world – or more precisely, my inner world. The piano was my favourite place from a very young age and encouraged by my wonderful Grandma, it formed a path into a landscape that I loved to explore endlessly—to go on adventures, to find stories, to discover deep truths. What I actually played was very simple but it was magical.

Finding my own path

When I was a little older, again, like many children, I struggled with the constraints of traditional learning. Afraid of losing my connection with the magic, I searched for a more rational understanding of what I had been doing as a small child. I soon began to notice that music wasn't mysterious or dense. It had clear patterns and shapes. The rhythmic groove and the keyboard both have beautiful underlying structures, and the more I explored music in this way, the more clearly I could see how rhythm, harmony and melody worked together.

The magic grew

My simple way of making music was so precious to me, I couldn’t allow my connection with it to be broken. But mostly, as I practised, I just felt mischievous and playful to discover how beautiful, unfolding patterns of music can take us to such fantastic magical places.

When music comes from that inner place, it feels soulful and embodied. So the simple things that I loved to play quickly developed into more complex patterns and I acquired the kinds of skills that are usually attributed to prodigies. But my fluency in the language of music arrived from the freedom and permission to play with a simple model rather than special innate gifts.

My work as a music artist

I like to think that the music I make is therefore accessible, or connected to a shared inner experience. In my various artistic projects, I love the idea that music is something we gather together around, something that warms our souls, provides solace and catharsis, a source of real joy. Over the many years of my life, I have built a relationship to the world of music not as something competitive or cool or aspirational, but more of a shared inward adventure. In my shows and recorded performances and improvisations, I invite people to join me on an inward journey, sometimes touching dark places but always moving towards the light.

My work as a music teacher

I believe that a great many people have the innate ability to understand how rhythm and tonality work, if they play in a permissive way using a clear model, as I did. So naturally, I love to teach others about this. I will work with anyone who feels ready to challenge their fears or inhibitions about expressing their deep inner feelings. I don’t mind whether you are a professional or amateur musician, a beginner or experienced practitioner, someone who wants to unlock their most powerful musical potential, or someone who simply wants to practice music very simply as a kind of meditation, I’d love to help you discover a deep relationship with music through your chosen instrument—to create music spontaneously, as fluent self expression, by learning how it works as a language.

Soul, not ego

Fluent music can communicate directly, soul to soul, bringing joy, solace and catharsis, even healing. With fluency as our focus, we can free ourselves from the common pressure to perform well. Today's Commercialism can cause music to become a vehicle for the ego. Musical fluency challenges this and awakens us to music's deeper purpose.

Having experienced early competitive success as a young musician, I have experience of becoming too driven – a common experience for so many musicians. The tendency to value prestige and rank within a competitive system can have a lasting psychological impact. The process of healing is a great opportunity for growth and insight, both as an artist and teacher.

"Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife."

— Khalil Gibran